Issue: 2014-01-16: Photo: iStoxk
Hockey inspires strong emotions in Canadians, even years after the fact.
Nothing upends Canada's conciliatory nature like hockey. Though we regard ourselves — as a people — as humble and polite, hockey dredges up jingoistic fervor and personal passion from somewhere deep within our national belly.
When Canada's junior team got trounced by Finland and was relegated to the bronze medal game, I didn't even bother getting up to watch them lose to Russia.
Gold or nothing, that's my motto.
More recently, within hours of Steve Yzerman announcing Canada's Olympic men's hockey team, I received three text messages from friends complaining about the roster.
Where was Martin St. Louis? What was Rick Nash doing there?
Hockey turns us from Jekyll to Hyde, and the transformative effects can linger and bubble-up long after we think we have expunged them from our system. Case in point: I hadn't thought about the 2010 Invitational Floor Hockey Tournament (IFHT) in years.
In the fall of 2010 I was working as an educational assistant at Holy Family Elementary School under the guidance of principal Ted Hupe.
Ted was a huge hockey fan and a brainchild behind the IFHT, which brought elementary school floor hockey teams from across Whitehorse together to compete. He knew that I enjoyed the sport, so he gave me a day's reprieve from my usual duties to help out as the assistant coach of Holy Family.
As often happens in these sort of events, the available adults just fill-in where needed. We were short on referees, so I was drafted into action.
One of the games I reffed featured Holy Family against one of the stronger teams in the tourney. Holy Family scored early and played a hard-working, defense-oriented game from there on.
Towards the end of the game, one of the players on the other team shot the ball at the same time as I blew the whistle; the ball went in.
According to the letter-of-the-law, this should not have counted as a goal, but I was anxious not to be perceived as a biased ref so I let it count: 1-1.
There were no goals during the remainder of the game (witnesses confirmed this).
But unbeknownst to me, the opposite coach had fabricated a goal in his mind, so when I went to record the official game score as a tie he began yelling at me. I yelled back; I was mad.
Last night, I suddenly became seething mad at that coach once again.
How dare he yell at someone trying to help out? How dare he be so stupid? Wouldn't the world be better if he hadn't been born at all?
Over three years later, I suddenly found myself twice as mad as I was at the time of the incident. This weird, déjà vu anger is not typical of me. So what gives?
The causal chain leading to my sudden fury is murky at best, but I think it has something to do with the amount I have been thinking about hockey lately.
Between the World Junior Championships and Yzerman's national announcement, I've had slap shots and hat tricks on the brain; I've even caught myself fantasizing about donning the Canadian sweater for my country. But despite my belief that I could be a good role-player for Team Canada, it is not to be.
In fact coaching and reffing in that elementary school floor hockey tournament was the pinnacle of my recent hockey career; that was my Olympics.
Given that, perhaps my surprising and passionate anger is understandable.
After all, I'm only Canadian.
Peter Jickling is a Whitehorse playwright and the assistant editor of What’s Up Yukon