Oh Canada...Go!

Okay.   First and foremost, let it be said that I am definitely NOT a sports fan.   I'm not funny about football, bonkers about basketball or buggy about baseball.   I'm one of those very few people who were secretly hoping the football lockout would last FOREVER! Good thing no one knows where I live, 'cause I would probably be lynched for that last remark!

However, if I were to follow a sport, I would hoot for hockey.   I don't know if it's because I like it more than the others or if I  just dislike it less.  Maybe it's because I actually went to a game....once...and liked it!  That's more than I can say for the other sports.   This does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that I would actually sit still and watch a hockey game on TV, it just means that I have a little more tolerance for it.

So you can imagine my horror when all of a sudden the Stanley Cup finals came on NBC and my remote was nowhere in sight.  How could I, a self respecting couch potato, not have my trusty remote by my side?   I made a mad leap across the room to where I thought it was...not there.  EEE GAD!  Hurry, the game is coming on.   I made another frenzied leap to a black object on the other side of the room.   That wasn't it either.  Making a mental note to self to clean my living room, I hurriedly turned over every object in sight.  By the time I found it, the national anthem had come on.

Well, I may not like sports, but I always stop for the "Stars Spangled Banner".  I can't help it.  It just makes my heart beat a little faster, and I stand a little straighter and I am proud to be an American.   I watched the faces of the players, they looked somewhat bored.   I watched the faces of the audience, they too looked like they were just trying to get thru the obligatory opening of the game.  It was just the same ole, same ole.   I didn't think anything about it until.....

Mark Donnelly came out and started singing "Oh Canada!"   He had barely gotten the first rich, deliberate notes out of his mouth when all of the Canadians in the audience were singing along with him.  WHAAAAAT???   Singing their national anthem? In an unabashed display of national pride?   Their song became so loud, that Mark actually stopped singing, spread his arms out, embraced the audience and those plucky Canadians kept right on singing without him!   I was so impressed and more than a little ashamed of the Americans in the audience.

Oh...don't tell me that it's common for Americans not to sing along.  To that I ask "Why?"   Don't tell me that the end notes of our national anthem are so high that they can break the voice boxes of the most accomplished singers.   To that I respond, "Canada's national anthem has notes swinging from the rafters also.  That doesn't stop anyone in Canada from singing along".   We Americans could learn a lesson here.

I grew up 50 miles from Bean Town which means I might still root for Boston...if I root at all. But there is a small part of my heart saying "Oh Canada...GO!  My hat is off to you!"