Canadian sports

As winter turns to summer here my thoughts turn to home and what the people I love best will be doing "down under".

Having decimated a summer's worth of rose garden growth with a 2 sets of his n' hers biceps, a large pair of shears and the determination of a pair of gladiators, my parents will have settled in front of the plasma telly for their winter. They will be stretching out their bedtimes to the wee hours to watch the only time the Poms enjoy sports, strawberries, cream and sunshine outdoors. Wimbledon.

Winter means watching sports to Aussies. If we are not playing it during the summer, we are watching it during the short winter. Having said that, it is odd to me that football here is a summer sport, when our guys are out in the mud all winter playing it. The girls are sensibly inside after their early-morning netball game watching it on TV and admiring the fit of their shorts.

My winter of sport in Canada was almost entirely spent on my bottom. Even when I was tobogganing or skiing or snowboarding I was on my bottom. There was no escaping it. My bottom seemed magnetised to ice and snow. My main form of exercise has been walking everywhere and that, combined with eating anything I want has seen me lose 2 dress sizes. Hurrah for me.

So, in my quest to watch a winter sport and become more educated about Canada, I had to find out what really matters to Canadians.

Hockey. It's played indoors, on ice, by huge, strong agile men wearing what looks suspiciously like shorts and thick woolen stockings. For big money and for months on end.

Welcome to the NHL (the National Hockey League). For those playing at home though, how confusing is this;

- the NHL is played by a mix of teams across Canada and the US. So really, it's international, unless the Canadians have misused a lot of their time sewing maple leaf flags onto everything to show they are not American.

- the competition for most of the season is divided between the "Eastern conference" and the "Western conference". "Conference" is a civilised description for a bunch of guys in razor-sharp skates, carrying sticks and trying to slam each other on the ice.

Moving to Calgary made me an immediate supporter of two hockey teams. One, the Calgary Flames, who made it to the playoffs (semi-final rounds) of the NHL this year. The other team is the Calgary Hitmen. The Hitmen belong to the next professional league, one step down from the NHL. Most of their players are 16- 22 yrs old and wear whatever straggly facial hair they can muster up to make themselves look scary.

Unfortunately I was not prepared to sell an organ to get a ticket to a Calgary Flames game. I arrived in Calgary towards the end of the season and tickets were highly priced and/ or sold out for each game. I am amazed that the season goes for 9 months of the year and games are played about 4 times a week. The players seem to train the rest of the time so they live on the ice for most of the year.

Laura and I saw 3 Hitmen hockey games before the end of the season. It's hard to describe walking into the Calgary Saddledone. It's a huge building, serviced by a nearby C-train station. One of the photos that best shows it is the "red" one I didn't take, of a Calgary Flames game. There is a huge stadium atmosphere, with beer, popcorn and ice cream vendors wandering about, team mascots in costume stirring up the crowd, supporters wearing and waving team colours.

The first game of Hockey was the Hitmen vs Kootney Ice. The Ice team hailed from a town in the mountains in British Columbia, famous for it's lager. There were a few busloads of supporters from BC. I was unexpected harrassed during one of the breaks (hockey is broken up into 3 periods- so there are 2 breaks). Two middleaged drunk blokes from BC decided to give me a hard time for supporting Calgary but made some truly offensive comments about Australian women. This was based on the reputation of the girls in Whistler and Banff who are on working holiday during the ski season. Banff is statistically the STD capital of North America and responsibility has been laid at our green and gold door. The end of this story is that I lost my temper and told them off. They sobered up quickly, apologised and most amusingly confessed that they were "bad Canadians" for not having any manners.
The Hitmen lost to the Ice.

The next game I saw was The Hitmen against the Brandon Wheat Kings (Manitoba). So it was mountain city boys against prairie farm boys. By this time I was getting the hang of this caper. Arrive in jeans and a supporters' T shirt and beanie (because it's cold next to the ice rink), buy a "pocket dawg" (it is actually spelt like that) and popcorn and settle in with a beer for the game. Be prepared to stand up, take your hat off and sing the national anthem, "O' Canada" at the beginning, watch the pyrotechnic demonstration of bins exploding balls of fire and shout for the rest of the game in- between nervous face-stuffing and beer burping. Don't flinch when the players slam into the clear perspex wall around the ice 4 feet in front of your face. Excellent.

A Pocket Dawg is a brilliant idea, by the way. The bun does not have a split in it- it is simply hollowed out enough for the hot dog to go in it. There is nowhere for the tomato sauce or mustard to escape to or make a mess. You can even spin it 360 degrees. If my career prospects collapse upon my return to Oz I have a few entrepreneurial ideas now...

Calgary Saddledome has the best buttered popcorn. The Isreali/ Palestinian conflict could be resolved if they shared this stuff. Alternatively, they could really hurt each other with it. I don't know what makes it taste so good, but it's apparently toxic. I'm still alive.

The Hitmen won against the Brandon Wheat Kings. The home crowd went wild. Laura and I jumped up and down like pre-schoolers on red cordial. All the Winnipeggers sitting behind us got drunk but were very nice to us and philosophical about their defeat.

The game of hockey itself is fast and furious. On one hand the guys who play seem to glide silently and effortlessly across the ice in every direction, watching the other players and the puck they are chasing continously. However, they will slam into each other to get to the puck, which moves so fast on the ice that it is easy to lose track of it if you take your eyes off the game. In fact, the Americans microchipped their pucks some years ago so they could light it up for the viewers at home. This ended up causing so much embarrassment that it was later stopped.

Players are routinely sent off for a few minutes at a time for fouling each other resulting in a team player deficit on the ice. This enables the opposing team to take advantage of their greater numbers, aka "power play". The game is really exciting to watch because of the speed and ferocity of the game.

The third game I nearly got thrown out by Security. Super. This was right up there with being threatened with a ticket for jaywalking across the street by the Vancouver police on my first night in Canada when there were uninhibited heroin deals going on in the alley behind them. Go Vancouver PD. Serve and Protect.

The Saddledome is licenced to sell beer. It is not licenced for BYO. So contrary to the cricket, when you can arrive at the grounds, stick a half watermelon on your head and walk in with an esky full of beer and suncream, you cannot BYO to the hockey. Laura and I arrived earlier to the Hitmen vs Medicine Hat Tigers and were sitting in the front row sipping on ciders and beers and Kelty arrived a bit later and ordered hers from a vendor. Partway through the game, a Very Large Security Officer walked all the way down the stairs in front of a packed stadium to frogmarch me and Laura, our bags and beer to "have a talk" outside. He was joined by another Large Security Officer and they explained to me the following reason for making me do the Walk of Shame;

- BYO contravenes the Saddledome liquor licence
- anyone caught BYO are automatically ejected

Some verbal tap dancing was required on my part. I told the truth and the Powers that Be accepted my blonde foreign stupidity. Also, not even a stupid person would sit in the front row of the Saddledome drinking illegal beer unless they were an Australian tourist (where is my watermelon?). Laura, wisely, said nothing.

We we returned to our seats shaking slightly. Laura didn't want to drink anything after that. I wanted spirits. Meanwhile, Kelty was in the front row alone in her Calgary supporter T shirt being harrassed by the Tigers supporters behind them. The Tigers' colours are orange and black, so the teenagers behind us had raided a construction site for their orange attire prior to arrival. They were somewhat deflated by our miraculous return from immediate ejection.

The Hitmen won narrowly. We ate too much popcorn. Kelty had her first "cesar" summertime drink (a Bloody Mary with clam and tomato juice- called "Clamato"- sounds like a medical condition) and Laura recovered sufficiently to have a soft drink. I took a photo of some of the cute kids with their parents and tried not to look like a child stalker. It is at the hockey, that a child learns to be Canadian. This one was wearing a "Timbits" shirt, the name of the donut "holes" sold at Tim Hortons and also the minky hockey team they sponser.

I love hockey. I am pre-buying Flames tickets for next season as soon as they are available.