#File Under: Sophie Fournier

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Too Many Men on the Ice?

Follow Sophie Fournier as she becomes the first woman drafted into the North American Hockey League. Available at NineStar Press and Amazon

Sophie Fournier is the first woman drafted into the North American Hockey League. Playing hockey is something she’s done all her life, but she faces new challenges as she finds her place on the struggling Concord Condors. She has to prove herself better than her rival-turned-teammate, Michael Hayes, and her rival-turned-friend, Dmitri Ivanov, and she has to do it all with a smile. If she’s successful then she opens the door to other women being drafted. She can’t afford to think about what happens if she fails. All she knows is this: if she’s not the best then she doesn’t get to play. No pressure, though.

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Canadian Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror: Bridging the Solitudes (Studies in Global Science Fiction), edited by Amy J. Ransom and Dominick Grace, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. Cover art: Oxygen/Getty Image, info. palgrave.com.

Canadian Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror: Bridging the Solitudes exposes the limitations of the solitudes concept so often applied uncritically to the Canadian experience. This volume examines Canadian and Québécois literature of the fantastic across its genres—such as science fiction, fantasy, horror, indigenous futurism, and others—and considers how its interrogation of colonialism, nationalism, race, and gender works to bridge multiple solitudes. Utilizing a transnational lens, this volume reveals how the fantastic is ready-made for exploring, in non-literal terms, the complex and problematic nature of intercultural engagement.

Contents: Notes on Contributors Introduction: Bridging the Solitudes as a Critical Metaphor – Amy J. Ransom and Dominick Grace Colonial Visions: The British Empire in Early Anglophone and Francophone Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy – Allan Weiss Nevermind the Gap: Judith Merril Challenges the Status Quo – Ritch Calvin Two Solitudes, Two Cultures: Building and Burning Bridges in Peter Watts’s Novels – Michele Braun The Affinity for Utopia: Erecting Walls and Building Bridges in Robert Charles Wilson’s The Affinities – Graham J. Murphy The Art of Not Dying: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel and Oscar De Profundis by Catherine Mavrikakis – Patrick Bergeron When Are We Ever at Home? Exile and Nostalgia in the Work of Guy Gavriel Kay – Susan Johnston Reconciliation, Resistance, and Biskaabiiyang: Re-imagining Canadian Residential Schools in Indigenous Speculative Fictions – Judith Leggatt Indigenous Futurist Film: Speculation and Resistance in Jeff Barnaby’s Rhymes for Young Ghouls and File Under Miscellaneous – Kristina Baudemann Building Hope Through Community in Élisabeth Vonarburg’s The Maerlande Chronicles – Caroline Mosser Cruising Canadian SF’s Queer Futurity: Hiromi Goto’s The Kappa Child and Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl – Wendy Gay Pearson 12. Crossing the (Trans)Gender Bridge: Exploring Intersex and Trans Bodies in Canadian Speculative Fiction – Evelyn Deshane A Maelstrom of Replication: Peter Watts’s Glitching Textual Source Codes – Ben Eldridge The Missing Link: Bridging the Species Divide in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy – Dunja M. Mohr “I Can’t Believe This Is Happening!”: Bear Horror, the Species Divide, and the Canadian Fight for Survival in a Time of Climate Change – Michael Fuchs Interacting with Humans, Aliens, and Others in Science Fiction from Québec – Isabelle Fournier Holes Within and Bridges Beyond: The Transfictions of Élisabeth Vonarburg and Michel Tremblay – Sylvie Bérard Tropes Crossing: On Some Québec SF Writers from the Mainstream – Sophie Beaulé Transculture, Transgenre: Stanley Péan’s Fantastic Detective Fiction – Kathleen Kellett Excerpts from A Glossary of Non-essential Forms and Genres in English-Canadian Literature – Jordan Bolay Index

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The Making of Sophie Fournier: 1

A Snapshot of Sophie’s Childhood

Growing up in Montreal, hockey was a way of life. Trading cards served as currency in grade school, trick shots were a way to move up the popularity ladder, and being able to recite the Mammoths’ roster was a necessity.

On Sundays, if there was an early afternoon game, Pierre was allowed to wear his jersey to church, and his maman would fill a crock pot and bring it with them to plug in while Pierre had to sit on an uncomfortable pew. But after the sermon, everyone piled into the basement to eat and watch the game.

It was the only time anyone was allowed to swear in church.

Pierre played hockey, because everyone played. He wasn’t particularly talented, though. His maman told him elite athletes need two things; talent and drive. He had plenty of the latter but not enough of the former.

Colby, his firstborn, shows promise as a goalie, but he doesn’t have the drive to take his talent to the next level. Pierre blames himself for it, and he’s determined not to make the same mistake with Sophie. While Colby shows flashes of greatness, Sophie’s a natural from the first time she puts skates on. But her path is going to be a tough one, and she’ll need thick skin and an indomitable will to make it.

Sophie’s grows up watching the Montreal Mammoths’ dominant Cup run on the thick rug of her grandparents’ living room. Her first word was, “Cup” spoken as the Maple Cup was lifted high, lights from the arena flashing off the metal.

Pierre knew then his daughter was going to be a great hockey player.

Sophie still doesn’t understand what it would mean for her to play in the NAHL, but she knows she wants to lift the Cup the way Bobby Brindle did, year after year. Pierre knows how difficult it will be for Sophie to play in the NAHL which isn’t co-ed yet like many of its European counterparts. He knows there’s a possibility she could be the first girl to play in the NAHL, and he knows it’s up to him to prepare her.

Given the choice, Sophie wouldn’t do anything besides skate and sleep, and he can use that.

Pierre stands on the front step, hands tucked into his pockets as Colby and Sophie play in the driveway.  Colby’s in partial gear as he guards the net, and Sophie’s focused as she attacks, drawing Colby away from his goal then going around him and tapping the ball in, easy as anything.

She’s even better on the ice, but this is good practice.

“Score on the next one,” Pierre says.

Colby tosses Sophie the bright orange ball and Sophie carries it back to the end of their driveway. She comes at the net from the side, but when she gets close, the ball rolls off the curve of her stick. She gathers it back, but her shot’s shaky, and Colby stops it with ease.

“Time to come in,” Pierre says.

Sophie turns her head, mouth falling open in outrage. “But we just got outside!”

“You should’ve scored.”

Sophie’s eyes, big and blue like her mother’s, fill with tears. It’s something they’re going to have to work on, the way she cries so easily. “But hockey,” she says, longing.

Pierre drops down to one knee and beckons Sophie to him. She drags her feet on the ground and her stick behind her, but she stops in front of her dad, cheeks flushed from the sun. “If you’re not the best then you don’t get to play. Do you understand?”

Sophie nods, serious, but Pierre knows she doesn’t understand yet. She will though, he’ll make sure of it.

Pierre pats her head, and says, “You can do stick drills inside or you can work with the reflex ball, but no more street hockey until tomorrow.”

“But--”

“What did I just tell you?”

“If I’m not the best then I don’t get to play,” she dutifully repeats back. “If I work hard in the basement, maybe I’ll score that one tomorrow?”

“I want you to be the best you can be.”

“Okay.”

Sophie waves to her brother then goes inside the house.

“Who am I going to play with now?” Colby asks.

“Let me get my stick,” Pierre answers.

They only play for half an hour, Colby’s eyebrows pulling together with each shot Pierre takes until there’s a permanent frown on his face. He gets sloppy with his glove, but Colby’s always been harder to motivate than Sophie.

When Pierre says, “Alright, pack it in,” Colby goes without complaint. He looks relieved be be sent inside.

Inside, Ellen clasps her son’s head between her hands and drops a kiss to his forehead before she tells him, “Dinner’s on the table. I was about to get you.”

“Yes, Mom.” Colby wriggles out of her hands and slips into the kitchen.

And then Ellen turns to her husband, hands planted on her hips. “You want to tell me why our daughter said she couldn’t come up to dinner until she was ‘the best’?”

“She’s practicing,” Pierre says.

“You sent her inside for missing a goal?” Ellen keeps her voice down, but she’s angry all the same. “She was playing with her brother. The game is about fun.”

“She needs to learn now if she’s not good enough she won’t get to play.”

“She’s six!”

“Do you want her to learn when she’s thirteen and it’s too late? When she’s fifteen? When she’s pinned her dreams on the NAHL, and they don’t invite her to the draft? She has to be the best, Ellen, and I think she can be.”

Ellen’s eyes narrow. “Her dreams, Pierre? Or yours?”

Ellen overcooks his chicken, but the extra chewiness is worth it when, tomorrow, Sophie scores on all three of her make it or come inside shots.