Hockey Day in Canada
Today is the CBC's annual celebration of the sport of hockey followed by a tripleheader of games featuring all six NHL teams based in Canada. It's a day I have enjoyed since they started doing it about eight years ago. Besides watching close to nine hours of hockey in a row the thing I really enjoy is watching all those stories from small towns spread across Canada, stories that show how the sport brings the people of Canada together and eliminates, temporarily, the lines drawn by race or language of politics.
I'm not really sure we have an American corollary. Then again, we have a totally different culture here in the lower 48. Our "national pastime" is baseball, a sport that celebrates more often than not the achievement on the individual or the one-on-one confrontation between pitcher and batter whereas success in hockey is rarely based on the accomplishment of a lone individual but instead achieved through teamwork. Culturally this makes sense as the great American archetype is the rugged individual striking out on his own, pulling himself up by his bootstraps, overcoming adversity through sheer force of will and tenacity. Canadians on the other hand celebrate the virtues of collaboration, of community, and of sticking up for one another. Whether or not each nation lives up to their ideal or whether the ideals are achievable in the real world is a discussion for another day.
Because I was born on the American side of the border I was raised with the American ideal and so I watch the small-town hockey stories unfold from the perspective of a foreigner. These tales from towns with names live Plaster Rock and Cold Lake. One thing I've noticed about Canadian hockey broadcasts over the years is that the announcers seem to know the hometowns of every single Canadian player and they love to mention them like "Moose Jaw's own so and so" or "The pride of Kelvington Saskatchewan". Maybe that's why there's such a strong culture of community in Canada. They are really more of a nation of smaller towns rather than big cities and really with the exception of Toronto even the big cities are small compared to America's big cities.
As someone who grew up it the odd hybrid of big city/small town that is the smallest borough of New York City I'm torn by my affinity for urban places and a yearning for a quieter, small town existence that I sort of had as a young child before the bulldozers rolled in in the mid 1970s. I suspect I will always live in or near a city so that small-town, communal ideal will likely remain just that. It's probably for the best, I don't really talk to the neighbors now so I'm not sure if I'm cut out for small town living. I think it's why that sort of life is so fascinating to me. It's the way I lived the first several years of my life so, like anyone else except those who had terribly traumatic childhoods it's kind of an idealized past, a memory covered in the gauze of all happy childhood memories.
As I type this it's 5-2 Habs over the Sens after two which makes me happy. The CBC just did another shot from this year's host city, Campleton, New Brunswick up near the Gaspe Peninsula. It looks beautiful from here. I'll probably never get to see it in person. So it goes.
I'm not really sure we have an American corollary. Then again, we have a totally different culture here in the lower 48. Our "national pastime" is baseball, a sport that celebrates more often than not the achievement on the individual or the one-on-one confrontation between pitcher and batter whereas success in hockey is rarely based on the accomplishment of a lone individual but instead achieved through teamwork. Culturally this makes sense as the great American archetype is the rugged individual striking out on his own, pulling himself up by his bootstraps, overcoming adversity through sheer force of will and tenacity. Canadians on the other hand celebrate the virtues of collaboration, of community, and of sticking up for one another. Whether or not each nation lives up to their ideal or whether the ideals are achievable in the real world is a discussion for another day.
Because I was born on the American side of the border I was raised with the American ideal and so I watch the small-town hockey stories unfold from the perspective of a foreigner. These tales from towns with names live Plaster Rock and Cold Lake. One thing I've noticed about Canadian hockey broadcasts over the years is that the announcers seem to know the hometowns of every single Canadian player and they love to mention them like "Moose Jaw's own so and so" or "The pride of Kelvington Saskatchewan". Maybe that's why there's such a strong culture of community in Canada. They are really more of a nation of smaller towns rather than big cities and really with the exception of Toronto even the big cities are small compared to America's big cities.
As someone who grew up it the odd hybrid of big city/small town that is the smallest borough of New York City I'm torn by my affinity for urban places and a yearning for a quieter, small town existence that I sort of had as a young child before the bulldozers rolled in in the mid 1970s. I suspect I will always live in or near a city so that small-town, communal ideal will likely remain just that. It's probably for the best, I don't really talk to the neighbors now so I'm not sure if I'm cut out for small town living. I think it's why that sort of life is so fascinating to me. It's the way I lived the first several years of my life so, like anyone else except those who had terribly traumatic childhoods it's kind of an idealized past, a memory covered in the gauze of all happy childhood memories.
As I type this it's 5-2 Habs over the Sens after two which makes me happy. The CBC just did another shot from this year's host city, Campleton, New Brunswick up near the Gaspe Peninsula. It looks beautiful from here. I'll probably never get to see it in person. So it goes.
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