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Dr. Colin Howell

Dr. Colin Howell is the founder of The Hockey Conference who recently retired after 50 years of service at Saint Mary’s University.  His teaching and research focused on the history of sport, medicine, and health in Canada.  At Saint Mary’s, Dr. Howell founded the Centre for the Study of Sport & Health and also co-founded the Atlantic Canada Studies undergraduate and graduate programs, the Gorsebrook Research Institute, and the Austin Willis Moving Images Research Centre. Dr. Howell has published widely in the field of sport studies, authoring Blood, Sweat and Cheers: Sport and the Making of Modern Canada (2001) and Northern Sandlots (1995). Other Hockey Conferences Dr. Howell has hosted include Putting It On Ice (2001), Women’s Hockey (2004), and Putting It On Ice III (2012). In honour of his retirement and his contributions to hockey scholarship, Dr. Howell is being acknowledged in 2021 with video messages from his students and colleagues, a distinguished lecture at the conference in his name, a custom Saint Mary’s University hockey jersey, and a dedication and afterword in a forthcoming hockey anthology titled Overcoming the Neutral Zone Trap: Hockey’s agents of change (edited by Cheryl MacDonald and Jonathon Edwards, published by the University of Alberta Press). Dr. Howell will be delivering the inaugural Dr. Colin Howell Distinguished lecture with his former graduate student, Dr. MacIntosh Ross. The organizing committee hopes that academic keynotes at future conferences will also be named the Dr. Colin Howell Distinguished Lecture.