CKNW Editorial
for May 3, 1999

I am a loyal Canadian. I would do almost anything for my country. I would be prepared to be taken back in a time capsule and fight through the poisonous gas of Flanders … slog through the mud of Italy … slosh through the floods of the Scheldt. I would even be prepared to write a favourable article about the CBC - Hell, I could even bring myself to vote for the Chretien Liberals … no, I go too far there. But I would do anything reasonably required to demonstrate my love for my country and my patriotism under the worst of conditions … but pull for the Toronto Maple Leafs? NEVER!! I will not do it despite the reasoned arguments of other anti Leaf fans who say that all of the other Canadian teams being out, I must pull for Canada’s last remaining hope for the Stanley Cup. NO! I say. That asks too much. There are limits and this is well past mine.

Now there was a time when I even hated the players. They were different. And on the odd occasion one was traded to my beloved Montreal Canadiens, like Dick Duff or Frank Mahovolich, I thought of them as utterly unreliable.

How did all this happen?

It goes back to the days of the crystal set which we kids all had – although every house had a radio, with a crystal set you could lie in bed with the headset on and your Mom wouldn’t know you weren’t asleep. In any event, it was in the war – no, dammit, the Second World War not the first – when I used to listen to Hockey Night In Canada which always, without exception, had the Leaf games. It was not considered proper to let English Canadians listen to the Montreal Games – the only time we heard my beloved Canadiens was the one Saturday a year they played in Toronto. Toronto never had to play a Saturday game in Montreal, don’t you know – Toronto was Canada and all that.

I had to listen to that tiresome homer Foster Hewitt who would have been Canada’s all time bigot had it not been for Conn Smythe who owned the Leafs – who never did understand that the plural of leaf is leaves. Smythe wouldn’t permit a French Canadian on the team and once opened a speech with the words "Gentlemen … and Frenchmen.

The broadcasts were so one-sided that even Don Cherry would look evenhanded by comparison. If the Leafs were beaten, you could be sure that the other goaltender would get the first star on the basis that it would have been 9-8 for the Leafs instead of 8-0 for the other guys were it not for the opposing goaltender’s hot hand.

When the Leafs played the Canadians, I died if the Habs lost. I felt I should take a day or two off school just to let it all die down. Fortunately, especially after the fifties began, the Leafs didn’t beat the Canadiens often and my patience paid off handsomely as Montreal had one super team after another.

Even as I matured, which is to say as I got into my 40s, old habits died hard. Back in the seventies the Czech national team played the Leafs in Toronto and my wife pleaded for me to cheer for Toronto so as not to give a wrong impression to my 8 year old stepson. I promised faithfully I would but when Czechoslovakia scored early in the first period, I leaped to my feet with a rousing cheer. I just couldn’t help myself.

When Paul Henderson scored that wonderful goal in 1972 to beat the Russians I felt a strong pang of horror – it had been done by a Maple Leaf and we’d have to hear that endlessly even though two Canadiens held them in there – Ken Dryden who stoned the Russkies in the third period and Yvan Cornoyer who scored the big tying goal and set up the winner … throughout the series Foster Hewitt deliberately mispronounced his name.

Over the past years I’ve lost all interest in hockey except for a brief flurry in 1994 and again in, was it 1995 when Montreal won, winning some ten games in overtime? But the bloom has truly gone off and I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what teams are still in the hunt though I gather that Montreal and Vancouver are not amongst them.

I can tell you this, however. To the extent the Toronto Maple Leafs are involved, I'm for the other guys. I no longer hate Leaf players … for one thing I haven’t the faintest idea who they are and I suspect they’re all spoiled brat millionaires like the rest of the players in the league.

No … times have changed all right and my passion for hockey has cooled to the point where it no longer exists … except. Except if the Toronto Maple Leafs are anywhere near winning anything. I’m then like the Scot who hears the skirl of bagpipes … it’s war. So I say "go anyone, go" – if you’re playing the Toronto Maple Leafs. Some things is a man’s life stay important forever!