‘The hockey gold medal has come home, where it belongs’
Ξ March 1st, 2010 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Canada, events, news, Photography, United States, winter |
Sidney Crosby wins gold for Canada. (Photo credit: Doug Mills/New York Times)
The depth and breadth of hockey’s place in Canadian culture can be hard to fathom beyond the borders. But it now might be heard, echoing from the north, thanks to a 3-2 overtime victory over the United States in the final event of the 2010 Winter Olympics.
To hear Canadians tell it, the hockey gold medal has come home, where it belongs.
Canada did not win as many medals as it had hoped at these Olympics, which closed on Sunday night, but it won more golds (14) than any country in history. The last, an emphatic exclamation point on the 2010 Vancouver Games, will be collectively cherished more than any other.
This, after all, is a country whose $5 bill has a scene of children playing hockey on a pond, with a quotation from the short story “The Hockey Sweater,” by Roch Carrier:
“The winters of my childhood were long, long seasons. We lived in three places — the school, the church and the skating rink — but our real life was on the skating rink.”
Hockey, the Canadian poet Richard Harrison once said, “is the national id.”
Continue reading this article at the The New York Times.
Roberto Luongo w/ victory flag (Photo credit :NYTimes/Stalknecht)
Team Canada Olympic hockey team wins gold/ Photo credit: Doug Mills, NY Times
It is really hard not to gloat.
The men I live with were rather smug about Canada’s loss to the U.S. earlier in the competition. They felt quite sure that the US had a lock on the gold.
There was never a doubt in my mind that Canada would take home the hockey gold. The world’s record 14 gold medals for Canada is the fudgey chocolate icing on my Nanaimo bar.
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