As the Spice Girls reminded us why the ‘90s were a wasteland of contrived “music” and The Who belted out CSI theme songs, we bid adieu to the Games of the 30th Olympiad. The Olympic flag was lowered and presented to Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes, who as per tradition waved it four times symbolizing the four years we’ll have to wait to care again about the discus, or the floor exercise, or judo. Most Olympians will go back to training in preparation for Rio. Usain Bolt will eat at Hardee’s until his arteries explode. LeBron James will return to South Beach to bask in the sins of ego and pride. Rosie MacLennan will return to her former role as “who?” Televisions will be turned off midday. Bob Costas will disappear. Brian Williams will stop telling us what time it is.

And what of Canada’s efforts? Eighteen medals: one gold, five silver, twelve brown. Neither a success, nor a disappointment. It was typically Canadian. It was average. It was okay. We were just happy to be there. We got to see London. Now comes the post-mortem, where Olympians, coaches, and faux-patriots will call for more funding for the athletes. And in all likelihood, funding will be increased. But I’m arguing that we go the other way on with inevitability. I argue that we should cease all funding for Olympic athletes. Let me repeat that: Cut all Olympic funding to zero.

Own the Podium (OTP), an ambitious government funded initiative was started in 2005 with a goal of Canadian success at the Vancouver 2012 Winter Olympics. And it was somewhat successful, though today all any of us remember of Vancouver is Jon Montgomery drinking a pitcher of beer in Whistler Village and Sidney Crosby scoring on overtime. The federal government funds OTP to the tune of $70 million annually, and divides those monies between the summer ($34M), winter ($22M) and team ($6M) sports. So if we were just to do some quick and admittedly somewhat flawed poet-math, in the four years leading up to the London Games OTP received approximately $136 million dollars, which means that the taxpayers spent $7,555,555.56 per medal. That’s fucking ridiculous.

Continue reading…

I WAS NEVER what you would call a “skilled” or “competent” or “sober” hacky sack player. But, for a good chunk of my 20s my friends and I played with a ferocious regularity. We were not the shirtless, dreadlocked, stoned, Dead listening, patchouli scented hackers of clichédom. Though, I did like the Dead, especially when stoned. And for a few years there between 2000 and 2003 I wore my share of patchouli. But we weren’t the hackers you think of when you picture hackers. It wasn’t a statement of the laissez-faire, or a tribute to a hippified lifestyle. No one wore tie dye. Instead, it was a pastime. A recreation. In those years, post-university (the first go) and pre-Montreal (the first go) and sans-career (still no) we seemingly played an endless round of hacky sack at barbecues, in parks, in driveways. Any patch of space that could accommodate three to eight people, really. On New Year’s Eve, 1998, I believe we played in the small living room of our unimpressed host. It was a transitional time in my life, in all of our lives. We were all equals, still. No mortgages. No car payments. No kids. Little debt.

And then, suddenly, one day, it was over. And everybody golfed.

Continue reading…

THERE ARE FEW THINGS I love as I love Montréal. My family. My friends. August and September of 2005. The Silver Jews third and fourth albums, American Water andBright Flight. The second ‘l’ in ‘llama’. The writings of Padgett Powell. 5am. An unnamed inlet tucked beneath the rainforest on Costa Rica’s Peninsula de Nicoya. A girl I met at a club in Copenhagen in 1995. A small scar on a forgotten cheek. Most of these things I can carry with me. They travel well. They are memory and fingerprint, inspiration, late night recollection at familiar tables soaked in drink and freckled in ash. Montréal is the hardest to transport, the most difficult affection to keep in my pocket, reveal in anecdotes, break silences. Montréal is a complicated love.

I know that when I am in Montréal, I feel very much at home. I feel safe. I feel true. And when I left Montréal in early October of 2011, there was nothing I loved that I could tangibly take with me. I could not pack my friends. I could not ask her to follow. I could not convince them to come with me, to Toronto, to the enemy. I had my memories, but Montréal memories are tainted in drink, and painted in rich hues of nostalgia and fiction. While away, while separated from my love, trapped in an adulterous long distance relationship, I was always able to turn to the therapy of radio, and feel at home in the comforting tones of TSN 990, Montréal’s all-sports radio station. This past week came news that TSN 990 will likely be shuttered, a victim of CRTC regulations and media avarice. Looks like I’ll have to move home.

I don’t understand the exact reasons for 990 transitioning from English to French all-sports radio. Bell bought Astral, I guess. The CRTC regulates that any one company may only own three English language radio stations in the Montréal market. The easiest, most financially viable switch was to throw the RDS banner over the TSN one, and call it a day. It’s simple, really: a big company bought another big company, and then people lost their jobs. This is not a unique story in 2012, unfortunately. Bell Canada Enterprises Inc. recorded $574 million in profit in this year’s first quarter, on revenues of $4.9 billion. You can see why they’d need to buy Astral Communications. Who can live on $4.9 billion a quarter? But I get it. We live in a capitalist society. More is more. A lot is never enough. I’m not naïve. But Montréal lost another Anglo media outlet, and I lost my long distance relationship. And in the long run, neither of those things are any good.

Continue reading…

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

Racism, Sexism, and Prejudice in Sports     

I don’t hate. Simple as that. It’s too strong a word, too violent an emotion to indulge. I dislike strongly. I oppose firmly. I abhor, I loathe, I detest. I can even provide an example, or two, for the haters out there who would doubt me. For instance, I used to work for this Russian fella who would disparage me and my peers to others with great frequency and malice, write me emails questioning my commitment and intelligence, withhold funds owed to me, use back channels to kill my career opportunities, and when I finally left his sausage-fingered grasp he told my colleagues I had stolen money from him. A lot of money. But, I don’t hate him. I quietly encourage others to avoid him, I won’t raise a glass with, or to, him. I try to take a shot at him covertly in many of my writings, but mostly as a running joke and to maintain my sanity.

Hell, I don’t even hate any of my many ex-girlfriends, even the one who tried to have me killed, or the one who went out for a drink and never came back, or the one who stole my cat. I have problems with the concept of hate. And yet, as a sports fan, writer, enthusiast, it’s hard to ignore the fact that sport remains well behind the progress of the rest of the West in the dissemination and elimination of hate. For sport, is one of the last refuges of hate in modern Western society. And while I love it for so much of what it has provided me, I hate it for that.

There are many forms of hate in sport, but for the purposes of this discussion I’m going to ignore, for the most part, team-hate, or player-hate, or city-hate. Yes, the Habs hate the Leafs (and, c’mon, for good reason), Philadelphia hates New York, and everyone hates Boston. And, yes, nobody loves LeBron, and A-Rod is an abomination, and we’re less than impressed with Tiger, and we wouldn’t invite Roger Clemens over for a BBQ. But that’s not really hate. It’s hate-adjacent. It’s hate because we have vocabularies that lack imagination. Real hate, true hate, breeds vitriol and violence, and no one’s turning violent against Clemens, with the possible exception of his wife in the midst of a Mindy McCready-induced roid rage.

The hate I’m concerned with is the manifestation of racism, and sexism, and prejudice, within the sports community and discourse, and its inherent acceptance by society at large. Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier in baseball on April 15th, 1947. Willie O’Ree was the first African-American NHL player when he stepped on the ice for the Boston Bruins on January 18th, 1958. And yet, a half-century removed from these feats of humanity, these benchmarks of progress, we still get racists fans denigrating Joel Ward on Twitter, ignorant treatment of PK Subban, fans throwing bananas at Wayne Simmonds, players in blackface at team parties, andracist taunts on the ice.  In many ways, in sport, it’s still 1950.

Continue reading on The Barnstormer…

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

When you’re a kid, there is a blissful ignorance in your affection for sport. Your favourite team is likely from the city you live in, or whichever one is close by, or the team your folks cheered for. Team loyalty is passed down through generations, like heirlooms, willed from father to son to granddaughter. Your favourite player, if you believe in such trips of childish reverie, is unique in that rather than willed it is bestowed, by some higher power, an intangible and immeasurable God of sport, who chooses for you. Your love is measured in fraying posters clinging desperately to childhood bedroom walls, imaginations of sandlot afternoons, and trading cards tucked safely into nine pocket pages in binders once meant for math or history. This is the second love you’ll know, after parents but before romantic love. For some reason, these players appeal to you, call to you. When they hand out little league and Pee Wee numbers, you do whatever you can do get theirs. You’ll fight your neighbour for Casey Candaele’s number 9. You’ll trade a Ryne Sandberg rookie card for Fred McGriff’s 19. There is no logic here. It cannot be explained. It just is.

Continue reading on The Barnstormer…