A couple of my friends came over this evening to watch the Habs-Leafs game on my big screen TV. And they were surprised to find out that I hadn't been planning to watch it, until they turned up. And that I wasn't the least bit excited that the season had finally started.
When I saw the Star headline today I was stunned. Could Stephen Harper and Vladimir Putin really be planning to face off against each other on the ice?
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is making plans to play on a Canadian hockey team in two exhibition games against a Russian squad that will include Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, sources tell the Star.
“We’ve been told that the PM would love to be involved. It’s as relaxed as that,” said a person familiar with Harper’s plans.
In the Kingdom of the Bullies. Where the bully-in-chief doesn't hesitate to run his foul attack ads during a football game.
Rules by fear. Shames our country. And degrades our institutions.
Also Monday, Moore announced the appointment of Pierre Gingras to the board of the CBC. Gingras was an ADQ member of the Quebec National Assembly in 2007 and 2008 and formerly a mayor of Blainville.
In the Kingdom of the Bullies. Where right-wing loudmouths like Don Cherry RULE. And even the country's best hockey player gets the treatment.
Now given all this, you'd think Crosby would be one of the most highly respected hockey players around. Think again. Around the league and among fans he's derisively referred to as "Cindy," accused of being gay and called a pussy for not sucking it up like macho hockey players are supposed to and continuing to play concussed or not, which Crosby actually did, until he suffered another concussion four days later.
After being flattened by a cheap shot from behind.
In the Kingdom of the Bullies. Where police brutality is the new normal. And most gay kids don't feel safe in school.
In the Kingdom of the bullies. On a February night when I'm too beat to blog.
"It's embarrassing, it's full-on embarrassing...Terrible. Shoulda hit, didn't. Lost the game because of it...I'm extremely upset because I figured Canada had it. We're Canadian. We own the game. It's our game..."
"The Russian heart is the best in the world, the Russian character is the best,'' said Kuznetsov. "Because we are Russian, we knew we could win."
Wave the flag. Pass the beer vodka.
And I agree with Roy MacGregor. Get a grip on yourself Canada.
Morley Callaghan had it partially right when he called hockey, Canada’s national game, truly “our national drama,” but he wasn’t all the way there. I think Calgary poet Richard Harrison, who sometimes writes poetry about the game, comes closer when he tagged it “the national id.”
When we win, as in the Vancouver Winter Games (both men and women), we swagger. When we lose, we wallow.
Which is pathetic eh? I mean how fragile is our ego? Don't we have any other real accomplishments to brag about ? What's the difference between an armchair hockey patriot and a yahoo?
Most of the banter with American hockey fans has been good natured, but some have been irked by the way some Canadians have acted as if they owned the place.
“I would cheer for Afghanistan over Canada, okay?” said one American fan. “Anybody but Canada.”
Canadians had grown so obnoxious, British skeleton champion Amy Williams recalled: “other nations began looking at it as the Rest of the World versus Canada. You wanted your own country to win, but beyond that you didn’t care who it was as long as it wasn’t Canada.”
Answer: The people Stephen Harper is hoping will give him a majority in the next election. The mostly male hosers he thinks he can whip into a frenzy with his cheap nationalism, his fancy jet planes, and his hockey talk.
When in fact Great Hockey Leader is just a fraud. A nerdy poseur. And the biggest loser of last night's game.
For no doubt not consenting to be photographed when our kids were losing, because "Stephen Harper" and "defeat" must NEVER go together eh?
They’re kids. Amateurs. Barely, if at all, out of high school. And the armchair coaches are telling them that they let their country down? That’s ludicrous. There was not one moment in the tournament when Canadians could not be proud of the young players.
Shame on him.
Yup. Stephen Harper is not a leader. Just a LOSER.
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...
