Pace on Earth

Don't Believe The Hype

A few weeks ago I was dismayed (to put it lightly) to see that the Toronto Maple Leafs had added a Canadian flag to their Leaf Nation logo implying, not too subtly, that Canada is Leafs Nation. As an added affront Allen Frew, former lead singer of Glass Tiger(and a Scot), wrote a song Free to Be (a.k.a. The Leafs' Song) which inlcudes the line "Oh, oh, oh, this is Canada's team - Go Leafs Go!". The final straw came while watching the Leafs play the Habs in Montreal last weekend. CBC interviewed Toronto head coach Ron Wilson and asked what his favourite game in Montreal's illustrious history was. He said it wasn't a Montreal game but instead it was when his US team beat Canada in Montreal for the World Cup in '96. The interviewer responded by saying that that wasn't a great memory for too many Canadians. He smirked and said "Well we hope to do it to you again at the Olympics". So the self-proclaimed Canada's Team has a coach that is trash talking Canadians about the ACTUAL Canadian team and this is ok? I think not.

All this lead to me finally pulling some ammo out of my internet cache. Leafs fans in the center of the universe will be sad to see that, as a whole, when polled, Canadians actually named the Canadiens as Canada's team. Look it right here in this article - 'Habs, not Leafs are 'Canada's team' - from the Toronto Star no less. So a big 'up yours' to Allen Frew and any Leaf fan that believes his BS.

A commenter on a related article had it right - no professional team made up of paid professionals from all nations can, or even should, be presumptious enough to call itself Canada's team. That title goes to the National Team and that is that.

Pace out.

posted by Vitamin S @ 6:44 p.m.