Politics and Press

Lunching at Sachsen Haus

Die Sachsen are the only people to have so far outmaneuvered the Olympic bureaucrats that have turned Vancouver into a security training ground for the next potential terrorist attack at a major world event. The security chiefs of the next Olympics in very vulnerable London must be shaking their heads wondering how they can possible protect a very large city with many unhappy people and a complex subway system to the level that the combined police forces of Canada have managed in a large city with a largely contented population and its mountain resort two hours away. The answer is – not easily and certainly not without considerable disruption of the normal affairs of the city.
The German province of Saxony is not a recognized national national concept to the Olympic bureaucrats and therefore should not exist. But the clever Dresdeners rented the Vancouver Rowing Club in gorgeous Stanley Park and are doing a roaring business since no seat is more comfortable than one on the patio of a cafe on the waterfront of Stanley Park on a warm sunny day in British Columbia with a Sächsisch beer and Wurst in hand.
Hundreds of thousands of visitors have come to see the spectacular sports events and cruise the city streets on the lookout for the best entertainment spots in the evening. And lots of them go to the Saxons for both lunch, dinner and entertainment, as the much larger and authorized Dutch, Russian and Swiss houses are jammed to overflowing in the city centre. As for the sports events, it’s been a very good Olympics so far for the Amurcans, Swedes and Swiss, leaving lots of smiling Uncle Sams, Vikings and cowbell ringers wandering about. For the Canajuns it’s been somewhat lala, but the big event has just started, and this promises to be the best hockey tournament ever. Once you’ve seen the Russian, Canadian and Swedish teams in action (the great Peter Forsberg has reappeared out of nowhere for the Swedes and looks fit as a fiddle). you can’t imagine betting against any one of them. If you’ve got a spare $4000 around you can pick up a ticket to the final, and one of those teams will be missing. Don’t miss it.

Snowless in Vancouver

As the world’s winter sport athletes begin to sharpen their skates and wax their snowboards it seems that there is a minor glitch. God forgot to deliver the snow that Canadian Prime Minister Harper ordered for Cypress Mountain, site of the snowboarding, and three of the less prestigious skiing events. God’s lapse was perhaps due to Harper’s over indulgence in proroguing. Or perhaps as punishment for Canada’s acceptance of socialized medicine and same-sex marriage. As any American can tell you, those are serious sins and Pat Robertson, the eminent American theologian, warns of God delivered earthquakes for national sin of that order of magnitude.

The International Olympic Committee  chose Vancouver for its fine restaurants, coffee shops and views without adequately considering the implications of awarding the games to a godless society of beer swilling, oil sand drilling, gay supporting, socialist louts. Punishment is likely to be severe with the Russians taking the men’s hockey gold and the U.S., the women’s hockey gold.  Bob and Doug will be devastated.

Proroguing – a new Canadian tradition

International reader may have some trouble making sense of the the title of this essay, since prorogue is not a commonly-understood word in normally-functioning democracies. But Steven Harper, the current Prime Minister of Canada, described this week in The Economist as a competent bureaucrat with a vicious streak (faint praise indeed) is doing his best to make it the word of the decade on his own turf. It is a British term which means to tell members of parliament their services are no longer needed until he feels it is safe for him to come out of hiding. It is a procedure not often seen in democracies that actually function with parliaments that actually do something. In a clever response the opposition liberals under Michael Ignatieff announced they would sit in the Parliamentary buildings and work for their money, and a substantial ground-root movement seems to underway to make the government pay for their disdain of Parliament at the polls.

Last year Harper prorogued parliament so that he wouldn’t have to face a vote of no-confidence that might have brought down his government. On New Year’s Eve he did it again, assuming no one would notice, since he was sitting on an increasingly hot seat as parliamentary committees tried to come to the bottom of a macabre cover-up of what Canada allowed to be done to their prisoners in Afghanistan. Journalists speculate he wanted very much to have his picture taken many times at the Olympic Games across the continent in sunny and warm Vancouver rather than sitting on the hot seat in frigid Ottawa. it also seems plausible that he felt Canadians would be in a much better mood after the hockey team wins the Gold Medal in Vancouver. God help him if Sweden – or gasp! – the USA beat the lads in their own rink, as the US Juniors did in overtime on New Year’s Day – in a spectacularly exciting game – in the world championship match in Saskatoon at minus 40 degrees.

The Sad Song of the South

On Wednesday and Friday nights, the Vancouver Canucks begin their playoff run for the Stanley Cup, and every seat has been sold out from the moment tickets went on sale, with lowest prices in the mid $100 range, no surprise since since the Canucks have sold out every game for the last 200 plus. You also are lucky to get tickets for Ottawa and Edmonton regular season games, you can’t get a ticket for the Calgary and Montreal playoff games, and Toronto tickets of any kind are passed on in wills, and the Maple Leafs only rarely even make the playoffs. Not so in many US venues, most dramatically in Detroit, home of the defending champions and one of the favourites once again (they have most of the Swedish national team, that may well win the Olympic tournament next year in Vancouver) where the crash of the auto industry has put much of the fan base out of pocket.

But Detroit, New York or Boston will survive bad times with good teams while many US expansion teams seem doomed – read all those south of St. Louis, maybe including St. Louis, the Canucks’ first round opponent. In Canada there is a sense of Schadenfreude in all this as sporting greed forced flourishing franchises out of Quebec City and Winnipeg, which were deemed to be too small for big sports money, and put in places like Phoenix, Atlanta, Columbus, Nashville and Florida, where some will certainly soon go belly-up, and kept out of places like Hamilton and London, where their success is virtually guaranteed. So up here everybody is hunkering down for the beginning of six weeks of matchless sports entertainment, knowing that the annoying phone calls from down south for the latest information will soon be pouring in from a sporting public stuck with nothing but steroid baseball to look at.

Politics and Sport – Part 5

There is one area – and maybe only one – in which Canada comes together as a whole. French and English, Inuit and Nu-cha-nulth, maybe even Newfoundlanders – all stop bickering long enough to agree that as far as the national sport is concerned Canada stands in nobody’s shadow, particularly not that of our rambunctious southern neighbour. That area is, of course, hockeyworld, and nothing drags the national interest together – certainly not another sideshow of an election – more than an international tournament, in particular when it takes place in Canada. When that happens, the bragging rights that used to be ritualistically fought over by the largest and second-largest country on earth have been irritatingly disturbed in recent years by bellowing from the third-largest country .
And so it is that a country being bombarded from coast to coast to coast with the most wintry winter in memory – 50 cm on the ground in usually tropical Vancouver as the snow continues into its fourth week and the new year arrives – focusses its attention on the World Junior (Under 20) championship that annually begins on Boxing Day and ends two weeks later. This year it is in Ottawa and more then 400,000 tickets have been sold to a sporting event that will undoubtedly receive no mention in the US sporting bible, Sports Illustrated. But the US boys arrived full of confidence and swagger, only to lose to Canada in a spirited affair, and then collapse and be eliminated by little Slovakia. Meanwhile super power Russia lost decisively to Sweden, but was very much prepared for a semi-final meeting with Canada, which almost matches it in size but not in power, except in hockey. It was a match that made Canucks forget the blizzards outside. Having gained and lost a lead 4 times only to find themselves trailing with two minutes left, Canada got a goal with five seconds to go and went on to win in a shoot-out. When was the last time you saw tough Russian guys actually crying as somebody else’s national anthem played?
There is one more hurdle, however. On Monday, Canada meets Sweden in the final, and lots of people think that Sweden has the strongest national and junior team in the world at the moment – just wait for the Olympic Game matches in Vancouver a year from now, though it will cost you a couple of thousand bucks to get a ticket to the final – and that it will not be the first second or third largest nation in the world that hears its anthem played, but the twenty-fifth. In any case don’t miss the game.

International Sports: Canada Rescues Boston

The Boston Red Sox were faced with a dilemma: how do you get rid of an ego-twisted hitting machine with a $20M contract? Manny Ramirez had soured on Boston and Boston had pretty much soured on him. While the arguments on whether they should have caved into whatever weird needs Manny had developed but not articulated continue, his behavior had gone around the proverbial corner and the management of the Red Sox could not stand having him around.

The trade that was finally worked out – minutes before the trade deadline – sent Ramirez to the Dodgers (with his remaining salary paid by the Sox!), the Dodgers sent a couple of minor league players to the Pirates and the Red Sox got Jason Bay from the Pirates to take the place of Ramirez, one of the baseball’s best hitters over the last ten years. Turns out that Bay is from Trail, British Columbia and brings a typically Canadian modesty along with a 282 batting average and 22 home runs, similar stats to those of Ramirez this year.

While no one believes Bay will hit like Ramirez, he will bring a couple of new dimensions to the left field position – speed, a decent arm, a willingness to run from home to first and a dedication to the game that goes beyond looking at himself in the mirror. Bay scored both runs in a 2-1 win over Oakland in his first game with the Sox and hit a three run homer in the next game. The Sox’ previous experience with a Canadian player was with Ferguson Jenkins who had a nasty curve ball and a police record of carrying illegal drugs across borders. Jason Bay will likely last a lot longer in Boston.