Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul (5 page)

Trent panicked, thinking for sure the jig was up. There were still three days to go before the men’s final. But somehow, the secret held. The entire country watched as the Canadian Men’s Team faltered, recovered, then won a place in the finals. Once again, it would be Team Canada against the undefeated Americans.

Was the Loonie really a good luck charm? One thing was clear, the miracles never ceased. The gold medal game was incredible! Wave after wave of the world’s best hockey players skated over centre ice in end-to-end, fast-paced hockey, just as it should be. While the world watched, Team Canada skated to a decisive 5–2 victory in front of a screaming crowd and a jubilant Wayne Gretzky. Later, captain Mario Lemieux, wrapped in a Canadian flag, called the triumphant team to centre ice for a picture that would go down in history.

While the team was celebrating in the locker room, Trent Evans ran onto the ice and dug out his coins. The dime he slipped into his pocket. The lucky Loonie he presented to the members of Team Canada 2002. Later that day, Gretzky held it up at a post-win news conference, proclaiming it to the world as a symbol of Canadian victory.

The last time I saw Trent was on the front page of the newspaper. He was touching that 1987 Loonie one more time. But this time it was in its new home at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. The Loonie rests in a case and is prominently displayed between pictures of the two gold medal teams. There is a hole in the glass so visitors who are touched by the Loonie can reach through and touch it themselves. Trent looked so proud and more than a little surprised. I’m sure he had no idea his good luck charm would end up in the Hall of Fame. I also remember thinking how amazing it was that one person’s inspired moment could become a national symbol signifying the Olympic spirit.

It became the Loonie that turned to gold!

Peter Jordan
CBC, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Reprinted by permission of Lo Linkert.

The Unity Rally—
Canada’s Woodstock

A
ll those Canadians [who went to the rallies]
can look at their children and say to them the
next time the Canadian flag flies, they own a
piece of it. They made a difference.

Jean Charest

It was October 1995, right before the Québec Referendum, and the future of our country hung in the balance. Like millions of Canadians, I sat at home watching TV to see what would happen. The news had more suspense than the 1972 Canada–Russia hockey series. We’re up, we’re down, were up, we’re down—we’re a country, we’re not. Québecers had been invited to vote either
“Oui”
to separate from Canada, or
“Non.”
Then, as the
“Non”
side began to lead, I began to cheer—just as if Canada had scored. Like many Canadians when the polls started showing Québec might actually go this time, I found myself scared that my country was about to disappear and frustrated because there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it.

Then my friend Donna called to tell me that a big Unity Rally would be held on Friday, October 27, in Montreal, and Canada’s airlines were offering a seat sale so anyone could go. Five minutes later, without any sort of plan, I dropped everything and booked a flight to Montreal. Thousands of other Canadians spontaneously did the same. Like them, I suspect, I had a million good reasons not to fly to Montreal that day. But I also suspected that all of those reasons would have sounded pretty hollow the following Tuesday if the people of Québec had voted
“Oui”
and I had stayed home.

When I told people I was going on the “save the country express,” I expected to be teased. After all, it’s pretty hokey to fly 3,000 miles just to wave a flag and sing the national anthem. But to my surprise, even my most cynical friends thanked me and said they wished they were going. My dad asked me to hug a Québecer for him.

In the departure lounge at the Vancouver Airport, I wondered how many of us were heading to Montreal in a heartfelt attempt to show the people of
la belle province,
that despite what they may have heard, we really did care about what they decided.

Standing in line, I found a man I knew from work right behind me. “Why are you going to Montreal?” I asked.

“To say no,” said Chris, who was bringing his son and daughter along to do the same.

Once onboard, the woman next to me told me she and her husband had been watching TV wishing they could go, but couldn’t afford the airfare. Then some politician came on and said the rally was a stupid idea, and who cares what English Canadians have to say. A minute later she was on the phone to a travel agent. The woman explained she was a Franco-Ontarian, and even though she and her husband were broke, they agreed that when they were ninety, she’d be able to tell her grandchildren that she did her best to help keep Canada together.

Then there was the schoolteacher from Bonneville, a small town in Alberta. He was carrying a big flag signed by every single kid in Bonneville.

A flight attendant told me about half the 170 passengers on this regular business flight to Toronto were headed to the Unity Rally. This was not one of the special Unity charters; there were no organized groups on board. No one I met had spoken to anyone except maybe their significant other before deciding to do their bit to help save their country.

Once in Montreal I spotted Much Music vee-jay Terry David Mulligan, who was covering the event for Much Music. At that moment, I realized this was Canada’s Woodstock. I half expected the organizers to broadcast warnings that “there’s some bad maple syrup out there!”

The Woodstock image was confirmed when I saw a vendor selling souvenir T-shirts depicting a happy face with long hair, dark glasses, a bandanna covered with peace symbols, and the slogan: “Keep Canada Together.”

The next morning, Donna and I headed out early to Place du Canada to beat the crowds. The rally was to start at noon, but when we arrived at 10:30 the streets were already packed. Still, we managed to get a great spot right next to the speaker’s platform. At 11:05 I heard the first of the numerous spontaneous renditions of “O Canada” that would sweep the crowd that day. Each was endowed with the same depth of feeling as when we sang it back in the original ’72 Canada Cup series against the Russians.

At about 11:15, a tiny old woman started forcing her way to the front of the crowd. She quickly attached herself to my left arm to keep from falling over, and held on tightly for most of the next two hours. She was from Richelieu, a half-hour outside Montreal, and I later learned her name was Marie-Josephte. She tugged on my arm occasionally to point out local celebrities like Jean Charest’s kids, and a local Montreal M.P.

As she filled me in on local colour, a man on the other side of the railing began tossing flags to the crowd—real, full-sized flags. The next thing I knew I had this Québec flag in my hands. Not sure what to do with it, I slung it over my shoulder and suddenly there I was, wearing a Vancouver Canucks jersey (which I’d worn to show where I was from) with a fleur de lis cape. My transformation to Captain Canuck was complete when Donna stuck a paper Canadian flag in my ponytail holder. Then Marie-Josephte pulled on my arm and handed me a small Québec flag, indicating I should put it in my hair too.

Under normal circumstance I would have felt ridiculous— but there was nothing about this event even remotely related to “normal.” I was surrounded by people of all ages who had drawn maple leafs and fleurs de lis on their faces, plastered their skin with
“Non”
stickers and dressed themselves in various combinations of Canadian flags. Meanwhile, the biggest flag I had ever seen was moving through the Rally like a living creature. In this crowd—I was positively inconspicuous.

When Jean Charest began speaking, Marie-Josephte started tugging frantically on my arm again. When I turned, she pushed my other arm toward a man in a snazzy business suit. As I said, “Hi, I’m from Vancouver,” I realized I was shaking hands with Frank McKenna.

“I’m out from New Brunswick,” he said. “Glad to have you here.” Marie-Josephte tugged again, then beamed and shouted: “You came all the way from Vancouver. Now you will be on TV with the premier of New Brunswick!”

I tried to be cynical and witty or at least hip and ironic about my feelings as I looked out at the mass of people, but the truth is, like Woodstock, it really was a love-in. We came for the people of Québec to tell them we care, but we also came for ourselves, because for one brief moment it felt like we might be able to make a difference.

As the crowd began dispersing, Marie-Josephte pushed a slip of paper into my hand. It had her address on it. She thanked me for coming and told me to write her. Then she grasped my hand and we hugged each other.

After she left, Donna and I walked away in our Canucks jerseys—or at least tried to. Every few minutes we were stopped by someone asking if we were really from Vancouver, and then after a moment in which they appeared to get lumps in their throats, they’d thank us for making the effort, thank us for helping. Then we’d wish them well on Monday—Referendum Day. “You came from Vancouver,” they’d say—some with English accents, some with French, “Thank you so much.”

I was told later that the TV newscasts focused on the speeches—but the truth is—no one cared about the speeches. As powerful as their words may have been, they weren’t as poignant as the man holding the municipal flag of the city of Yellowknife, the woman with the cardboard sign that read “Edmonton, Alberta loves Québec,” or all the people from across the country who, like myself, had never waved a flag in their lives and were now proudly holding a fleur de lis and a maple leaf to show their support for a united Canada.

The only statement that really mattered was that people had come from all over Canada to participate in something no one could have imagined, a powerful and spontaneous outpouring of genuine Canadian patriotism. No one who was there will ever forget it. The biggest cheer came when a speaker announced the crowd was estimated at 150,000. I strongly suspect if the politicians hadn’t interrupted, we would have just sung “O Canada” all afternoon.

Mark Leiren-Young
Vancouver, British Columbia

The Goal of the Century

“
A
vant tout je suis Canadien.”—“Before all I am
a Canadian.”

Sir Georges-Etienne Cartier
A Québec Father of Confederation

Time was running out! It was September 28, 1972. The place—Luzhniki Arena, Moscow. It was the eighth and final game between the Russian National Team and Canada’s best NHL players. The score was tied with less than one minute remaining—and no overtime allowed! With the series tied three games apiece, a tie was no good—we needed a goal and a win!

I had always dreamed of playing in the NHL. Spurred on by my father, a rabid hockey fan, we never missed our weekly ritual of “Hockey Night in Canada” on the radio, with Foster Hewitt doing the play-by-play. Woe betide anyone in our home who talked when Foster Hewitt spoke.

According to my dad, when I first donned skates at the age of eight I was a natural. One day in grade five, with my eyes firmly fixed on the NHL, I landed in the principal’s office for practising my autograph in class.

“Don’t worry about my schoolwork,” I told him confidently, “It won’t matter. I’m going to play in the NHL!” He laughed, pointing out that the six-team league used only 108 players and I didn’t have much of a chance. But his words only strengthened my resolve.

Growing up in rural Ontario meant old, secondhand hockey equipment. Even so, my speed and strength developed, and I frequently scored goals. After a local play-off game I earned a write-up in the
London Free Press
that attracted NHL scouts, and in 1959 I ended up in Hamilton with the Detroit Red Wings Junior A farm team. By 1962, I had married Eleanor, my childhood sweetheart, and won the Memorial Cup and an invitation to try out with the Detroit Red Wings. It was a banner year, but also a crossroads decision for me at the young age of nineteen.