1.05.2015

Today 35.2 Million Usually Divided Canadians are Bound Together Cheering GO CANADA GO

With the crowd chanting “We Want Russia" Team Canada captain Curtis Lazar celebrates one of Nic Petan's three goals last night.

Pancho and i are just back from our after lunch walk around the neighborhood. It's a fairly typical early January day here in Blackpoint [+5C and low cloud cover]. We've had about 50mm [2in.] of rain the last couple days and usually the folks would be as low and sodden as the ground under their gumboots on days like this...but not today!

Today Canada is a nation of 35.2 million individuals bound together by hockey. Canada is well known to be populated by an abnormally courteous people whose most commonly spoken phrase is: "i'm sorry". Right now in lane-ways, stores, you name it, people greet each other with a tense smile and a thumbs up. Today we all play for Team Canada.

Once a year Canadians who are usually divided by politics, by economic class, by geography, by language, by race, even by which NHL team they root for are united from coast to coast to coast by tonight's dramatic final against Russia in Toronto.

Canadian Tire, a Canadian institution unlike your usual heartless corporation, has again gone beyond expectations with its campaign to raise money through it's commercials to underwrite the cost of sending and equiping thousands of underprivileged kids [boys and girls] to hockey camps and leagues. Canadian Tire of course knows that every Canadian is watching and where everyone [including the Gumboot Nation] will buy their next pair of iconic footwear, birdseed, etc. It's hard to forget Canadian Tire, everyone of us has some of their famous money in their wallets.


Like the video above explains, on the ice tonight, every score is assisted by …the early rising parents…the trusty car-poolers…the kindly business sponsors...the play-by-play announcers…the crowd igniters… and everyone else whose efforts prove, there’s no such thing as an unassisted goal. Learning the lesson that every goal, everywhere across Canada, Russia and everywhere else is assisted by a country sized community who often appears divided but can be united by sport is one of the greatest things about living up here in the Great White North.