“Don’t Mess Around with Gordie”: Hockey Violence, the 1959 Gordie Howe-Lou Fontinato Fight, and Postwar Masculinity

Abstract

This article explores cultural constructions of hockey, violence, and masculinity through a close examination of one of the game’s most successful and prominent players in the postwar period, Gordie Howe. By combining skill and scoring ability with toughness, physicality, and a willingness to fight when necessary, Howe epitomized many qualities of the ideal hockey player over the course of his lengthy professional career, which extended from 1946 to 1980. In particular, this study focuses on media coverage of Howe’s highly publicized fight against Lou Fontinato of the New York Rangers on February 1, 1959. Using Canadian and American newspapers and magazines as the primary research base, we analyze media representations of Gordie Howe in the context of ideals and anxieties related to North American masculinity following the Second World War. Historians have identified this period as a time when Canadian and American manhood was perceived to be in decline. We argue that Howe demonstrated a combination of controlled violence and humble manliness suggested by his early nickname in the Detroit press, the “Bashful Basher.” Howe’s rational and expert application of violence – especially in contrast to the emotional Fontinato – firmly established his masculine credentials within the culture of hockey, while positioning him more widely as a “modern” yet rugged role model for masculine renewal in postwar Canada. Howe’s example of gentlemanly masculinity normalized and celebrated a culture of fighting in hockey while establishing a standard of conduct for superstar players that persists to the present day. At the same time, cultural constructions of Howe’s manhood contributed to the entrenchment of a dominant version of heroic, white, heteronormative hockey masculinity in Canadian life.