CANADA ROCKS!

By Joel Thurtell

I was sitting in the living room of Zoe and Burnley McDougall’s house on Vim Island in McGregor Bay on Sunday, February 21, 2010, the day the U.S. Olympic hockey team beat the Canadians in the quarter finals.

The living room is actually the dining room, the kitchen, the family room — the place where Zoe and Burn and their guests congregate in the winter, because the other half of the house is closed off to better heat the part that is centralized around a big, black, old-fashioned kitchen wood burning stove. In the winter months in this isolated house — a nine mile run by snowmobile or ATV to the post office and parking lot — you could say the stove is the focal point of all things social in this cottage during the winter months. Their house — the heated portion — consists of this kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom.

I’ll be writing more about my short mid-winter visit with the McDougalls, but today I’m reflecting on the telephone conversation Zoe had with her dad, Jock Fleming, 89, just before that first Canada-U.S. hockey game. Incidentally, this was neither a cell phone link nor a landline hookup. The McDougalls’ house is far enough away from landline connections that they need a radiotelephone.

Maybe the radiophone amplified Jock’s voice, because I could clearly make out his words as they talked about the then-upcoming quarter-final game.

Zoe: “We’ve got an American hear watching with us.”

Jock: “Tell him we’re gonna kick his ass!”

I’m not a hockey fan, and I don’t go in for nationalistic rah-rah. In theory, at least, I didn’t give a rip who won the game. But as I watched, I got tuned into the excitement and was quietly rooting for the Americans. It happened that I was wearing a t-shirt with a small American flag on the front which just happened to be in my luggage, honest, because I wasn’t even thinking of the game when I packed.

Needless to say, I was not believed.

I was very quiet, did no shouting, made no biting comments about the opposing team and was very gracious when the U.S. team won.

Zoe and Burn were very gracious in defeat.

But one week later, the U.S. and Canada came together again for the final Olympic game, winner of which gets the gold medal.

Her dad, it turned out, was right after all.

They did kick our ass.

Under the head, WE ROCK. Zoe wrote this e-mail to her American friends:

I’d like to thank my producer, my director–oops, wait a minute, it was the

men’s hockey team, not ME that won the gold medal

 To all my darling US friends and relatives, thank you for putting up with

this arrogant Canadian wench for the past 24 hours

Frankly I think the American men skated faster and better and I truly think

that we just got lucky that Sidney Crosby came out of his retirement to get

that last goal in overtime

Congrads to the US team on their hard earned and well deserved Silver

medal–you rock!!!!!!!

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com