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| Game on London, ON February 2017 This photo originally shared on Instagram |
Canadians from coast to coast to coast will be waking up before dawn to catch the game live. Here in Ontario, Premier Doug Ford has allowed bars and restaurants to start selling alcohol at 6 a.m., because nothing says Great Canadian Breakfast quite as effectively as a tall cold one.
This is much more than a mere game. In the context of the past year of increasingly erratic politics leaking over our southern border, it’s not much of an exaggeration to call this a moment of national significance.
Canadians hold hockey more closely to our national, community, and individual psyches than perhaps anyone else. Countless parents in countless towns drive their kids to countless arenas in the early morning darkness. Many of them cling to dreams of this brutal, beautiful game holding some kind of ticket out of this place. Or maybe it’s a senior’s league, playing less for glory than the simple refusal to submit to the ravages of time.
Or maybe it’s the average Canadian fan, sitting on splintered wood bleachers in a frigid arena, or watching the game on TV, or otherwise hitting the pause button on the everyday to watch magic play out between the boards. We all have a role to play.
However this one incandescent game plays out, our hockey culture will be just as integral to our national identity long after the medals are awarded.
Tomorrow morning, a single unsung hero will walk into an empty arena, flip the lights on and take the Zamboni out onto the silent ice. Soon enough those countless kids will tumble in. And new dreams, Olympic ones perhaps, will scrape themselves into the brilliantly cold ice.
Maybe they play hockey elsewhere. But they don’t live it like we do.
Go Canada.
#ldnont #london #ontario #canada #hockey #sports #sportsing #photography #throwback
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