Golden Days Are Here Again

Well another World Junior Championship is over and thank God Canada held on and won another gold medal. Best of all, they beat the U.S. and Russians along the way to do their country proud.

To the rest of the world, this must seem completely odd how a country can get so completely behind a group of kids under the age of 20 for a hockey tournament where there is no Olympic or Stanley Cup reward upon its completion. The bars were open before the noon hour and even Chinese restaurants were showing the game on their 102" flat screens usually reserved for colour changing lyrics which are parts of chalk board screeching karaoke songs.

That's just the thing, you'd have to be Canadian to get it. It's literally become as much of a part of the holiday season as re-gifted fruit cakes and bouts of H.S.I.I. (Holiday Shopping Induced Insanity). Hell the Prime Minister even took some of his day off to watch the game today. We as a people are proud of our sons and daughters who go abroad and represent our nation.

I guess one of the more endearing parts of their story is that the team members come from 20 different cities across Canada. I think my high school had more people in it than the home town our #1 Goalie comes from and we only had 550. They go and play not for the name on the back of the jersey, instead for the one that they all have on the front. They do it for the love of the game and country. They have no contracts to oblige their appearance, no endorsement deals, just the weight of the expectations of a nation.

The team and their coaches forgo their holidays at home with their families so most of us can rally around the televisions with ours and cheer them on. Then there are the hundreds of die hards that made the trek to Northern Sweden to support the team in person. They could barely fill one end of the ice when Canada played Germany earlier this month, but of the people that were there most were in Canadian jerseys living and sharing the dream in person.

Oh Canada, gotta be it to get it I guess.