HABSZONE!

Or, as I call it, Heaven. Score 1 new Habs t-shirt for ronniecat.

Curious - while they had a whole bank of ladies' tees with players' names on the back, the one name I wanted - Halak - has been expunged completely. I'm about 3 months late for that one. Even a joke about finding one in a back room got only a terse twitch of the lips.

As you can see, it was pouring apocalyptically. Always seems to be my luck with Montréal. So much to photograph here, on the square outside the Bell Centre - status of many of our Canadian hockey heroes, paving stones noting great moments in hockey - all drowned under a downpour. Quel dommage!

ronnie

Hockey Night in Pakistan India Canada

What a country.

(You can also catch HNIC in Mandarin on some cable channels.)

It's our game. ALL our game.

ronnie

Chez Habitants!

Le Centre Bell, home of my beloved Canadiens (or a tiny corner of it). I considered trying to get tix to a game Saturday night but quel dommage! They're in Toronto playing the Leafs!

ronnie

Golden

A complete nail-biter, won in sudden-death overtime by a goal scored by our own "Sid the Kid" Crosby (that's him, second from the right) of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia. (All of Atlantic Canada claims him as our own. We're chummy like that.)

As of this writing, traffic in downtown Vancouver is totally shut down due to crowds in the street. Yonge and Dundas in Toronto is a mob scene, and traffic is shut down in a large portion of that city too. What I wouldn't give to be on George Street in St. John's right now.

All I can say is, it's a good thing we won this squeaker. I shudder to think of the collective national nervous breakdown that would've followed a loss.

We've had a great games. More gold medals than any single country in a winter Olympics. Many incredible stories from many incredible athletes.

But there can be no doubt about it - this is what mattered. Hockey is our national religion, and we practice it devoutly. They were playing for our national pride. Some said they were playing for our national psyche. There have been thousands of articles and tv stories and blog posts leading up to this game, analyzing it, predicting it, musing on what it means.

The women were under the same pressure, and delivered. (The ONLY women's Olympic hockey team, by the way, whose head coach is a woman.) Tonight, all the pressure in the world was on the men. And they did it, too.

The US team played very well, all Olympics long (hell, they beat us - and deservedly so - in our first match-up, which gave the Canadian team some much-needed time and practice to gel), and happily for them, hockey means very little to the US, so they won't bear too much disappointment. They certainly won't bear the kind of disappointment and angst and soul-searching the Canadian men would have, had they lost.

So I think this one turned out just right.

I started off extremely skeptical about these games, but I've come around. They're still too expensive, too commercialized, and too environmentally irresponsible - but there can be no doubt that these particular games have been the kind of bonding experience that is all too rare and very valuable in a country as huge and diverse as Canada. And that's a good thing.

An update: Roger Ebert just posted this to his Twitter account:
@ebertchicago: Notice: The nation of Canada will resume limited functions in about an hour. Full service is expected by sometime Tuesday.

ronnie

Ottawa [updated]

They run the whole country outta that building with the "Canada" government logo on it.

Naw, just kidding. There are hundreds of buildings just like that all over this city from which they run the whole country. Hundreds. Who has the contract to manufacture the giant logos, one wonders?

I walked a couple of blocks north towards the Parliament Buildings, which are about 5 blocks from my hotel, but it is really freaking cold here and since I've seen them before, you'll have to forgive me for not continuing on for a photo for your benefit. Google 'em, they're pretty.

Went out for a stroll again after my meetings were done for the day, as is my wont, and as I passed the darkened cafes and delis - this was 5:30 pm! - I was reminded of why I really can't bring myself to love beautiful, polite, dull, patriotic Ottawa. The cliché about this town is that "they roll the sidewalks up at 6pm" and it's sadly true. I recall an earlier visit when a colleague of mine and I went out from our hotel looking for a pub or bar - any pub or bar - to take in Ottawa's night life.

It turned out there was no "there" "there". I believe we finally stopped at a hideous Elephant & Castle before returning dispiritedly home. (I'm not linking to the Elephant & Castle chain's webpage - it launches a loud video that loads without asking your permission. It sucks even worse than the chain.)

For some reason, federal civil servants just don't know how to party down.

Now I am safely nestled in my hotel room watching the Canada-Switzerland hockey game. Lotta history there. I got up at 4:30 am to make my flight to Fort Buttoned-down, but I think I'll be able to stay awake long enough to see the outcome of this one.

ronnie

A brave young man lost.

Brendan Burke, the young student manager of the hockey team at Miami University (in Oxford, Ohio), was killed in a car accident Friday afternoon.

He was a member of an esteemed hockey family, the youngest son of Brian Burke, currently General Manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The loss of any 21-year-old is tragic. But Brendan - for such a young man - leaves a legacy that, within the hockey world, belies his short life.

The whole story - his revelation and its fallout - is nicely chronicled here. (Annoyingly, in the second person, but still.)

I followed the story as it played out in the hockey news. In the hockey world, it was a bombshell. I was so proud of Brendan, and especially his dad, who was very public in his support for Brendan (he said he stood by Brendan "with an axe!"). And of his employers, and of the team he managed. I was even proud of the website commenters and hockey fans who said, "Yeah, so the kid is gay. So what?"

Rooting homophobia out of sports is going to be done like this, one brave kid at a time.

Poor Brendan. I wish he'd lived to fulfill his promise. But I'm so glad he was brave enough to make a difference.

ronnie

Manitoba Hydro, CTV & Air Canada. Winnipeg

Wow.

I can't wait until I have access to the internet so I can post on the internet how completely broken and lame the Delta Winnipeg Hotel's wireless internet is.

Since I'm posting this from my Blackberry, this is possibly some kind of metapost. Or not.

Ronnie@Winterpeg where it is really, really cold. And the interwebs does not work on my laptop.

Winnipeg

Watching the Canada-US Gold Medal game in the Junior World Hockey Championships!

Wait, that's a tweet, not a blog post.

Goldarn all this new-fangled technology.

Only in Canada...

...Battle of the Blades.

Teaming professional figure skaters with professional hockey players.

And making them do ice dance routines.

Srsly.

ronnie

Primordial urge

The modern housecat, as all cat owners know, compulsively buries their scat in the litter box, which we helpfully accesorize with sand-like kitty litter. Why do they do it? Because thousands of years ago, in the wild, their forebears buried their scat so that predators wouldn't be able to find them.

Are there predators in the modern North American household? No. But cats do this, because this is what they do. It's hard-wired, as they say.

The modern Canadian, as all Canadians know, compulsively watches Stanley Cup playoff hockey, which is helpfully served up to us on both basic and enhanced cable. Why do we do it? Because for a hundred years, we've been raised and nurtured on The National Game.

Does the NHL make sense any more? Does the average Canadian know what the hell the Columbus Blue Jackets are? No. Or the - god help me - Carolina Hurricanes? No. But Canadians do this, because this is what we do. It's hard-wired, as they say.

We're especially vulnerable if there is one nominally-Canadian team left in the playoffs. A team based in a Canadian city. Carrying the flag, as it were.

Which is why we stayed up insanely late last night watching the Vancouver Canucks lose to the Chicago Black Hawks. (Being in Van, the game didn't even start until 11:30 pm local time.)

The best-of-seven series now stands at 3 wins for the hated Black Hawks (in the 1970s, when I was a real fan, they were despised rivals of my beloved Habs) and 2 for the Canucks. And tomorrow's game - when Chicago can wrap the series up - will be played in the Windy City.

To be a fan, it has been said, is to have your heart broken. My Habitants (the nickname for the Montréal Canadiens) - a team which turns 100 years old this year - didn't even make the playoffs. So, belatedly, I shift my allegiance to the Vancouver Canucks.

I'll prolly still get my heart broken. But what can I do? It's a primordial urge.

ronnie

Canada vs. Sweden Redux

Tonight's the Gold Medal game of the 2009 IIHF World Junior Championship. Canada vs. Sweden. Sweet! They're in Ottawa this year and I envy the big and boisterous crowd in the stadium.

The Canada-Sweden matchup mirrors last year's Gold Medal game, where Canada won a hard-fought 3-4 victory in overtime. So the Swedes will be pretty hungry for revenge.

Reactions to Sweden's Magnus Paajarvi's comments to a Swedish website that the Canadians would "shit in their pants" if Sweden scored two quick goals in the game (which ranged from crude [The Edmonton Sun called him a "Swedish meatball"] to annoyed, to sanguine [the Canadian players and coaches], to bemused [me]) have largely been assuaged by the fact that the Canadians scored their first goal at 38 seconds into the first period. (Paajarvi later said that the comments 'meant something different in Swedish', by which I assume he meant it was badly translated, which may be true. Or may not, because doesn't it just sound like something a 17-year-old hockey player would say?)

I love the Juniors. So much more interesting than the NHL these days. So with 4:08 left in the first period, I'm settling in for some good hockey.

ronnie

Da-duh-da-duh-duh-DAH!

Oh, snap!

A couple of days ago I wrote about the CBC's inane decision to a) squabble over rights to use "The Hockey Theme", one of the most iconic tunes in Canadian culture; b) take the argument public when things didn't go their way; and c) announce (before negotiations were even over) that they weren't going to use the song anymore, whipping up the sort of public frenzy that only this kind of tempest-in-a-teapot over something that people are emotionally attached to can cause.

Following that post, the CBC bollocksed things up further by putting out a press release - dated 4:59 pm on a Friday, children - that announced they were bringing in a mediator to help settle the dispute... and they were launching a contest to find a new tune.

I'm not sure what the network hoped to achieve by taking the whole thing public in the first place. I mean, the company representing the songwriter - an 80-year-old woman, just to hand them another card in the public-sympathy game - had no reason to be influenced by public pressure. The CBC, on the other hand, relies on public support not only as viewers, but for its very funding. And since response ranged from revilement to ridicule of the Corporation, the whole thing already looked like a pretty impressive gaffe.

And then, while CBC executives were busy pitching their public hissy-fit, this happens.

If you're not Canadian, you won't understand the significance of the song itself or of CBC's public bickering over negotiations to use it for another year. You certainly won't understand the irony of CTV being the network that slipped in and scooped the song up. CTV and CBC are bitter rivals; CBC is the dowdy public broadcaster who keeps serving you healthy Canadian whole grains because they're good for you, while CTV is the lipsticked commercial network who smokes and drinks and dates Americans in fast cars. A lot of Americans in fast cars.

CBC says CTV should be forced to develop more Canadian content instead of simply buying and rebroadcasting hit US shows. CTV says they could be all high-cultural-minded too, if they were living off the taxpayer's teat.

CTV also owns TSN (The Sports Network, Canada's version of ESPN), which shows NHL games throughout the week, another point of rivalry between the two networks. Once TSN appeared, CBC lost its role as Canada's sole hockey network. Knowing that the famous theme will now open TSN hockey games has got to be like salt in the MotherCorp's wound.

All in all, you have to admire CTV for the coup. I can only imagine the faces around the CBC boardroom table when this news broke yesterday afternoon. CTV wasn't even on anyone's radar in this dispute, which had been between Copyright Music and Visuals, which represents the theme song's author, and the CBC. In branding terms, this is a screw-up of epic proportions.

Don't worry, though. CBC, like a cat who falls off a shelf and then grooms itself calmly as if to say, "I meant to do that", is moving boldly forward with the aforementioned absolutely brilliant idea of holding a contest to write the new Hockey Night in Canada theme. To quote the Calgary Herald's Bruce Dowbiggin, "This is like launching a search for a new bride in the same press release that says your former wife has run off with your best friend. No one was fooled."

ronnie

Worst. Decision. Ever.

If the CBC was sending roving gangs of assassins to gun down its few remaining fans, it couldn't be doing a more efficient job of killing off its viewer base than it's doing on its own with breathtakingly boneheaded decisions.

Red Wings victory last outing for Hockey Night theme?

He shoots, he scores

I fell asleep halfway through the third overtime period Monday night so didn't get to see Pittsburgh's miraculous bid to stay in the Stanley Cup finals for another game. Husband and I have been following the finals, as is mandatory under Canadian law in order to keep one's citizenship.

Normally I follow the playoffs until Montreal is eliminated and then tune out until the finals - if I'm even interested in watching the finals. Too many teams from too many non-hockey towns in the NHL to really hold my interest any more. However, this year we've been following the finals with a bit more of an emotional investment because for the past few years we've been rooting for Sidney Crosby, the "local" boy (from next-door Nova Scotia) who's such a wunderkind that he is, at 20, the youngest captain to ever lead an NHL team into a Stanley Cup final series. (Indeed, when he became Captain of the Pittsburgh Penguins in May, he was the youngest captain of an NHL team in history, period.)

Hmm. Yes. Youngest. A young captain (his nickname is "Sid the Kid") of a very young team, poor Sidney has been struggling to rally his team to efficiency almost as hard as he's been trying to grow a post-season beard. Both have been largely unsuccessful efforts. Detroit's vastly superior experience has them literally skating circles around Pittsburgh, which is why the former led the series 3 games to 1 going into game 5 Monday night, and why the latter just barely managed to hang on by the skin of their teeth by breaking a 3-3 tie in the third overtime period.

One of the things that astonishes me about watching hockey on TV is the closed-captioning. Yes, live hockey is close-captioned, God Bless the CBC, and how the captioners keep up with the machine-gun delivery of the play-by-play I will never know, but much of the time, they do it. Good thing, too, as the ambient crowd noise in the background means that I understand almost nothing of what is said and rely on the captioning to follow the action.


"Much of the time", I said... however, there are moments when the sheer rapidity of events and commentary overwhelm even these talented captioners, and I see this - the visual equivalent of just plain throwing up of the hands in defeat.

ronnie

(hoping tonight's game doesn't go until 2 a.m. local time...)

Spring

Things are quiet around Casa Ronniecat these days. Spring arrived rather suddenly, as it always does here. The Saint John River has flooded its banks as usual, but what is not usual is the height of the water this year. Emergency centers have been opened up on Fredericton's north and south sides and in Oromocto. 20 families have been forced out of their homes; but things are not expected to get much worse. Still, we're on the Globe and Mail's front page today. (The downside is that the appalling amounts of snow we got all winter is now melting. The upside is that there are no ice jams in the river, which can cause truly dangerous flooding.)

In Quebec, the snow doesn't seem to be disappearing nearly as quickly, leading officials to send a warning out to homeowners - just before Earth Day, mind - to stop watering their snowbanks in an impatient attempt to speed melting. I can't figure out if the offenders are insane, ingenious or just breathtakingly wasteful. Perhaps all three.

(Of course, Montrealers also rioted after a first-round Stanley Cup game 7 win. First round. I mean, it was over Boston, a rivalry so deep that even Husband and I watched the game. But still. First round. That's lame.)

Meanwhile, the weather out west has been frightful, with Manitoba - hi, Robin! - getting slammed with yet another snowstorm.

It's been that kind of strange spring.

Work keeps my nose firmly to the grindstone - my cat updates his blog more often than I do - but I keep reading everyone else's blogs and comments even if my own participation is more muted. Someone's always got something particularly interesting to say. And if I wasn't keeping up with my friends' blogs, I would've missed this.

At least springtime in New Brunswick doesn't involve shaving cats...

ronnie