Our February Member Showcase is Assistant Professor with the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at Brock University, Dr. Kyle Rich!

We sat down (virtually) with Dr. Rich and learned about his educational background, a new class that he is teaching, a series of research projects that he is wrapping up about rural events, and a few of his personal interests and hobbies.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to specialize in your specific line of work?

My background is in kinesiology. I studied my master’s at the University of Ottawa and I did my Ph. D. at Western. My focus was on sport and recreation policy as it relates to diverse communities, specifically rural communities. I had really good critical mentors who kind of pushed me in that direction and I got really interested in sport development. I’m from a small town so I think I always considered what that looked like in the bigger picture. And then that led me to this intersection of sport policy and rural development.

Can you speak about a class that you are teaching/a class you taught previously/one that you will be teaching soon?

This term, I am teaching Foundations of Leisure Studies. It is the course that everyone in the master’s program studying Recreation and Leisure takes. It’s a new course for me but it’s exciting because it’s my first grad-level course. In the class we cover classic and contemporary approaches to looking at leisure. I’m excited because it’s a small course, we get to cover some real research-focused content, and it gets in-depth about theory and research paradigms and things like that, not to mention that half of the class are students that I am supervising. So we’re a pretty tight group and it’s definitely going to be fun to work through that course with them.

Can you speak about any recent, current, or future research projects that you’re excited about? What inspired you to want to get involved in your topic of research?

I’m actually wrapping up a series of projects where I’m looking at rural sports events. One is called “The Battle of the Little Big Puck,” an event held in Maple Creek Saskatchewan. I just had a paper come out about it where we looked at settler-Indigenous relationships and how that is reflected in this event. It’s a super interesting event where The Ranchers play against the First Nations, so it embodies a contentious metaphor. In the last period the Ranchers wear chaps and hats and the First Nations come out in regalia and they engage in this really interesting performance of community.

Another event is called the Heritage Cup that’s based in Barry’s Bay, Ontario. They have a really interesting settlement history along the Opeongo Colonization Road where different groups of settlers migrated. So they have different cultural groups in the area. In the tournament, the Irish, the Polish (Kashubian), the Algonquins, and the Germans make up the teams and they have a competition based on these ethnic groupings. The whole community comes out to the event dressed up and they have the four sections in the stands with all the colours from each team. It also embodies a lot of interesting symbolism and cultural practices that I don’t think people expect in small towns. So, there’s a lot of interesting elements of rural-ness and rural identity that are expressed. I’m just wrapping up those projects right now.

Speed Round Ice Breakers:

Are you involved in any clubs/associations?

I play beer league hockey with a group of friends and I try to run a race every six months or so. I’m a bit of a weekend warrior with races. I’m there to do the race and have a good time and meet people.

On the more professional side, I’m on the board for the Rural Development and Knowledge Mobilization Organization called the Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation where we do lots of work with researchers and community members to try to build relationships and facilitate evidence-based decision making, knowledge translation, and all of those kinds of things.

What is your favourite TV show right now?

I don’t watch a ton of TV. I’m more of a binger where I’ll watch a show and then I won’t watch anything for a while. But if I were to pick my favourite show, I would have to say Vikings and a Spanish show called La casa de papel (Money Heist in English). It’s super interesting and I 100% recommend it!

What are your current hobbies/interests?

I jumped on the sourdough bandwagon and got a sourdough starter. I had a few successful and a few failed attempts but that was a new skill that I picked up during the pandemic. I also jumped into audio books recently. I never really read for fun because I read so much for work, so I usually don’t have much of a desire to pick up a book for a leisure read, but having the audio book option has made me much more inclined to just chill out and listen and not have to think about reading.

What is your favourite book?

This year I read a book called Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. It was written in 2014 but it was set in Toronto after there had been a global pandemic, which is super interesting and fitting to our current situation. It’s a completely fictitious story, it wasn’t meant to be a premonition, but it was a really interesting book.

What is your favourite sport or sports team?

My favourite sport is hockey but I’m not really one for pro sports. I don’t follow anyone too closely but I do indulge in the Olympics when they come around.