Deities, Ice, and Motion

On September 28th, 1972, adult Canadians found a way to skip out of work and school children were packed in gymnasiums to watch an event on those horrible TVs in a box. Most Canadians over forty have some memory of it, many can tell exactly where they watched the game and who they were with. Canadians have tendency to struggle with their identity. They often define themselves by what they are not, which might be why hockey remains consistent in popular culture.

Canadians fully expected to dance and weave around the Soviet team for the historic 1972 series. Instead they were stunned when in game one they lost to a team that was in better shape and played a completely different style. The Globe and Mail was blunt the Canadians made enough bad plays to fill a garbage dump. The first four games were played in Canada and by game four Canadians started booing team Canada. As they left for Moscow, team Canada trailed the Soviets in an eight game series. In the final and decisive game Paul Henderson became an instant icon.

Gradually, over the years the NHL has been bloated by expansion and lock outs. Canadians no longer dominate the game and yet they still cling to hockey and a weird strain of anti-Americanism that can be both funny and disturbing.

It should be no surprise that this is a beer commercial.

This one mixes hockey and the annoying American theme.

When Canada finally won a gold medal at the 2002 Olympics after a fifty year drought using professionals, of course, it was the Americans they beat not the Russians.

At one time Canadians used to comfort themselves by being able to beat the Americans at hockey. As it happens, Americans, like the Europeans, are every bit as good at our national game.

Canadians long for a team to come back to Canada. Sure they got tossed the Ottawa bone, but they resent the fact that Americans largely view hockey as a circus sport while having the luxury of the teams. Hockey makes sense in the north and north east, but Atlanta?

I wonder about myself with a foot in two countries. I wonder about the extent to which I romanticize my country of birth, when the truth is where I am from in Southern Ontario, it is indistinguishable from the US. I often find myself in the weird position of defending Americans when I visit home, and then chastising colleagues and friends here because they have so little interest in Canada or any other country. I have really become a North American, a hybrid, comfortable nowhere and yet strangely contented by that.

My love of hockey is a way of connecting back to Canada, of remembering my childhood when neighborhood mothers were scandalized because my mother let me play in a girl’s league. It is a way to connect to my grandmother as she becomes more frail and her world gets smaller. My grandmother and I are loyal and stubborn Maple Leafs fans. It is a way to remember real snowy winters when the parenting style of the day was,”Go out and play and don’t come back till lunch,” when the neighborhood kids played on homemade rinks. The boys didn’t want the girls to play, they grudging included us and knocked us on our asses to make that point clear. When a boy from another neighborhood knocked us on our asses, the fists would fly.

Hockey isn’t a nice sport. It has moments of violence and flat out stupidity but in 1972 it was still our game.