Puck Hockey

I grew up in the Sault, home of the Sault Greyhounds, a minor league team for which Wayne Gretzky once played. I never went to a game, although I did go to Memorial Gardens once with a friend who had a crush on a player. He had a bit of a Bobby Clarke thing going on I guess, but hockey players were not in my league in those days.

My crushes tended to be grander. Like Bob Dylan grander.

A few, or maybe several, years later I was at the Sault airport for a flight back to Toronto after a Christmas visit home. Phil Esposito, high scoring forward, was there in a full length fur coat catching a flight to somewhere in the US where he lived. Entirely unselfconsciously, too, swanning about the Sault airport like it was a fashion runway. Eyes were rolling in the aisles, but contrary me almost wondered if maybe I should check the local snark a bit and ask him mid-strut for an autograph.

It must stick in his craw that brother Tony, a goalie, ffs, is the hometown favourite.

I don't recall my mother being a big hockey fan but every Saturday night Hockey Night in Canada was on. I hated it. Even if Gram went to watch it in her room, and unless my mother went out, Hockey Night in Canada it was every godddamned Saturday night until finally my mother ceded a bit of territory over the tv.

Also, cable.

But when the Canada-Russia hockey series happened in 1972 competitive patriotic Canadian me was all in. It had nothing to do with hockey. It was all about winning. We had to be the best at SOMETHING. And even though I was in love with Tretiak, the Russian goalie, we still had to win.

And thank Gord we did or whatever would have become of us? Whatever would have become of me?

Paul Henderson could have turned out to be a cannibal and been excused by Canadians for it.

Madness. It's always been madness. We have to win at hockey or... what? What would've happened if we'd lost to the Russians? How different would our country be? Worse? Or, Gord forbid, better.

But we didn't and I went back to hating hockey again.

When I lived in Toronto, which I did from 1977-1991, I watched Hockey Night in Canada because my recently deceased former husband did. I recall being into it a bit because it was the Leafs, and I had crushes on a couple of the players.

I guess my standards had dropped.

Also beer, friends, so it was a party, not just watching hockey.

Prior to this I had a boyfriend who was a huge hockey fan, although we didn't live together, and I don't recall watching much hockey with him. What I did was parrot back stuff he said about different players, Ricky Vaive was a suck, Mike Palmeteer underrated, impressing him mightily with my deep knowledge of the game.

Are all men so easy to fool? Or just hockey fans...

Later, living in Ottawa, it was all about the Senators. The kids and their dad, who was well into fantasy sports leagues by then, would watch the games. One year the city had an outdoor showing at city hall of the Senators in a playoff game. It was a big deal and my son, who was a pre-teen at the time, went off to watch it. All I did was worry they'd lose and I'd have to deal with the fallout. Also pubs on Elgin Street downtown took to calling it "Senators' Mile" like their businesses depended on them making the playoffs and then lasting right through to a Stanley Cup win.

The pressure to win has only ever gotten worse.

But it was this latest Olympic round when it finally twigged, it's not about hockey, not for me, not for Canadians as a whole, it's about having to be the best at hockey, winning, all the stakes in for gold.

A few Olympics ago my ex told a story about going to lunch with his colleagues after a gold medal win against the Americans, and how every day for a few weeks afterward, someone would pipe up, "Let's talk about how we beat the Americans again."

I thought it was hilarious, too, but when we lost last week to the American team the first thing I said to my oldest (having not watched the game myself), "Well at least your Dad isn't alive to witness this tragedy."

She agreed, having a hard enough time herself, this young woman of impeccable progressive credentials but also a hard case of Olympic fever.

The loss got me to thinking about how I can't stand to watch these do or die hockey games and never could. And while I was blaming other people for being so wrapped up in their team winning I couldn't bear to live with their disappointment, it's me, too. At least other people enjoy watching the actual sport. I just need us to win.

I'm embarrassed to admit, this came to me as quite the revelation. Of course I hate hockey. I have no appreciation for the skills involved, the actual sport, how it's played. For me it's just hockey, hockey, hockey, shoved down my throat via our public airwaves from fall through to summer now, a national bully, win internationally or bust.

Oh and never mind the racism, the misogyny, the sexual assaults, players both victims and perpetrators, the homophobia, the gambling, the brain damage.

The Conservatism.

Because those are nothing to do with hockey, the game, those are all about the people who play, watch, coach, commentate, own, and so on and so forth and more of the same etc etc.

Anyway, at first I was "argh!" about losing to the Americans, especially after the spectacle of Trump's FBI plant partying with them in their dressing room, followed by Trump himself calling in to capitalize on their win and show off his misogyny at the same time, a twofer, while the dumb dupes guffawed along with it all, no idea he'd just taken them from heroes to zeroes.

From what I've read, too, the Canadian team outplayed the American one, skills-wise, so I imagine there's consolation in that for Canadians who actually appreciate hockey as a sport. I like it, too, though, because it puts into perspective all those wins when the Canadian team wasn't actually the most skilled one on the ice, maybe even including the Russians back in the day, when we had to win because it's not hockey we're so identified with, it's winning at hockey.

And I'm not sure the "Americans may have won the gold in hockey but we still have democracy" is the flex some think it is, either, because it's sure as hell no thanks to the aforementioned people of hockey in Canada that we do.

So yeah, turning that frown upside down, I'm glad we lost, and to the Americans. You should be, too. Hockey's a bully. It needed a good checking. So did we for tying our national identity to winning at it.

The World As It Is

Somebody once replied to a big change in my life I was ascribing to X, that no, if it wasn't X it would have been Y. Or A, B, C, and so on and so forth and more of the same.

And it's so true. I didn't make the change because X, I made it because me.

It took me a while to get here but here I am.

It's been a few months, let me tell you, but when a woman I'd been talking to recently asked, "But are you healing?" my mouth answered, "Yes".

It wasn't really a question but later I thought about it and realized she was right. I am healing. That's the point, not the hurt, the healing.

It's the job of life, isn't it, healing. Healing and letting go. Or maybe it's the letting go that brings the healing. I don't mean letting go of people, even our dearly and not so dearly departed, I mean letting go the stories of who we were then and who we'll be later.

My daily gratitude practice helps me stay focused on what's real, as opposed to made up, so right now.

I had a friend who decided not to care anymore about the world as it is. My mother was the same. Once, in her very old age, she looked at me, that steely look still in her eyes, even though they couldn't see anymore, and said, "I don't understand you". It was a confession, a laying down of a mother's burden, and a relief to us both.

I wish I could say that's when I learned to stop explaining myself but of course it wasn't. I was doing it with the woman I'd been talking to recently. It's why she asked if I was healing.

Ah, breakthrough. No more explanations. I understand me and that's enough.

Thank you, universe, for this addition to my daily gratitude practice.

Anyway, I've been watching a variety of therapy videos over the past few years and I've noticed a couple of therapists, and this is just recently, no longer shy away from the world as it is for fear of offending someone.

Anyone.

It's always bothered me, the careful avoidance of how it is in the world by therapists, as if it has nothing to do with our grief, fear, anxiety.

Substance use disorders.

Every time a friend gets sober I grow wings.

One therapist is even pointing out now of other therapists that they're not doing their job if they're ignoring how it is in the world, because it's WHY so many of us have trouble healing. It's not crazy to care, it's crazy-making to be told we'd heal faster if only we didn't, as if the world as it is has nothing to do with us, with anybody, it's just... how it is.

There's a scene in The Sound of Music, I've never forgotten, where Max wants Maria to tell Captain Von Trapp to try and get along (with the Nazis), and she says, "I can't ask him to be less than he is".

We're not being asked, we're being told.

I can name at least three people of my close acquaintance who died prematurely, recently, due to decisions made by successive governments in Ontario to reduce the quality of healthcare available to us, even though we're collectively wealthier than at any time in our history.

Meanwhile it's tax breaks and means testing because we really only take the world as it is when it suits us.

Doug Ford's a demonstrable crook, an ignorant bully, and he's Premier of Ontario because people don't care enough.

The last thing we need is people caring less.

My mother used to say I was upsetting myself. My friend used to put it similarly of others, they did it to themselves. It took me a minute to realize she meant me, too, because what am I to her if not an other.

There's that old line, I say you're driving me crazy, you say it's a short drive.

So here's what I think, and yes, I'm aware of the daily threats of takeover by our fascist neighbours - who were never not fascist in one way or another so let's not kid ourselves all over again - we DON'T have to take the world as it is. We're just being told we do by our latest Prime Minister, who views himself, and so the country he was elected to lead, as somehow apart from, or maybe even above, it, the world. But we're not above it, and we are a part of it, and, as such, we're responsible for why the world as it is.

OUR world.

We change our behaviour, we change our world.

It's funny. I didn't see it until I did, and it was a personal experience with our much ballyhooed dental care program that opened my eyes, but if we didn't already have universal healthcare in Canada (and I use the word universal loosely) our government today would be telling us we must take the world as it is, and no, we can't have universal healthcare, it's too expensive.

There is no way in hell a government of Canada would bring in universal healthcare now and we need to be asking ourselves why that is, not shrugging our shoulders and saying, oh well, it is what it is.

I don't think I've ever written my Member of Parliament before but I decided now is the time. I can deal with it, too, so I'll take it to the wall. It's not really about dental care anymore for me, although I'll be out not a bit of money. Fortunately, I realized a while back, I have enough.

As Peter Gzowski once said of the healthcare he received after a heart attack, "It's nice to not have to worry about money". But of course he had the resources to afford the recovery. It's not the same for a retail clerk heading up a family and renting an apartment.

I just mean we're not as good as we could be and never have been. A lot of what we believe about ourselves is, well, kind of made up.

All the concern by our government right now about this industry or that, cars, oil, canola, while Canadians are dying on gurneys in hospital hallways, or living on the streets playing Russian roulette with addictive pain killers, or just finding ourselves unable to go a day without crying because taking the world as it is hurts our hearts too much to bear.

Because we're a middle power I guess is what we're supposed to buy now.

Don't get me wrong. I voted Liberal. Because whether Canadians are ready to face it down or not the choice is Liberal or the Neo-Nazi Separatist Bitcoin Anti-Vax Freedom Convoy Plus Michael Chong Party.

I mean, can we not be real, ever? Stephen Harper's been Chair of the IDU for a decade now, an international laundromat for the dark money funding the rise of fascism all over the world, including Canada and next door where the regime he helped elect is executing democracy activists in the street.

He was a Prime Minister of Canada ffs.

So no, I don't accept taking the world as it is, not when no one who can is calling out the fascism we can do something about right here at home.

We have an entire media chain that's been nothing more than fascist propaganda for years, kept alive by government funded bailouts as if it's good for democracy. It's even free online, and has been for years, while decent media is paywalled. And we wonder why so many people have been radicalized into believing fascism is freedom.

Postmedia alright. Postdemocracy too.

No, I don't agree with Mark Carney we have to take the world as it is. It's a choice. It's always been a choice. LAVs for Saudi Arabia because $$$ for Canadians. And it wouldn't be so bad if it was a choice that isn't also taking us ever further from the promise of a society that measures itself by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. But it is. What has changed since the pandemic that resulted in reservists ending up with PTSD from the conditions they encountered in nursing homes?

I always think of something a friend entirely dependent on social assistance, so poor, said back when we were in one of our financial crises, "It's times like this when I can take a bit of a breather from worrying about not having any money in the bank."

Anyway, it's no one government's fault, and certainly not Mark Carney's, but I'm not going along to get along anymore either. We don't HAVE to take the world as it is, we CHOOSE to, as we've been choosing to do for decades, and to no one's benefit.

You can't care too much and don't let anybody tell you otherwise.❤