O Canada, my (summer) home and (not) native land.
Tonight, I root for thee.
Yes, that makes me an American rooting against Americans, which is un-American. But, hey, I have my reasons.
We’re talking about the so-called 4 Nations Face-Off, the round-robin hockey tournament that is down to two nations. Tonight’s championship game is Team USA versus Team Canada. It will be played at Boston’s TD Garden, an arena named for a Toronto-based bank — and owned by a Buffalo-based company.
(As it happens, Delaware North’s global headquarters offers expansive views of Buffalo’s gateway to Canada, Fort Erie.)
It’s fine if you think my rooting interest makes me unpatriotic. Go ahead, call me a snowflake. (Canada gets a lot of those in winter.)
Look, I rooted hard for Team USA to beat Team Canada in the finals of the 2010 Winter Olympics, in Vancouver. Ryan Miller, then goaltender of the Buffalo Sabres, was voted the tournament’s Most Valuable Player. Alas, Team Canada won in overtime on Sidney Crosby’s golden goal.
And I rooted for the Czech Republic to beat Canada in the semifinals of the 1998 Winter Olympics, in Nagano, Japan. Dominik Hasek, then the Sabres goalie, stoned a murderers’ row in a classic shootout: Theo Fleury, Ray Bourque, Joe Nieuwendyk, Eric Lindros, Brendan Shanahan. (All red-blooded Canadians know a national lament: How on earth did Wayne Gretzky not get to take a shot?)
But all of that was then. This is now.
And I’m all in for Canada.
As you’ve no doubt heard, the American president says he wants to make Canada the 51st state. The very notion is deeply disrespectful. Canadians sometimes can’t quite define their national identity, but this much they know for sure: They are not us.
‘Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant,’ Pierre Trudeau famously told the National Press Club in Washington in 1969, when he was prime minister. ‘No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.’
These days, the beast is not so friendly. The American president says he has plans to place steep tariffs on Canada, our biggest trading partner. If it happens, the Peace Bridge connecting Buffalo and Fort Erie might as well be the Trade War Bridge.
Our countries have not been actual enemies since the War of 1812, when the Americans burned Newark, now known as Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. And then the Brits burned Buffalo. (The White House came next.) We’ve been at peace with Canada ever since. (Well, except for a skirmish in 1866 when Irish-American Civil War vets known as Fenians rowed across from Buffalo and shot up Ridgeway, Ontario.)
I’ve spent happy parts of every summer of my life, except the COVID one, in a cousin-shared cottage on the Canadian shore of Lake Erie. When we’re there, we are only a stone’s throw from Buffalo — and yet also a world away.
This is a rare gift that only border towns can know. In Canada’s honor, allow me to express the feeling bilingually:
Vive la différence!
And now here comes Team USA, whose general manager told Fox News the other day that the American players are using the American president’s regrettable remarks as ‘inspiration.’
‘I think there was a political flair to it,’ Bill Guerin told Fox of last week’s fight-filled first game with Canada. ‘It’s just the time that we’re in.’
It’s a terrible time. Last week, Canadian fans in Montreal booed during the American anthem. Please understand, they were not booing the American players, and they were not booing America. They were booing the sword of Damocles that hangs unfairly over their heads.
I hope that the American crowd in Boston will not boo the Canadian anthem tonight. Team USA and Team Canada are bitter rivals on the ice. That’s hockey. But our countries are not enemies. We are best friends. And we pray it stays that way.
That’s why tonight I will root for the True North, strong and free.
Go, Canada.
You hosers.