By the grace of this multi-platform religious holiday weekend, celebrated with a four day weekend by coddled, overpaid, underworked federal civil servants, like we are in Italy or something, but I have been to Italy and holy fuck this is not Italy we are in, on this very special weekend we give thanks for the transformative change that has arrived upon our national agenda for the benefit (of Mr. Kite) and delight of those who would give their attention: The Montréal Canadiens are back in the playoffs.
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The door of Larry’s is open to the streets of Parkdale, home of Toronto’s anti-Mao, pro-bao revolution. The sun is sort of out, not nearly the Mediterranean sun you get where the Mediterranean is, but in Canada we know our place in the new (again) world order, and we’re a nice place to live because the weather is so lousy so we band together (look at us, banding!) especially when it’s raining tariffs (we see you, Windsor!).
Or maybe the weather is indifferent. This is Toronto -home of the Maple Leafs, this year as in several previous, an absolute hockey powerhouse, four lines deep, and now featuring a goalie not afraid to stand between the net and the puck (in all fairness, that must hurt, getting whacked like that) - and in Toronto we are not really Canada, if you go by the mediocre winters. Montréal and Ottawa have winter. Snow falls Toronto gets a man cold.
The Leafs will meet the Ottawa Senators in the first round, renewing what is tragically marketed as The Battle of Ontario, a banner equally soporific to opening a 1985 High School Canadian History textbook to literally any page.
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As it happens, with predictable, reliable, historical irony, Québec will come to rescue Canada from itself. In this colonized land you can watch a Canadian federal leaders’ debate (for a moniker of equivalent excitability, see under “Battle of Ontario”) featuring the leader of a political party committed to the breakup of the country, in this case, not only the Conservative candidate who gets to free Alberta for free, but also the perennial straight-faced aplomb of the leader of the Bloc Québecois, the federal arm of the Parti Québecois. If this was Ireland, the confrontation would surely evolve from a pub crawl into a pub brawl and, like Canada, all because of the damn British.
As previously iterated, the night in 1976 when the Parti Québecois first won a provincial election, I was in the Montréal Forum watching one of the greatest hockey teams to ever play what Canada tenuously holds onto as Our Game. Dryden was in nets. Ken fucking Dryden. In the second period, early results of the election marched across the digital messaging board. The PQ were going to form a government. Half of the Forum erupted in celebration. Half of the Forum looked vaguely worried. The Habs scored and we were united once more. The next intermission, everyone went into the hallway to smoke, except Guy Lafleur, who could smoke on the bench, in the dressing room, on the ice, he probably scored once while exhaling nicotine, because who the fuck is going to tell M. Lafleur where and when he can smoke a cigarette.
The gentlemen partisans (it was 97% gentlemen) smoked and drank their beer and I wandered around at knee-level. That’s how high I was. I had a Coke because dad was not gonna drink alone.
The conversation in both official languages described a lively intersection between hockey matters and the political independence of Canada’s most interesting and least interested province. Forget if Québec would keep the Canadian dollar (now and again a feasible store of value measured against the self-destructing greenback); would Canada get to keep the Canadiens?
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So there was Yves-François Blanchet the other night, playing nice with the three other leaders, one of them an unelected Prime-Minister, which must be a cool thing to be, and the BQ dude was keeping cool even though his party appears to be in jeopardy, as the always curious and open Québecois (je suis into it si tu es…) transform the political fortunes of the ROC by dumping the BQ for a minute, or, in the language of volatile relationships, they’re taking a break.
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I lived in Montréal through two close call referendums and enjoyed both. Ok the first one I was kind of too young but the whole Oui/Non thing was easy to follow, and by the time of the 95 sequel it looked like Rocky might win this time. When the result came in, I was in a studio in McGill University (bastion of higher learning and research that in would surely be destroyed by the ruling Maoists south of here) with Babelfish, recording songs to be released in the cassette format. The referendum result was basically a tie, with tie going to the House, which was Canada, so nothing changed and Jacques Parizeau drunk dialled reporters talking about an ethnic vote.
The remarkable thing, when you leave the Bedroom of Québec for the Battle of Ontario, is how much they don’t talk about Québec here. One recalls the descent upon Montréal in 95 of suddenly bereft Canucks, Wait baby don’t leave me! Québec will put up with canoodling, but don’t take her for granted.
In Toronto, we talk about the 905, the huge blue belt around the city, that hates us. We are to them a gross red and orange blister in an otherwise blue skied paradise of cars and highways where climate change is just some woke bullshit and even if it isn’t there’s nothing we can do about it and even if we could we won’t because sprawl is real and spending two hours in your car every morning is the only rest you get from the family and there’s a bus you could take but you must be fucking kidding. This country, sir, was built on the three-car garage and our environmentalism is nothing more impressive than returning our empties. Then the Leafs lose again in the first round and the misery compounds into unspeakable rage and everyone starts checking out Rebel “News” to confirm our prejudices.
It is simple economics that if the government is smaller there will be more money for everyone because money is just a fixed amount of dollars air-dropped by Jesus (who is actively selling off his US fixed assets), so, with the civil service gone, there will be more Canadian currency to go around. And this newly liberated magical money circulates entirely to Canada’s dreary 1%, and the misery compounds into unspeakable rage.
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Québec will determine what government Canada plays next. If things stay red (a Canadian red not an American red, which is transforming from Republican red to a really Chinese-looking red) Alberta and the 905 (to quote the extraordinarily great American film Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby) are gonna shit a chicken. And in Montréal, they will stand for a bilingual national anthem.
Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto, Montréal. Should be an interesting playoffs.
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Coda: The Dryden Story.
A number of years ago (Next Play has no idea how to account for time and believes life is just a Christopher Nolan movie playing backwards) while on the phone with Mom in Kingston, she blithely (yes Mom, blithely) mentions that Ken Dryden was over the other night for dinner. Time, in a very real sense, unrelated to Nolan’s wearisome paradoxes, stops. Next Play believes they have misheard the blithe remark. Ken Dryden, the goalie? Yes, he is touring Canadian universities looking at sports programs and Geoff invited him over. (pause). Sorry, Ken Dryden, the Montréal Canadiens goaltender? Next Play is experiencing cranial static interference not unlike Major Tom’s last received transmission in his stupid orbiting tin can. Yes! I guess I should have told you? You wouldn’t have been able to make it, the invite was the same day as he came over. Clearly, she doesn’t understand the concept of vehicular light speed, a Ricky Bobby acceleration that Next Play is perfectly capable of in the humblest of rented cars. She proceeds to fill in some details, but Next Play has lost the capacity for sensory experience, locked on the vision of Mr. Dryden in his famous mask, leaning on his stick in front of his net, a totem of calm one night in 1976, as Québec and Canada change forever.
NEW KIDS ON THE BLOC
· Hi to Mom in Italy!
· But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.
· Haim (sort of) wants a relationship. Rock your yacht.
PLEASE STAND BY
· Next Play, a bastion of higher learning will be on assignment next week. Back in May.