Making It Up As I Go Along #249

MONDAY...
— Tiring evening dealing with pettiness and childishness. The events at work are really becoming annoying.
— My voice is pretty well back. Still not all perfect but I can talk normal now.
— Long walk tonight to try to unwind. Blah!

TUESDAY...
— Better night tonight. Not much out of the ordinary one way or the other today.

WEDNESDAY...
— Okay evening. Really tired from supper on though. An after work walk is pretty good.
— Will see no more of Melissa until the new year. She leaves for Christmas tomorrow and I’m gone before she gets back.

THURSDAY...
— Tired... plenty of sleep lately but just worn down.
— Do a couple more meetings (did three with my team yesterday).
— I decide to cut the week short. I have a bit of leave stored and decide Friday will be my Saturday... making today Friday. This makes the tiredness more tolerable.

FRIDAY...
— Day off work is nice. Nick and Sheila pop by for lunch and we join Casey, Isaac, Steve, and Anne-Marie for a junior hockey game in Gatineau. St. John’s are in town and they come back to beat Gatineau 4-3 in OT.
— From there it’s off to Father and Sons for some hanging out with Linda and some other co-workers while Read and Jonathan sing.

SATURDAY...
— Quiet day around the house. Some napping and movies with hockey night in Canada in the evening.


Hockey Night in Quebec
It is an odd night of hockey. I travel from Ontario to go to Quebec to see a team from my home town in Newfoundland. It’s the first time I’ve seen my hometown team play as well.

I left St. John’s with the minor league Maple Leafs firmly entrenched with more than ten years experience. I had watched that team play out of two stadiums. I was there for the inaugural game. I was there for the trip to the Calder Cup finals. And it was a family event. For much of the time of the Leafs, dad and I shared season tickets with my uncle and a friend of his. And we’d get together each September to plan out the games of the season.

After I left, so did the Leafs. Now it’s junior hockey in St. John’s. The Quebec League’s St. John’s Fog Devils. I can’t say it brings any warm and fuzzy feelings for me in the way that the Maple Leafs did. The Leafs at least started out old school. It was a team with veteran players in an old stadium and a traditional name and uniform.

The move out of Memorial Stadium and into Mile One Stadium was needed... although it did remove some of the romance of the team. There was something about being in a little stadium with rusty rafters and wooden seats, thick with paint, that just felt like hockey. You’d trek through the snow and wind, climb in through the old wooden doors and breathe in the diesel of the Zamboni.

Mile One Stadium took away the warm and cozy, pull-up-a-chair-by-the-fire feel. In Memorial Stadium, you’d look across the building and recognize faces in the other sections. More than once I waved at a friend at the other end of the building. In Mile One, people have become more concerned with watching the jumbotron for their own faces than scanning the stands for those of others.

And now that the Leafs are gone, and the Fog Devils are in, I feel all the more separated from home. All tradition is gone. I hear they even removed the Stadium part of Mile One’s title. It’s now a Centre... just like all those other shopping mall wannabes.

And want on earth is a fog devil anyway? The desperate attempt to gain a foothold in the world of fad. Hoping to see rappers from LA adopt a new version of cool in the form of a horned Ziggy peaking out from behind a crest.

Still, when the Fog Devils came to Gatineau, a group of us from work decided it would be fun to go. I vowed not to cheer for St. John’s though. There betrayal to me as a traditional hockey fan has cut too deep. And besides, how can any self respecting fan cheer for a fog devil?

At the game, we get a treat. Entering the front doors of the old stadium brings back the feel of Memorial Stadium. Cramped corridors and thick coats of paint make the place feel like home. And walking the corridors has that same feel of hockey. I don’t recognize the faces but there’s a comradery in it all. They’re there... like me... for hockey. Nothing more, nothing less.

Before heading down to our seats, we stop to get a beer. It’s just a small stand with room for the one lady selling the beverages and her taps. I use my French to the best of my abilities... “Un Bleu?” Gets me a Labatt’s Blue and I even understand her quote the cost to me.

Sitting in the seats, it’s like I’m back home in old Memorial Stadium even more so. One Zamboni circles the ice in hypnotic fashion. No need for the two vehicles like in the newer arenas. And fans are left on their own for pre-game entertainment. There’s no jumbotron. There’s no entertainment coordinator. And even the public address announcer keeps things brief. People just mill about their seats, chatting to each other.

And through the game, it’s much the same. Back home, they’ve gotten caught up in the entertainment around the game. The have prizes to give away and trivia contests and kissing cam and the blasted jumbotron that searches out and rewards the most annoying children in attendance.

But here, throughout the game, it’s all about the game itself. Some shirts are fired into the stands during the intermissions... and some kids play a five minute game between the first and second periods, while a lone man takes a shot at an empty net during the second intermission. Other than that, the only times the public address announcer breaks the silence is to announce goals... penalties... and the attendance.

And like home, I do end up running into a couple of familiar faces, even here in Gatineau. Two other guys from work stop by, tapping me on the shoulder and standing in the isle to talk for a few minutes just as we would do with friends during those games in Memorial Stadium. It completes the feeling of pulling up that chair next to the fire. It’s this feeling that makes hockey a very real piece of Canada’s culture.

Of course, there are differences from home as well. All the announcements come in French before English. The people selling 50/50 tickets are calling out in French. And the team from St. John’s is not being cheered for.

Anytime I’ve seen St. John’s play in hockey, it’s been as the home team. But today, they’re on the road and getting booed. It’s surreal for me.

By the end of the second period, I’ve been brought back over. Where I went vowing not to cheer for a fog devil, I find myself drawn in by the familiar names on the backs of the jerseys as well as the “St. John’s” written into the crest on the front.

And even though the team is outplayed, they play hard, fight back to tie the game with two goals in the final five minutes, and score a beauty to win it in overtime.

I walk out of the old building with my co-workers talking about how it was a good game in much the same way as I would years previously, walking out of Memorial Stadium with my dad.

St. John’s will be playing a home game while I’m there for Christmas. And I’ll probably get down to Mile One to take a look at the Fog Devils on home ice as well. And even though the faces in the stands will contain some familiar to me, and I’ll be there with my father, there’ll be something missing from the night. Because we’ll be in plastic seats in a Centre rather than wooden ones in a Stadium. And jumbotron will be on throughout the night, trying to pull the mind away from the action on the ice.

Yes, there may be a fireplace at Mile One Centre on that night... but rather than the pop and crackle of the warm fire as we sit comfortably and in peace, it’ll be an electrical fireplace with a rotating light and no warmth what-so-ever. But at least a few kids will get on the jumbotron... and, after all, isn’t that what going to a hockey game is all about?