It's Just a Hockey Game Stoopid

I see that there's a contest to caption this photo. But I'm not entering. Because firstly I wouldn't win. And secondly I've had ENOUGH.

Like everybody else I was delighted that Canada beat the Americans in hockey. But I've been horrified by the torrent of hyper-inflated lowbrow nationalism that followed.

Like this gaseous twaddle.

Even before the Olympics, there had been a great deal of gnashing of teeth over Canada’s supposed changing image abroad. People in other countries don’t like us as much as they used to, the critics wailed. But to the extent that’s even remotely true, we should understand why: they preferred us as doormats.

Because I don't have an inferiority complex, so I don't need a hockey game or gold medals to make me proud to be a Canadian. People in other countries liked us more when we were peacekeepers and planet savers, rather than torture freaks and planet burners.

Medicare defines this country more than hockey ever will, and Stephen Harper is using this pseudo patriotism to try to turn us into Amerikans.

Which of course is a lonely position to hold these days. So lonely in fact that for the first time in my life I find myself agreeing with Rosie DiManno.

There have been songs, both country-twangy and tragically hip; there have been doctoral dissertations; there have been books. No less an authority than Stephen Harper has tackled the subject, the PM working on his endlessly germinating exposition for, oh, the past two decades.

Do try to remember, though, that sometimes a cigar is just a good smoke and a puck is just a piece of vulcanized rubber, not a big, black communion wafer at the altar of Canadiana.

And I really must thank her for this quote from David Adams Richards:

"If you think that you are a Canadian then my boy I will show you I am a Canadian too – if they check me from behind I will get up, if they kick and slash I will get up. If we play three against five for fifteen minutes I will get up. I too am a Canadian... At the moment they think we are defeated we will have just begun. I will prove forever my years on the river on the back rinks, on the buses, on the farm teams. I will prove forever that this is what has shaped me. No one will then ever take this away. This is our country. This is our country!"

Because right now this isn't my country. Not when Stephen Harper's Cons are running it and violating every value we once had.

Oh yeah...I know...the truth is a bummer. And I do want us to be the best hockey players in the world.

But hockey is just a game. It's time to come down off that cloud and face cruel reality.

It's late in the third period. Stephen Harper's Cons are ahead.

And we're in danger of losing our country...