Hockey has defined Canadians for as long as there has been ice on the pond. It has unified the country under the Olympic flag, and, says Robinson, it “feeds young dreams and entertains in the darkest of winter days. (It is)…also responsible for the systematic dehumanization of young men and young women.”

In Crossing the Line, Laura Robinson takes readers behind the rink’s gritty scenes, into the male-dominated, hero-worshipping world of hockey.

Robinson, a freelance journalist, whose work on sports and gender issues has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and Saturday Night, worked with CBC’s Fifth Estate to produce the 1996 “Thin Ice” documentary, which looked at initiations and sexual abuse in junior hockey.

Robinson describes lewd initiation rituals, hazing, and minor league abuse and complements this with personal interviews with real players, real coaches, and real victims, male and female. Subject material is footnoted with 36 titles.

Sheldon Kennedy, Graham James, Gordon Stuckless, and Martin Kruze’s stories are all told. But Crossing the Line also exposes the perverted de rigueur passage of team bonding rites in junior hockey and the collusion of minor league officials in these rituals. The physical and emotional backlash is often devastating.

It is all about money and power. Young players, billeted hundreds of miles from home, hypnotized by the promise of the NHL, are naive and susceptible. Coaches like Graham James, with the power to make future stars out of these young people, betray the trust, demanding sexual favours for recognition on the ice. Fulfilling the abuse cycle, players become abusers themselves, with substances, as well as women, passing around girlfriends like “puck bunnies.”

Yet with accusations levelled, a code-of-silence is enforced at all levels of the hockey organization. Crossing the Line exposes game misconduct. It is time to serve the penalty.