Never Lose Again: Hockey, Community, and Canadian Identity in "Shoresy"
In the fifties, Vincent Massey proclaimed that Canada had no culture.
Kind of.
Vincent Massey was appointed head of the Massey Commission, formally known as the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, and was charged with assessing the state of Canadian cultural life. The commission posted its first report, citing “vast distances, a scattered population, our youth as a nation, [and] easy dependence on a huge and generous neighbour” as defining challenges. With regionalism fragmenting national identity and American and British television increasingly infiltrating Canadian homes, the Commission concluded that intervention was necessary. The result was foundational: the creation of the Canada Council for the Arts, expanded support for the National Film Board, increased university funding for arts programs, and the emergence of world-class thinkers such as Margaret Atwood and Northrop Frye, both of whom would attempt to articulate what makes Canadian culture distinctly Canadian.
Northrop Frye posited that Canadian Literature and art were based on the idea of Garrison Mentality, a defensive posture rooted in survival, enclosure, and respect for a hostile environment that could just as easily kill you as sustain you. Margaret Atwood came along later and furthered Frye’s theory with Survival, reframing Canadian literature around endurance rather than conquest As the postcolonial critic S. Samuel Rufus notes in his reading of Survival, Atwood advocates for a Canadian literary space that “should be reclaimed or conquered from the imperialist onslaught … [to] help create positive new identities by writing back to the centre, and thereby negating the indebtedness of colonised peoples to colonisers’ discursive constructions and modes of thinking.” This reading positions Canadian space not merely as physical territory but as a cultural and epistemological space to be articulated independently of colonial models.
Within the postcolonial reading of Canadian literary history, space transcends physical geography to become a cultural construct, one through which a community expresses “the meaning of their existence” and resists inherited frameworks that have historically positioned Canadian identity as derivative. This emphasis on constructed spaces becomes central for understanding contemporary media’s reconfiguration of identity in arenas and workplaces rather than forests and frontiers.
It’s been over 50 years since Atwood wrote Survival, and while some of these archetypal frameworks still hold water, they no longer exist in isolation. In a changing landscape, one where diversity is king, survival increasingly hinges on community. Over the last two decades, Canadian television has shifted towards ensemble casts set in contained communal spaces. Corner Gas, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Trailer Park Boys, Da Kink in my Hair, Kim’s Convenience, and even Degrassi. These are all set in small places where people gather, clash, learn, and ultimately choose sincerity over irony. Differences are not completely erased, but are held together with care, love, and respect. This emphasis on community as a mechanism for survival represents the latest evolution of Frye’s and Atwood’s frameworks.
Jared Keeso’s cult-hit series, Shoresy, is a perfect example of this shift. Shoresy begins as a tertiary character on Letterkenny. He’s faceless, abrasive, defined entirely by his alto voice and relentless chirps. He’s a pest, a hockey player whose jokes about his teammate’s mothers are exhausting, quick, and hilarious. Shoresy initially begins as a gag. In season 10 of Letterkenny, Keeso releases Shoresy from the margins. The Protagonist, Wayne (also played by Keeso), takes up a job as a Zamboni driver and sees Shoresy show up early, train, and be the last to leave. They shake hands, Wayne cites Shoresy’s work ethic and saves him from a fight with his soon-to-be teammate, JJ Frankie JJ. It’s here that Shoresy stops becoming a two-dimensional jester and starts to become something more real.
Shoresy, first and foremost, is about hockey. Shoresy (whose first name we never find out) is a hockey player. He’s loud, he’s rude, he’s incapable of losing. He “takes a shit in between every period”. He works hard, and he’s still a pest. His signature “Potty Kiss”, smashing your head against a urinal when you’re having a piss, perhaps a subtle nod to Al Purdy, and never dropping your stick in a fight so you don’t deprive yourself of a weapon, reinforces his status as an old-school enforcer. He hates to lose. His general manager, Nat, a young, professional woman, and her two assistants, Ziigwan and Miigwan, function as the moral and logistical anchors against the hurricane that is Shoresy. These three keep the boys, and particularly Shoresy, in line as they navigate their way through the treachery of the NOSHO (the Northern Ontario Senior Hockey Organization).
When the series opens, the Sudbury Bulldogs are heading towards their twentieth loss of the campaign under a disengaged coach. The power struggle between captain and coach is evident as we’re introduced to Shoresy for the first time, in the bathroom stall, goading Mark Michaels through the door.
Michaels: What do you want, Shoresy?
Shoresy: I want to never lose again.
Michaels: Can you just finish your shit and come talk to me down the hall, please?
Shoresy: Oh, you think I’m shitting? I should be so lucky. I’m puking and shitting at the same time. This team is so fucking bad, I’ve lost control of my bodily functions.
The exchange establishes Shoresy’s isolation. He’s the only one who wants to win, who wants to play. He tells Nat,“[Fighting] is exactly what we should do. Run ‘em up and fill ‘em in….The kids don’t want it. They don’t skate, they don’t score, they don’t hit, they don’t fight, they float… They don’t hate to lose.” The common culture in the room is getting by, rec league whale shit hockey. There’s no winning culture, there’s no community amongst the team. Everything is fractured and fragmented with no common ground. Shoresy then, when faced with the consequences of the team folding, proposes bringing together a group of rag-tag veterans to create the culture, community, and shared values. From this effort, the Sudbury Bulldogs not only have a winning culture, but they have their very own booster club, affectionately dubbed the “Bluester club.”
Nat brings in a sponsor by the second episode to pay for the Veterans - the Blueberry Festival, and changes the team name to the Sudberry Blueberry Bulldogs - a running joke that undercuts the traditional hockey seriousness and constantly brings the scope of “toughness” into view. The veterans embody classic masculine ideals - of resilience, stoicism, and endurance, often associated with Canadian survival narratives, yet these traits are constantly reframed. The call of “go ‘til you can’t go no more” is not about individual glory, but collective responsibility. Who are you going for? You are going for your team, for the community, and for love. These men never collapse into caricature because the show insists on sincerity.
For most of its run, Shoresy takes place in contained, liminal spaces: the rink, the locker room, the Coulson, Shoresy’s Apartment, and Peppi Panini. These environments reshape the men who inhabit them. Early on, the boys joke about bunking arrangements in Shorey’s apartment - making sure they don’t wake up “pole to hole” with the expected archetypal homophobia we expect from men. Later on, they attend a Gay Night at the Coulson to support JJ Frankie JJ, who has been embraced as a Bear in the LGBTQ+ community. Keeso refuses easy punchlines and constantly pushes to ensure that everything we see of these players is done with intention. In the third episode of Season One, we meet Shoresy’s family. We find out that he has three adopted siblings, and his dad loves every one of them. Shoresy hugs his siblings, calls his dad, does whatever Nat needs from him, and he cares. Under all the bravado on the ice, Shoresy cares deeply - and that care is easily reciprocated by the people around him.
Reciprocity defines the Bulldogs. In the first season, a bouncer disrespects Sanguinet, the Bulldog’s new coach, and Shoresy responds with a potty kiss. When that same bouncer later threatens Goody, one of the veterans, Hitch and Dolo step in, and the bouncer is left sprawled on the Coulsons’ floor. No matter what happens between them - from dating each other’s girls to calling each other out for being soft - they protect each other. Always.
The calendar storyline solidifies this argument. In a flashback, Shoresy arrives at the photoshoot with an absurd amount and shade of spray tanner and sunglasses. After chirping from the boys, we learn that this was a deliberate choice, believing it would help sell more calendars to support Nat after she refused to fold the team. Because the community is so important to her, he does the ads and the calendars, spending time to make sure that she has everything he can give her because she believes in him and this team.
When Shoresy takes a life-altering hit in the National series, Nat struggles to give Shoresy what he needs with what he wants. Even after he lashes out at her, she ensures that no matter what, he “finds a way to contribute”. He does - by starting a brawl in the stands.
Despite their crass language about “broads”, Shoresy’s romantic focus is singular. Laura Mohr is a sports journalist and single mom. He tells her again and again, “I want to make your life easier”. He promises that he’d “be good to [her] like crazy”. He goes out of his way to make her smile, and in season 4, as he proclaims it’s “the summer I close on Laura Mohr”, he coaches some young talent, not just in hockey, but in vulnerability. His advice on dating rejects the red-pill masculinity that is rapidly becoming the norm for young men, and instead, is in favour of openness, effort, and risk. He takes Jake, one of the young players, to sing Karaoke to his crush at the same bar that Shoresy takes Laura to - where he serenades her with Canadian hits - in this case, Alanis Morsette. Through his usurpation of traditional stoicism, Shoresy shows that community becomes the pathway to connection.
Ultimately, Shoresy interrogates the toll of endurance - this “Never let them know you’re hurt” ethos that has long been associated with not just Hockey, but the Canadian landscape. How far are you willing to go for your people? Will you sacrifice your body, your pride, your individual success? How far can you push your love? Are you willing to bleed for a win for your team? What are you willing to do to make your town proud? Unlike American hero-centric narratives, Shoresy rejects individual greatness. Shoresy isn’t chasing fame or fortune. He says many times that it’s “whale shit hockey”. He wants to win together. He wants to elevate the people around him, and in this way, the series offers a contemporary reimagining of Canadian Survival, not against the elements but through one another.
Shoresy argues that Canadian Survival has always been less about conquering space than about sustaining one another within it. Where Frye once emphasized enclosure, and Atwood framed endurance as an individual or national condition, Keeso reorients survival as a collective practice - built in locker rooms, bars, and small-town arenas rather than forests and tundras. The series insists that care, sincerity, and mutual obligation are not weaknesses but necessities, especially in a fractured, contemporary landscape. In Shoresy, to love your team, your town, and your people is to survive, and to survive together is the most Canadian gesture of all.
