Go Canada Go

When my dad was 14 he left his home in Field, BC, hopped on a train and got off in Montreal. The first thing he did was stash his suitcase behind a garbage can in an alley and use the last of his cash to get himself a ticket to the hockey game that night. Not surprisingly, when he left the Forum (which sadly is no longer in use) and returned to the Alley, his suitcase was gone.

My dad loved hockey. His two teams were the Canadiens and the Canucks. Those teams became my teams as I watched them on Saturday nights from his lap. My childhood is filled with the sounds of hockey; the theme song to Hockey Night In Canada; Don Cherry, who was old even 25 years ago; the call of the game by the best commentators in the biz. I heard the Canada/Swiss game on the radio the other night while driving to the grocery store. The slap of the stick against the puck, the checks against the boards, the skates on the ice... As a kid I listened to many Canucks games on the radio during road trips and the sound of that Canada/Swiss game instantly recalled the safe, snug, secure feelings of laying in a dark cocoon under a blanket in the back seat while the snow whirled around me and the gentle rumble of tires and the call of the game filled the car.

My childhood was filled with hockey. I still have my binder of Upper Deck Hockey Cards. My dad would bring them home every so often and opening each packet was a thrill. I still remember when I got Pavel Bure's card. As I grew up I dropped the Habs from my favourite team list and became devoted to the Oilers. Don't we all remember their glory days? Gretzky, Messier, Kurri, Coffey, Anderson, Fuhr... magic! Eventually they lost their sparkle and I moved on to flirt briefly with the L.A. Kings. It didn't last. The Canucks have been the only constant team in my heart but even they haven't been able to keep me interested. As I've gotten older I've watched less and less hockey. I don't know who any of the players are anymore, well, except Jerome Iginla and Sidney Crosby. I am still Canadian after all! It was a slow fade for me. First I stopped watching the regular season. Then I stopped watching the play-offs. Now, unless it's game 7 and Vancouver is playing I won't even watch the Stanley Cup Finals. And since that hasn't happened since oh....1994, I haven't watched hockey in a long time.

I'm no longer a constant fan but my childhood love of hockey is never too far under the surface and I have odd recurrences of the old love. Like during pregnancy for instance. And also during the Olympics. As I'm typing Canada is playing Russia in it's first do-or-die game. It's 7-3 Canada with 7 minutes left in the third. I started writing this in the kitchen at the island with my back to the TV and my stomach in knots. I am now on the couch with my stomach in knots. I am not emotionally equipped to handle the stress of 60 agonizing minutes of play. The swearing and crying I did during both the Canada/Swiss and the Canada/US game made me perfectly aware of that. I know in the big scheme of things this game is not important. Haiti is important. The state of education in Alberta is important. Whether Canada beats Russia at the Olympics for the first time in 50 years shouldn't matter. Except somehow it does. Whether as Canadians we truly have hockey in our blood or whether we're just indoctrinated at a young age to believe we do, I don't know. And frankly, I don't care. All I have to say is "GO CANADA GO!"

Oh and Sebastian has a message for us too: