Category Archives: Op-Ed

The Barnstormer: Hockey’s Worst Year

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The following can be found in its entirety on The Barnstormer. Link below.

Jim Hughson didn’t utter a word. As the final minutes of the 2011-2012 NHL season came to a close, CBC’s Hughson turned off his microphone, took a breath, leaned back in the booth, and did what more sports broadcasts should. He let the images tell the story. The game clock slowed towards its destiny. The crowd stood, and cheered, as crowds tend to do. But not with a desperate fervor, or the pain of relief, but by way of habit, and tradition. Gloves and sticks and helmets were discarded. Grown men, proud men, cried and embraced. An aging goaltender, a native Montrealer, left the ice for what may have been the final time. A smug commissioner, an enemy of hockey patriots, stepped onto the ice. He was not booed, which is a custom unbeknownst to a Southern California crowd. He handed the Cup, a sacred chalice, to a 27-year-old from Ithaca, New York, a grinder, a winger who plays with grit, with sandpaper, “the way the game should be played”. A character guy. He’ll drop the gloves, you know? The Cup, the oldest of its kind, gets passed from player to player to coach to trainer to general manager. Slowly, reluctantly, one-by-one, they left the ice. The crowd remained standing. The crowd remained cheering.

To an outsider, it would appear to be the culmination of a beautiful season, the peak of winter’s game’s crescendo. The anthemic refrain that fades to a contented quiet. But that would be false. It would be a lie. Because beneath the tears, the character, the hyperbole, the pageantry, is what the moment really was. This, was the end of hockey’s worst year.

It began as last season ended. It began with a death.

Continue reading on The Barnstormer.

Newspapers are Suicidal

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The only time I’ve ever been fired was from a Milestone’s in Vancouver, sometime around 1998. It was not a pleasant day, a day made worse by the fact that upon returning home unexpectedly and unemployed, I discovered my partner and my roommate had been having an affair. Losing a job and a lover in the same morning is humbling, and yet the two have striking parallels. Both, one could argue, are essential to living. Both are gratifying, in their own ways. Both provide you with money. I’m often hesitant to introduce both entities to my parents. But I can empathize with anyone who has lost either, though they are learning moments. I learned that you shouldn’t work for an organization that has their own glossary, or more than 20 employees. I also learned that when your girlfriend spends late nights with your roommate, it’s not because she digs his Captain Beefheart LPs. Earlier this week, a large contingent of Postmedia staffers lost their jobs in what is a sign of the times for the newspaper industry. But, unlike my ability to learn from heartbreak and loss of a $8-an-hour cooking gig, has the newspaper industry learned anything from its losses? I think not.

Newspapers have been dying for some time. Content is free online, and not just theirs. There is a near infinite supply of news and opinion available. It’s part of the reason you’re reading this, and not some other chump’s ramblings. Newspapers had a monopoly on printed news and opinion for, well, forever, and now they are feeling the effects of not adequately preparing for a shifting marketplace. They failed to adapt to a rapidly changing industry, whether by flaw of ego or a lack of understanding. How anyone could watch and not learn as technology nearly destroyed, and then reinvented the music industry is beyond me, but I’m of a different generation than those running newspapers and those who continue to pay to read them. And therein lies the problem. The newspaper industry is built around a demographic that no longer dictates the mode by which we consume. The National Post, The Globe and Mail, and the rest of Canada’s papers are written and edited by, and marketed and subservient to Boomers and beyond, while the generations that follow are rapidly reinventing our methods of news consumption.

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100 Days of Blame

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I am, by most accounts, a horrible partner, and I have the exes to prove it. I am self-involved, self-indulgent, and more often than not underemployed. I suffer from tunnel vision and insomnia. I enjoy adult beverages, some times too much. I write poetry. I listen to a lot of alt-country. A lot. This is why I am 35 and my folks still ask about the absence of grandchildren and RRSPs. This is why my LinkedIn profile notes that I am a freelancer, but follows the claim with a question mark. This is why my relationships last three months, and typically end in a furious and graceless blaze of glory. But despite my poetic endings and disappointed parents, I’ve always been good at admitting blame, of recognizing my faults, and celebrating my flaws. One day I plan on learning from them. During the 100 days of the Quebec student strike, all sides, all entities involved, have been unwilling to admit any fault, to believe that they may have made mistakes, to admit that they should not have come home three days late smelling of perfume and whiskey. So, as Montreal prepares for an important day and joins the protest century club, I’m taking the time to consider how to share some blame.

The Mainstream Media

The CBC, CTV, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, et al. have failed miserably in their coverage of this event, and rest assured it is an event. The journalistic coverage has been if not lazy than perhaps complicit. Over the weekend “a” Molotov cocktail became pluralized very quickly in many reports. All entities continually refer to the “students” protesting and marching, while in reality the students are on strike but much of the rest of Quebec are on the streets. They quote tired facts about tuition costs, but are guilty in omitting from the discourse what non-residents and international students pay. The images and arguments have been ones of violence, and all too willing to ignore the moving and inspirational story of the rise of an important social movement. Their coverage has the appearance of writing from afar, written on desks in Toronto and Calgary.

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The Op-Ed Remains the Same

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Yesterday, the Quebec student strike claimed if not its first than its most prominent casualty. Line Beauchamp, Quebec Minister for Education, resigned her post in both Premier Jean Charest’s cabinet and the National Assembly. As for Ms. Beauchamp, rest assured I imagine she has some sort of severance package to cushion her fall into the private sector, and given her age and education I would further assume that her student loan debt, if she had one, has been paid off for some time. I’m sure a teaching gig awaits at U Laval, or U de Montreal, provided she returns to school for an MA or PhD. As soon as they reopen. Enjoy your summer, Line.

This was a calculated move on the part of the Charest government. It’s akin to the Canadiens firing their head coach during a slump. It’s a distraction. It gives the scribes and pundits (entities complicit in this discussion) something other than the issue at hand to feed the news cycle for a day or two while the franchise, in this case the Quebec government, regroups and plans their next course of action before the season (ahem, semester) is lost. Randy Cunneyworth was not considered for the position, Charest instead going with Treasury Board President Michelle Courchesne. I’m assuming she speaks French.

The intermediary should have provided a moment for reflection for both sides, and perhaps a more enlightened and calm discourse emerging on the other side. But no such luck. It has been fascinating to see how Canada’s op-ed columnists and political pundits have covered this story from afar, removed both from the university experience and Quebec itself. It’s difficult for me to understand why there isn’t more solidarity, why not just students but reasonable taxpayers aren’t more concerned with how the student strike has been reflected in the media, and furthermore how the mismanagement of subsidized tuition shares multiple parallels with other forms of social spending.

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Le Québec est le Canada que nous devrions vouloir

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The following is a French translation of my post from yesterday, “Quebec is the Canada We Should Want” kindly and expertly translated by Murielle Cayouette. Ms. Cayouette is an M.A. candidate for a “maîtrise en littératures d’expression anglaise” at université Laval and her thesis is on Native American Literature.  She also teaches part time in Cégep FX Garneau in Québec City.

Ce qui suit est une traduction française de mon post d’hier, “Quebec is the Canada We Should Want” traduit aimablement et de façon experte par Murielle Cayouette. Mme. Cayouette est un candidat à la maîtrise d’un “maîtrise en littératures d’expression anglaise” à l’Université Laval et sa thèse sur la littérature amérindienne. Elle enseigne aussi à temps partiel au Cégep FX Garneau à Québec.

Quand j’étais petit, j’adorais les cartes géographiques.  J’aimais rêvasser devant ces représentations tangibles d’endroits mystérieux que je ne pouvais qu’imaginer.  Quand j’avais huit ou neuf ans, mes parents m’ont acheté une mappemonde pour afficher sur mon mur de chambre.  Chaque pays sur la carte était coloré selon la langue officielle de chaque nation.  J’ai un souvenir très tendre de l’affection que je portais au Canada sur cette carte, avec ses vives rayures bleues et rouges représentant l’anglais et le français.  En fait, je crois qu’il s’agit de mon premier souvenir de fierté, en particulier en comparaison avec la grosse masse juste au sud, les États-Unis, qui eux n’étaient que rouges.  Ce n’était pas seulement une question linguistique : c’était une question d’unité, de diversité, et de ce que c’est d’être un Canadien.

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