Chiefs Win
In my previous post I referred to a friend who passed away this week, and said that we “grew up” playing hockey together. What I didn’t mention is that we still played hockey together, if only for a few months this year. Read more
Posts from the ‘Sports’ Category
Mar 6
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Peace, Pietism, and Personal Branding
Part of this week was spent at a gathering of Alberta Mennonite pastors just north of Calgary. The drive alone would have made the trip worth it. I had forgotten how spectacularly colourful autumn in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains can be! More importantly, though, it was a good opportunity to connect with new colleagues, as well as to get a sense of some of the strengths, challenges and theological perspectives of a conference that is still fairly new to me. Read more
Run For It
Conversations with a few friends over the last little while have got me toying with the idea of attempting a half-marathon later this year. I have taken a few halting steps (literally and metaphorically) towards this goal in the last few days, but it remains to be seen if these will be sustained. It’s not hard to jog for a few kilometres in the midst of what has been a glorious Alberta summer, but when the cold and the wind make their inevitable appearance? Well, let’s just say that my resolve will likely face a more formidable test. Read more
Real ____ Would Never Do That!
I just returned from a glorious five days spent motorcycling through Washington and Oregon. We crossed the border into the United States last Sunday and then headed over the Cascade Mountains, wound our way down to northern Oregon, then meandered through the central part of the state, before heading back north up the Oregon Coast, and catching a ferry back to Vancouver Island from Port Angeles, WA last night. All in all, a fantastic trip. Read more
About Time!
On April 28, 1996, the city of Winnipeg, MB lost its beloved NHL Jets. The Jets became the Phoenix Coyotes due to a combination of the financial realities faced by a small Canadian city, a weak Canadian dollar, rising player salaries and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman’s idiotic insistence that the National Hockey League needed to grow in places like Phoenix and Miami and Nashville and Atlanta. You know, places where it snows approximately never. Read more
Christmas Confusion
I couldn’t help but chuckle at the conclusion of tonight’s edition of Coach’s Corner on CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada. Cherry’s shtick was his usual combination of lightly-informed, opinionated bravado and Canadian hockey machismo, but as is increasingly often the case, it was also the opportunity for him to step up his soap box. Read more
What’s Old is New Again (NHL Style)
According to WordPress’s new, more comprehensive statistics page the second-most popular post I have ever come up with—at least according to number of page views—is a post from last year on hockey jerseys (naturally, of course… What else would you expect, on a blog that deals primarily with faith-related subject matter?). Apparently I am not alone in my life-long fascination/curiosity with hockey jerseys! So, because fall is here and hockey season has officially begun, I thought a hockey post might be fun for a holiday Thanksgiving Monday (my apologies to the non-hockey aficionados who read this blog :)). Read more
Beautiful… as Long as You Like Soccer
Over the last few weeks, my morning routine has involved waking up, tiptoeing down the hallway to avoid waking everyone else up, putting the coffee on, and catching a World Cup match before work. It has been delightful, and I am already dreading the end of South Africa 2010. This morning’s game (a 2-1 win by the Netherlands over mighty Brazil) had it all—colour, drama, suspense, amazing skill, some great goals, a bit of nastiness, and the right result! I can’t wait for the other three quarterfinal matches today and tomorrow. Read more
Feb 28
Feb 24
OH CANADA!
UTTER. DOMINATION.
I don’t think anyone expected such a blowout for a Canada/Russia game, but the Red Machine is rolling!
What a night!
Swept to Big Purposes
Like many, I have been watching the 2010 Vancouver Olympics off and on for the last several days. Much as I would like to pretend otherwise, I have found myself to be a bit of a sucker for a euphoric flag raising ceremony or a powerful biographical vignette or an emotive speech or any of the other carefully crafted media productions intended to produce some kind of transcendent sense of being Canadian. It’s been unsettling to see how manipulable I am! Medals won by people I do not know in events I have virtually no interest in outside of two weeks every four years suddenly have the capacity to make me feel like an important part of a grand and momentous red and white wave of fulfillment, meaning, and purpose. Read more
Hockey Dad
Once upon a time, my wife and I decided that our kids would not play hockey and, more importantly, that we would never be “hockey parents” (apologies to non-Canadian readers who may not appreciate all the unwelcome moral freight conveyed by this loathsome term). Hockey was expensive, it brought out the worst in both kids and their parents, it was expensive, it was unnecessarily violent, it was expensive, it involved unnecessary amounts of travel and early mornings at frigid rinks… and it was expensive. Read more
It’s 1989 All Over Again!
From the “it’s about time” file comes today’s news that my beloved Calgary Flames have decided to rewind the clock and wear retro jerseys from the 1980’s for five home games this year in order to commemorate their 30th anniversary. These jerseys will always have a special place in my heart. The Flames wore these the night they became the only visiting team ever to hoist the Stanley Cup in the hallowed Montreal Forum (and made a 14 year old boy very happy!). The return of the jerseys are just the first step. I can see it all now… The glory of 1989 is returning! Read more
Jul 6
Hockey Heaven
Well, we’re nicely into July now so I figured it was high time for a post about… hockey? What can I say—I’m as Canadian as they come. Like many kids growing up on the prairies, I was obsessed with hockey as a child. I played on ice, on grass, and on concrete. I played table hockey and video game hockey. I watched hockey religiously every Saturday night (we didn’t have a TV for part of my childhood so every Saturday night my brother and I would race across the yard to my grandparents’ house to watch Hockey Night in Canada on their black and white television). I collected hockey cards and my brother and I would spend hours arranging them according to every conceivable category, memorizing endless numbers of players and their statistics along the way. Read more
May 22
YES!
I don’t often comment on sports here, but as a lifelong fan of the Calgary Flames, today is a happy day indeed. Mike Keenan’s tenure in Calgary was about two years too long, but all I can say to the powers that be in Flame-land is…
THANK YOU!
(Actually, I could say a lot more… Like, why did you ever hire this guy? What were you thinking? I knew this was a bad move right from the start… Nah, I’ll just stick with thank you).
I Skate, Therefore I Am?
When I was at the University of Lethbridge a few years back, I needed a philosophy course in the summer to fill out my degree requirements and allow me to finish a year early. As I recall, there weren’t very many attractive offerings, so I ended up taking a course called “The Philosophy of Sport.” I thought this would be a kind of cream puff course without much substance, but it ended up being fairly interesting. Philosophers can subject a lot of innocuous looking activities to mind-numbing analysis, after all, so why not sport? Read more
Oh Canada!
I returned yesterday from a technology-less weekend at our church’s annual family camp to discover that I had missed a glorious weekend for Canadian soccer! I’ve been a soccer fan for nearly a decade now, and have largely had to content myself with the odd exploit of a Canadian player overseas, or an occasional miraculous result (Canada’s 2000 Gold Cup win) when it comes to Canada’s performances on the international soccer stage. Read more
May 9
A Picture Says a Thousand Words…
For all the Canucks fans whose acquaintance I have made during our time out here in Lotus-land…
Rumblings 