Monday 12 January 2015

Hockey, poutine, toques & Gowan

TSN sets audience record during world junior hockey championships
By Mark Schadenberg

Canada is all a-boot hockey and poutine! Right? Wrong?
There are many other unique traditions, sayings, appetites, and other preferences which make Canucks genuinely Canadian. A knitted winter hat, for example, is a toque.
As a sports fan, there are also some traits of spillage from the U.S., which I don’t like. For example, Canadian university sports (I realize the top-end athletes are in the U.S. on attractive scholarships) receive almost zero press, but the NCAA basketball tournament and its brackets are followed by many. Today, is the U.S. college football final, but I prefer the Vanier Cup in November.
Canada loves hockey and the championship game of the world juniors set a new record for viewership on a specialty channel with 7.3 million calculated viewers (story link below).
“Team Canada’s gold medal performance at the World Juniors has once again inspired fans across the country, and this massive audience demonstrates that fan engagement in the tournament has reached staggering new heights,” said Stewart Johnston, President of TSN. “Everyone at TSN is so proud to showcase the drama and excitement of this incredible tournament for viewers in Canada and around the world.”


Canada is about wearing a toque and shovelling snow, but in the summer it’s about camping and enjoying the great outdoors.
There’s a Reader’s Digest link below which discusses Canadian traits, sayings and menu choices.
Canada has very unique heroes and many are specific to our country led by Terry Fox, but also including Paul Henderson, Chris Hadfield, Roberta Bondar (pictured), Romeo Dallaire, and Rick Hansen.
 We have significant historic figures, which do not get the fame they deserve. For example, this past weekend was Sir John A Macdonald's 200th birthday (See previous post). 
There are many recording artists who are hugely popular in the northland, and not so much in the U.S. On that list, I would lead off with Roch Voisine, but I would also continue scribbling out names such as Lawrence Gowan, Rankin Family, Terri Clark, Jann Arden and Bruce Cockburn.  

Canada has better beer and a much better healthcare system than the U.S. Take it from someone who has had a hip replacement due to deteriorating quality of life. Would I have been able to afford that surgery if I lived in the U.S.?
On a related matter, I am bewildered when folks on Facebook chat about how much they saved and how many dollars they spent on a holiday shopping trip to Buffalo or the Port Huron area. Everyone takes trips to the U.S. and I’m on that list, (Burch Run and Frankenmuth) but since a vast majority of our population lives so close to the border, it seems ‘Canadian’ to invest in the U.S. economy. Let’s spend locally – and when I say locally, I mean in Oxford County.
I love Canada. I love the diversity from coast-to-coast. I enjoy poutine and prefer the CFL to the NFL. I watch Corner Gas in re-runs and admit to reluctantly not jumping on its bandwagon when it was in first run.
Canadians could almost support an all-curling TV network, but having said that it’s not easy to get Canadians to attend sporting events in gigantic numbers like 100,000 would flock to a college football game in Michigan, but 4,000 attend a Mustangs football game in London. Curling – to complete my thought – has evolved into being a made-for-TV event unless it’s the national men’s playoffs at The Brier.
Some things we may think are predominately Canadian, are not really. Smarties are great chocolate candy not for sale in the U.S., but you can find the Nestle product in many countries, according to Wikipedia -- United Kingdom,  Australia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, Netherlands,  France, Italy, Greece, the Nordic countries, and South Africa.
Canadians are a hearty group by personality, and while walking through a large group our favourite sayings are ‘Sorry’ and ‘Excuse Me’.
Instead of writing more, it’s time to insert my ear buds, turn on my Ipod, and listen to Ian Thomas, April Wine or Trooper.
Later on, I’m watching the Leafs game -- a road game tonight from the hockey hotbed of Los Angeles.


LINKS:

Mark Schadenberg, sales representative

Royal LePage Triland Realty Brokerage

757 Dundas St, Woodstock

(519) 537-1553

Email: mschadenberg@rogers.com

Twitter: markroyallepage

Facebook: Mark Schadenberg, Royal LePage Triland
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