There was a nice moment a decade ago when the mic cut out on a woman singing the American national anthem before a hockey game in Toronto, and thousands of Canadians in the stands politely helped out by belting out the rest of it. Footage of the neighborly behavior quickly went viral, and Canadians didn’t even object when news stories didn’t report it as “neighbourly behaviour” with the extra letter U we’re so fond of as a former British colony. (See also: colour, humour, honour.)
It’s worth a watch if you missed it the first time or are feeling heartbroken about the direction North America is headed:
Try to imagine if the skate was on the other foot and it was “O Canada” experiencing audio issues in a US city. Hockey enthusiasts would actually be far more likely to know the song than most Americans after having been made to endure it so many times, but raise your hand if you’re not Canadian and know many or any of the words that come after “our home and native land.” Extra points if you know the words in French and all the points if you agree the line should be changed to the more accurate “our home on native land.”
The occasion came before a Maple Leafs versus Predators battle, an apt bit of foreshadowing for current relations now that there’s a sexual deviant back in the Oval Office yelling about grabbing the country by the beaver.
I wrote this a few days ahead of schedule for family reasons, and “The Star-Spangled Banner” may no longer even still be the official anthem if, say, That Awful Man used his magic Sharpie to give Francis Scott Key’s bombastic ditty the Golf Gulf of Mexico treatment and insists everyone now sing Russia’s or maybe the gay disco anthem he likes so much instead. You already know MAGA would come around to it if told.
Or perhaps President Musk’s “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika,” which at least has a version in English.
Terrible things are happening fast and furiously, so apologies in advance if I missed any breaking Canadian news developments like Don Jr. being dispatched to Iqaluit to win the hearts and minds of Baffin Islanders or SEAL Team Six seizing control of the Rideau Canal from Beijing. Or if the dumb 25 percent tariffs thing happened yesterday (Feb. 1) as vaguely promised. Or there’s a new prime minister.
The song’s reception certainly wasn’t the same last week before a Montreal Canadiens home game against the New Jersey Devils, when a vocal segment of the Bell Centre rained down boos from the stands. It wasn’t exactly the entire stadium expressing the new fear and loathing of our former closest ally in full-throated unison but it was pretty damn audible during the broadcast.
Oh say can you see why your mafia don causes fright?
Keep in mind Canadians are asked to stand and remove our toques for it, and also the folks firing “the bombs bursting in air” were technically us when the British attack on Fort McHenry inspired the lyrics during the War of 1812.
Fun fact: The French word for booing is huer, an even less likely approximation of the sound itself than Boo-urns. Which is something I was reminded of after stumbling across the story on French CBC. I don’t know how things work at the Ceeb as they’ve never responded to my many job applications, but it was interesting to see there was no mention of it on the national public broadcaster’s Anglo side. The most recent result for a search of “Bell Centre” (we also spell center as centre; Canadians are much more centrist) on the Mothercorp’s homepage was a story about renovations at a Calgary museum because it involved a guy with the surname Bell.
They otherwise had boo to say about it.
Nobody else appears to have reported on it either, which is unusual in such a hockey-obsessed country as ours. Or at least as far as I could find now that search engines are also obeying in advance and we’re expected to wade through a sea of shitty ads and embryonic AI before finding anything useful. But it’s hard not to think media outlets self-censored themselves so as to not draw the Sauronian gaze of Fox News and have them spin it as a perfectly valid pretext to capture our precious oil, freshwater, maple syrup, and letter U reserves.
This isn’t the first time boobirds have sung out on Murican foreign policy at the Bell Centre, with Habs fans having previously voiced their opinion on Dubya’s doomed quest for missing WMDs before yet another game against the Devils, a team with a name that’s also a bit on-the-nose whenever the Great Satan runs amok. (Although I’ve always felt it was a missed opportunity Slovakian rightwinger Miroslav Šatan never suited up for them.) Les glorieux were owned by American tycoon George Gillett at the time, and the team quickly put out a statement condemning their own fans.
They also showed a video of Canadiens legend Jean Béliveau on the Jumbotron at the next game encouraging the crowd to show some respect as there were players from both countries on either team, and even left his face up on the screen during the singing part of the show to discourage bad manners. Which actually worked as no true Montrealer would ever want to disappoint le gros Bill.
Béliveau is no longer with us to try to appeal to fans’ better natures, and it’s hard to imagine another former beloved player with the necessary juice this time around. Certainly getting Chris Chelios to do it wouldn’t go over well, and it seems unlikely star defenseman P.K. Subban would be down with the indefensible.
There’s an old joke that asks: How do you get a bunch of Canadians out of a swimming pool? The answer is you ask them politely to get out of the pool. The stereotype didn’t come out of thin air, and we generally reserve boos for players or bad refs with one notable exception: NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, an American who never played the game but has nonetheless been running the league for more than 30 years.
Booing Bettman whenever he shows his face in public is considered practically a patriotic duty, which doesn’t even seem unfair given the guy has overseen three separate lockouts (including an entire season), makes moronic marketing decisions like prohibiting players from using Pride tape on their sticks for a day or two before bowing to public outrage, and keeps banishing our financially struggling teams to cities where they aren’t even wanted such as Phoenix and Atlanta. It’s so ingrained in Canadian culture nobody even stops to consider if it’s antisemitic, and most of his vocal haters probably don’t even know he’s Jewish. Or would care.
Giving the man a Bronx cheer has become normalized to the extent it’s the expected natural human response. Like shouting “Norm!” if George Wendt walks into the bar or headbanging at the part in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Or giving the finger to a driver of one of the Space Nazi’s Cyberpanzers. Just another civic responsibility his own children probably indulge in on occasion.
But he may want to consider killing the anachronistic tradition when teams from either country play each other moving forward. Half the players are Russian or Scandinavian now anyway unlike in the Original Six days of yore.
It’s a problem confined to ice hockey for now in the sportsball realm as we don’t do the NFL, and only the city of Toronto has teams in the baseball or basketball big leagues. But those sports aren’t even close to being as dear to the true north strong and free’s glowing hearts as the best game you can name, and if this hasn’t already become an emerging narrative by the time you read this, I suspect it will be once the playoffs start in April. No matter how many Canadians there may be on a given American team’s roster.
Assuming they haven’t all been rounded up by then and shipped to the KHL as an apology gift to Putin for economic sanctions due to his special military operation in Ukraine.
