About Queer Hockey Nova Scotia 

QHNS Mission Statement: 

Queer Hockey Nova Scotia (QHNS) is a hockey organization by and for queer hockey players in Nova Scotia. QHNS seeks to create a space where all folks, especially those who have been marginalized from hockey, are able to come together to play, learn, celebrate, and connect.

QHNS Statement on allies: 

QHNS looks forward to a time when straight-identifying allies will be welcomed and included in all aspects of the Queer Hockey Nova Scotia community. We understand that a welcoming environment can strengthen a community and create a safe space for questioning folks to explore themselves. However, in the wake of other Nova Scotia-based self-identified all-inclusive hockey organizations not proving their commitment to protecting their queer members, we have decided to only welcome allies at specific times and in specific ways. We’ve found that a protected by-queer-for-queer hockey space has important value to the members of our community. We hope that true allies of the queer community understand and appreciate the need for these boundaries at this time and are still excited to support us as we build and grow.

About QHNS: 

Queer Hockey Nova Scotia (QHNS) is a hockey organization by and for queer hockey players in Nova Scotia. QHNS seeks to create a space where all folks, especially those who have been marginalized from hockey, are able to come together to play, learn, celebrate, and connect.

QHNS gathers and plays across Mi’kma’ki and operates primarily out of Kjipuktuk, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq. We are all treaty people. Acknowledging that we play in Mi’kma’ki is just one way that QHNS is working to respect our relationships to Mi’kmaq communities across this land.

We recognize that the sport we play and love has deep roots in the Mi’kmaq community, from stories of Glooscap first bringing the game back to the Mi’kmaq people, to the first written account of ice hockey being played by the Mi’kmaq, to the invention of the hockey stick as we know it today by the Mi’kmaq people. We thank the Mi’kmaq people for sharing this sport with us.

QHNS also plays in a province that is home to over 50 African Nova Scotian communities. African Nova Scotian hockey players have been pivotal in the development of the game we love, through leagues like The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes (CHL), which was founded in Kjipuktuk in 1895.

Our sport, at an organizational level, historically has, and continues to, exclude and push out Mi’kmaq folks, African Nova Scotians, and other people of colour.

To learn more about the history of our sport check out the following resources: