Recreation as soft defence

Recreation, its spaces and infrastructure, when equitably resourced and inclusively governed, constitute a form of soft defence: the underlayer of social trust, collective capacity, and civic practice that makes society resilient under conditions of chronic external pressure. Drawing on civil leisure theory, social infrastructure scholarship, and Nordic comprehensive security frameworks, the paper develops a theoretical argument linking parks, arenas, trails, and community centres to the conditions that enable populations to function cohesively under stress. The argument is grounded in the Canadian context, where sustained territorial and economic pressure from the United States has foregrounded questions of national resilience, which existing security frameworks, lacking both a whole-of-society doctrine and a policy architecture that reaches into civic and recreational life, are ill-equipped to address. Leisure studies is uniquely positioned to contribute to this conversation. Investment in inclusive recreational infrastructure is not peripheral to national security but essential to it.