Wednesday, September 5, 2001
It's hockey, eh!
Buzz surrounding our Olympic team shows what binds Canadians
together
By AL STRACHAN -- Toronto Sun
CALGARY -- Those who spend their life in an endless search for the Canadian identity are probably looking in the wrong place.
It won't be found in Ottawa, where a couple of lunatic sisters and a crook are trying to drag the nation even further into disrepute while wrapping themselves in the Canadian flag.
It won't be found in Toronto where the final traces of Canadian heritage will disappear as soon as King St. and Queen St. are renamed.
It's here in Calgary. Right now.
Our identity -- and perhaps the only identity that is exclusively ours -- is hockey. At this moment in Calgary, the proof is on display.
For what is essentially a non-event -- an "Olympic training camp" that is not really a training camp and isn't sanctioned by anyone from the Olympic movement -- there are more than 200 accredited media.
The sports-oriented TV networks have their best hockey people here. The news agencies are staffing it. Every major paper has sent its elite columnist. There are magazine writers. Even radio, an industry not widely known for acquiring information from primary sources, is represented.
This is the case because the media decision-makers understand their audience and they know that even though we are five months away from the event and three months away from the announcement of the final roster, fans are already enthralled.
In Calgary yesterday, there was no shortage of confirmation for those views.
At the airport and at the hotel, the fans gathered in the hope of getting a glimpse of the arriving players.
The story was the same at a rink where the players just happened to gather in the afternoon for a bit of impromptu exercise.
In keeping with the charade that this is not really a training camp, nor was this a practice. It was just a bunch of guys fortunate enough to be in the same building at the same time for what coach Pat Quinn called, "an equipment feel-out skate."
Fortunately for all, this happy coincidence occurred at one of the few buildings in the country which houses an Olympic-sized ice surface. With similar fortuity, there were enough security people on the site to handle a Global Summit.
There were no incidents to cause the security people to spring into action.
For the most part, they just stood around wiggling their jackboots and flexing their biceps under their crisply pressed black shirts.
There were plenty of fans but they weren't interested in causing trouble. They were just people who wanted to be a part of what they know is the Canadian identity as manifested by a bunch of revered hockey players who may or may not represent this country in Salt Lake City next February.
From their spots behind the high wire fences, they shouted encouragement at the players and the team's executives whenever they passed on their way to the news conferences or the bus.
In physical terms, this is as close as they are likely to get to this team. But in metaphysical terms, this team is a part of their being.
This team will represent Canada like nothing else can. It has players from French Canada and from the prairies, from the rural areas and the metropolitan hubs, from the families of recent immigrants and the founding fathers.
There are players from the New Jersey Devils and Colorado Avalanche who have been away from the game for what seems like only a few days. There are players who are returning from long stretches of inactivity -- Theoren Fleury, Eric Lindros and Mike Peca.
The common thread is that they all play the game that is head and shoulders above all others when it comes to popularity in this country, the only one at which we have a legitimate claim to ownership.
Sure a Canadian invented basketball. Yes, we were playing baseball when that game was in its formative stages. We even played the first college football game. For years, the official national sport was not hockey but lacrosse.
Nevertheless, it is hockey that stirs the national passion like no other sport, and it is hockey that binds the country together.
This is our identity. It is not the Mounties, who sold their image to Disney, or the even the winter which we now routinely conquer and call in the army when we don't.
Hockey is our identity. Nothing else.
2002 Games Men's Hockey Coverage
