As any Canadian knows, tonight is Hockey Night in Canada. For expats in the United Arab Emirates that means it's Hockey Morning. And not just any Hockey Night/Morning. It's the second game in the best-of-seven Stanley Cup final, the crowning glory of what some insist on calling "ice hockey". But I am Canadian, and this is my space today, so let's just call it what it is from here on in: hockey.
Roll your eyes, but nothing is more important than bringing that Cup back home where it belongs (Canada), and nothing more important to me especially, because it's the Vancouver Canucks, my hometown team, that finally have that chance. Unbelievably, victory has eluded Canada's teams for 18 years, and it's been 17 years since my team made it to the final. In the past decade, a Canadian team has been in the final only three times, and even then we had to suffer the humiliation of losing to American teams such as the Anaheim Ducks, a team founded by the Walt Disney Co in southern California and named after a kids' film.
That's why tonight, when the Canucks face off against the Boston Bruins, after winning the first game with an "oh ya!" goal in the last 19 seconds, some Canadians (the others, all traitors) will put aside their provincial team loyalties and root for a Canadian team, any Canadian team, to take back what's ours (the Cup was created in 1888 by Lord Stanley of Preston, governor general of Canada). And that's why even Canadians who aren't regular hockey fans, people like my mother, will tune in to watch what we see as much more than just a game, with everything at stake.
Much like the United Arab Emirates, Canada is a country that frets about its identity, with our larger neighbour (no points for guessing) dominating popular culture on television sets, in cinemas, on the radio and in print. If a Canadian is world famous, it's likely because the United States made them so, and that's why we feel compelled to stake our claim to them, much to the annoyance or bemusement of others. (Leonard Cohen? Canadian. Pamela Anderson? Canadian. Jim Carrey? Canadian. Conrad Black? Canadian. Justin Bieber? We hate to admit it, but he actually is Canadian.)
Hockey is a different story, something we were born to own and grow up playing. The greatest players of all time - Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe or Maurice Richard, depending on your point of view - are Canadian. (In a poll for the TV show The Greatest Canadian, Gretzky was voted Number 10, just after the inventor of the telephone, and Don Cherry, our colourful hockey commentator, was Number 7, ahead of Canada's first prime minister.)
The National Hockey League refers to our nation, and we just invited the Americans to play our game (notably, with the addition of the Boston Bruins in 1924). And for the most part, we dominate the sport, even if it's just having a large number of Canadians on a winning US team.
But the 18-year stretch of a Canada Without the Cup represents what we fear is a slide that began in the 1990s, a decade when we won the Stanley Cup only twice. That same decade, the country was forced to give up two teams to US cities with less-dedicated but more financially attractive fan bases: the Winnipeg Jets to Phoenix, Arizona, and the Quebec Nordiques to Denver, Colorado. (The loss of the teams is the key plot line in the Montreal-made movie Bon Cop, Bad Cop.)
The final humiliation came in 2008, when we almost lost what Mike Myers, the comedian (Canadian), rightly called our "second anthem". The Canadian Broadcasting Corp, which owns the rights to broadcast games under the title Hockey Night in Canada, gave up the licence to The Hockey Theme. (Cue up any Canadian with: Da da DAH da da, da da DAH da da…) As only the CBC could foolishly do, it got in a battle over the licensing fees with its composer, Dolores Claman (not just Canadian, but from Vancouver). The disputed cost? About $500 per game. A private broadcaster snatched it up, and TSN now plays it leading into its hockey coverage, but its absence hangs over Hockey Night in Canada like an invisible limb.
There are signs that it's Canada's time to bounce back, like a slap shot off the glass. Winnipeg just found out it's getting a team back (by agreeing to buy the Atlanta Thrashers), reversing the drain south of the border. In what is believed to be a nod to that welcome news, hometown rocker Neil Young was spotted in the stands wearing a Manitoba Moose cap. (He has season tickets to the San Jose Sharks, but the Moose are the Canucks' farm team.)
And then there was the surprising surge of feeling - more aggressively proud than the usual warm fuzzies - after last year's gold medal win against the United States in the Winter Olympics, the truest test of Canadian hockey might because all our best NHL players team up to play for home. They won it on the same ice in Vancouver where tonight's game will be played, with the same goalie, Roberto Luongo (Canadian) of the Vancouver Canucks. (Can you see the stars converging over the mountains in Vancouver?)
Forget that the Canucks are a younger team up against one of the misnamed Original Six. Forget that they have never won a Cup before, or that they've made it to the Cup final only twice in their 40-year history and lost both times. Forget that they come from a part of the country that doesn't get cold enough for outdoor rinks, and so the rest of Canada thinks we don't qualify, because we don't have a hockey culture.
Canucks fans are readier than ever, and you will see them waving their white towels, a tradition that was begun in Vancouver during the playoffs in 1982, when I became a believer. Coach Roger Neilson held up a white towel on a hockey stick as a sign of surrender, in protest against unfair penalties. Three other players did the same, and later, so did the fans. They now call it Towel Power.
As for Canadians in the UAE, particularly the minority Canucks fans, we are more than ready to join them, despite the difference in time zones, because there is nothing more bonding for those of us abroad than hockey.
For most of the year, we play along with all the talk of football (aka soccer) and cricket, putting up with the endless matches on television while silently seeking out other hockey faithful to discuss the season's standings. We might even wake up early in the morning, anywhere between 3 and 5 am, to listen to a game streamed live online, our ears against our laptops in much the way our forebears listened to games on the radio in the 1930s and '40s.
But we ramp it up when our National Identity is at stake, generally during the playoffs, calling around to find a fellow Canadian with ESPN, getting up in the middle of the night and putting on our hockey jerseys (this heat makes the polyester that much more uncomfortable). We watch the game, trying to stifle our pre-dawn hooting and hollering from waking up the neighbours, before emerging, blinking into the hot morning sun. Unlike when Al Wahda or Al Jazira win a football match, and the city is taken over by honking cars, Abu Dhabi simply goes about its business after our hockey game, oblivious to our elated victory or our crushing defeat. And we Canadians just go to work quietly, experiencing that loss or win alone in our hearts.
So if you see a sleepy Canadian in your midst this week, you'll know why. We're just celebrating our tradition in the middle of the night. And hoping for that elusive, legendary win.
Mo Gannon is The National's (Canadian) weekend features editor who remembers the days of King Richard Brodeur but Roberto Luongo will always be her hockey Number 1
