Stolen From a Hockey Card
Last night was pretty amazing.
It was the "Stolen from a hockey card" show at the Yukon Arts Centre, and it was a mixture of stories from hockey people, performances by Canadian musicians about hockey, and short films about the sport and, particularly, its place in the North and within FN communities. So cool. I'm going to write a lot about it and I don't care if that bores you because it was such a great event.
Dave Bidini started off with a song that I don't much remember, and after that, Ron MacLean spoke in his way, just pulling anecdotes about hockey out of thin air and remembering a little bit of his childhood in Whitehorse. He was, I guess, the closest thing we had to an emcee for the evening. He introduced an old NFB doc called "Here's Hockey!" from 1953. I actually don't remember the order very well, so I'm just going to do bullets on some of the other stuff that happened:
It was the "Stolen from a hockey card" show at the Yukon Arts Centre, and it was a mixture of stories from hockey people, performances by Canadian musicians about hockey, and short films about the sport and, particularly, its place in the North and within FN communities. So cool. I'm going to write a lot about it and I don't care if that bores you because it was such a great event.
Dave Bidini started off with a song that I don't much remember, and after that, Ron MacLean spoke in his way, just pulling anecdotes about hockey out of thin air and remembering a little bit of his childhood in Whitehorse. He was, I guess, the closest thing we had to an emcee for the evening. He introduced an old NFB doc called "Here's Hockey!" from 1953. I actually don't remember the order very well, so I'm just going to do bullets on some of the other stuff that happened:
- After some banter between MacLean and Wendel Clark, Buck 65 came out and did a song called "Look Away" about the night Borje Salming's face was sliced open by a skate blade.
- Sarah Harmer sang a touching little song called "Lullabye" about how when she was little, she was only allowed to stay up for the first period of games, and her father had a habit of clapping one, single time whenever the Leafs scored, and she always wanted to work out a deal with him where he would clap twice when the other team scored, so that she'd be able to keep score from bed.
- There was a short film about Hazelton, BC and the struggle by the FN there to keep the arena open in spite of the dwindling economy and population. I started crying during this one, it pulled all the heartstrings in telling the story of a brother and sister who've continued playing hockey in the village's old arena despite the square corners and chicken wire behind the nets.
- Lanny MacDonald and Ron MacLean came out and talked about Reggie Leach, probably the biggest FN hockey star in history? Anyway, they told a couple of anecdotes and then introduced John K. Samson who sang a song called "Petition", about a petition to get Reggie into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Then they aired a short film about Reggie and what he means to Riverton, Manitoba. Then Jeff Marek came out and talked a bit about Reggie and then called backstage: "Hey, is John K. Samson around? Can we get him back out here for a second?" So, JK came back out and Jeff asked him, "Why Reggie Leach?" And John started fumbling through his answer when Reggie walked out of the audience, up onto the stage and JK became a babbling idiot, because he'd never actually met the guy he just sang a song about. It was really sweet.
- Geoff Berner did a number about the day Gretzky was traded. He was good, but also felt a bit out of place just because this sort of thing is not what he does usually.
- Two locals from a band called Spring Breakup sang songs. One was basically a love letter to Jaroslav Halak and the other took the form of a letter from Winnipeg to Phoenix.
- The musical highlight of the evening, though, was probably C.R. Avery's two numbers - the first about Gino Odjick and how, in his capacity as a FN leader, he met the Pope who apologized to him for residential schools and the second, only vaguely hockey-related, a beat-boxing/spoken-word thinger about Pierre Trudeau/Canadian identity. ("We pulled our peacekeepers out of Vietnam/We said no to Iraq/We were the third country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage/This is our history/This is our 'Fuck you they like us in Europe'".)
- The night closed with another song from Dave Bidini and his band, a rocker about John Kordic.