Viking. Alberta. Canada. Stanley. Cup.

No music. No introduction. No criss-crossing spotlights. No confetti gun.

And certainly no smoke.

He just walked in. Carrying the Stanley Cup. While two Mounties in red serge watched, the people in the hall clapped politely. And then waited. What do we do next?

He put the trophy on a table in front of a printed sign that congratulated him for winning the Cup, and then he motioned for people to line up, come forward. And they lined up.

He was Darryl Sutter, the coach of the Los Angeles Kings, one of the favourite sons of Viking, and what he walked into was the Viking Community Hall. And what it all was was a great Canadian moment.

Five bucks got you a picture with the coach and the Cup. The money went to Viking minor hockey. The line of fans curled around the hall and out the door.

When we got to the front of the line, and it was our turn to get a photo taken, he was the first to speak.

"Hi, I'm Darryl, thanks for comin'," he said to Shelagh. "You must be tired standing here all day," she said. "Thanks for having us."

I shook his hand and said what I wanted to say.

"We drove here from Edmonton to say congratulations and thanks for saying you were from Viking, Alberta, Canada," I said. On the CBC broadcast just after the Kings won the Cup viewers saw and heard each member of the team say where they were from. Sutter said: Viking. Alberta. Canada.

"Well, that's important," he said to me.

We were there with Dub, his boy Cohen (who we call the Wide-Eyed Champ),  and his dad, and with Kobes and his son, Jaxson. Dub's dad is from Viking and he knows Sutter. It was a thrill to be close enough to hear the sound of Sutter slapping Bob on the back. "Good to see you," he said.

We stopped at the Burger Queen on the way home for cheeseburgers and beer and a milkshake.

The woman who took our order said she had to work all day or else she would have lined up for a photo.

"It doesn't mean as much to me," she said. "But my daughter! She is there!"

She went on to tell us that Darryl is a great guy and drops into the kitchen whenever he comes by.

"He still helps on the farm here," she said.


Yes, it took a Viking farmer to bring a year of reign to southern California.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

:)

Image
One of the joys and dangers of studying in the MACT program is that you start to feel scared enough to feel confident enough to fool around and try simple new things with technology. The danger is that you're not good enough not to spend most of your time fiddling around doing those things. And, so, this morning I am proud to announce that, taken by the hand, I have managed to embed html vimeo code into my blog. Please, no applause. This is not much, I know. Your basic 8 year old can do more. Asleep. But it is a minor accomplishment for me, because of me. And how I get in the way with my pre-wired reaction that new things won't work. The effect of that kind of thinking (or that lack of thinking) is that I transform the machine in front of me into an antagonistic force working to undo me. But it does remind me of me when I attribute malevolence to the skies when they conspire to bring rain on a morning of golf! Either way, that's bad storytelling. On another leve...
Read more

Hello!

Image
The potential socialness of a bicycle is built right into its roofless and windshieldless and doorless frame. It is easy to say hello on a bicycle. Like this morning. These sidewalkers nodded to me in unison at the exact instant I nodded to them. I said hello to the jogger, and he waved back. Hi, I said, to the dog walkers and the dog, and they nodded a greeting back. Both joggers smiled and said hello as our lives passed. I said hello to the squirrel. I said hello to the woman walking with poles and she returned the hello. The jogger looked over and I said hello as she said hello. I said hello to this fellow egg picker upper and we talked for a couple of minutes. Her bicycle comes out April 1. She is excited. Hello, I said. Hi, she said. I said hello to the  man on the other end of this leash and he said he and his dog were enjoying the beautiful morning. I said hello to this woman and she said hello, and we laughe...
Read more

Some Late Thoughts Listening To Wheat Kings

Image
Wheat Kings in Edmonton, July , 2016 I asked a friend at work what The Tragically Hip song Wheat Kings was about, and he paused for a beat longer than he would have had he not considered the same question many times. And then said: "I don't know." I took this as a good sign both of his humility and the song's profundity. It was an honest question. I don't know much about The Hip. They were cool for the first time when I was watching my wife raise our children, and trying to help the mission where I could. Those were busy days. The 1990s are my mediated decade, preserved by photographs of my younger self. Among the art that didn't get in was The Tragically Hip's. And it was a dishonest question. I knew the song was about David Milgaard's wrongful conviction and wrongful jail time served for the murder of Saskatoon nurse Gail Miller. And it was an honest question, because song's visual shards—that weathervane, a killer's face lit ...
Read more