The As It Happens Files (18 page)
Read The As It Happens Files Online
Authors: Mary Lou Finlay
The public opinion we were hearing was running about twenty to one in favour of giving the Stanley Cup to
somebody
in 2005, although one immigrant from England let us know
she took exception to the GG’s claim that we all grew up with hockey. Another woman said she loved the idea that female hockey champions should have a Cup of their own, but she wasn’t sure they needed a “cast-off.” What about a
new
trophy from the Governor General—a “Clarkson Cup”?
Our listeners had various ideas about whom Stanley should be awarded to. One caller said it should be awarded to the Toronto Maple Leafs, because they’d never win it playing hockey. But most agreed that the Cup ought to be freed from the “sole grasp of Big Business and millionaire bullies,” as one caller put it.
Neither the voice of the people nor the voice of the Queen proved enough to win the day, however—at least, not that day. The Stanley Cup remained unawarded that season. But apparently there was a legal challenge lodged with the Ontario Superior Court because a year or so later the NHL caved in and agreed that, in future, if they weren’t going to be using the Stanley Cup one year, they would graciously allow someone else to claim it—temporarily, of course.
Oh, and the GG’s office did buy a new trophy. It’s called the Clarkson Cup, and it will be awarded every year to the best women’s team in the Dominion.
To get back to Don Cherry: He was right, of course, when he said that we probably wouldn’t have called him if his team had been winning. I mean, where would be the fun in that? It’s not true that we wanted to humiliate him, though; we just knew he’d make for some great radio. And while we love to salute the best—we talked to Junior Hockey Coach Brian Kilrea, for instance, when he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame (he’s won more than a thousand games with the Ottawa 67s)—where is it written that we shouldn’t
tip our hats occasionally to those who achieve another sort of distinction?
I remember a conversation we had with an American basketball coach after her team suffered a resounding defeat of 103–0. Jennifer Marks never got a bit testy. Perhaps the fact that they were from Texas and were called the
Lady Chaparrals
had something to do with her good manners. When I asked her if they’d considered playing baseball instead, she laughed good-naturedly. Ms. Marks did admit that they’d had a hard time just getting enough girls who wanted to play basketball to make up a team, but she hoped that in a few years they would be more competitive.
The Sheffield and District Junior Sunday League in England, on the other hand, were not at all amused when the
Derbyshire Times
described a 29—nil result at one of their soccer games as a “comprehensive trouncing.” League chairman Matthew Harman seemed to think the losing team would feel worse about seeing the result depicted in that way than they would about the actual loss, so he had issued a kind of edict against talking to the Press and declared that anyone who defied his rule would be subject to disciplinary action.
And then there are folk who make a virtue out of losing. Not only Canadian ice skaters
(just kidding!)
but, well, I’m thinking again of the aptly named Zippy Chippy—aptly named, that is, if you think of “zip” as standing for “zero” and not speed. Notwithstanding that Zippy is the grandson of Canadian racing champion Northern Dancer, at the time we caught up to him (so to speak), he had just lost his 85th race and was tied for
the most losses for a thoroughbred in American racing history.
Lost handsomely, too—by 37 ½ lengths. Here’s part of my conversation with Zippy Chippy’s owner and trainer, Felix Monserrate.
ML: Mr. Monserrate, Zippy Chippy has the right pedigree. Why can’t he win a race?
FM: I don’t know. Sometime I try to ask him, but he don’t give me no answer. He try to run, he try to win but …
ML: Oh now, is he really trying?
FM: Yes, he try to catch the front runners, but they run more than him.
ML: What about this problem of, when the gate opens, he just stands there?
FM: It’s hard to explain, because you know, I try to find what is the problem. He trained perfectly in the morning—he was pretty fantastic—but last two, three times, he just breaks slow.
ML: When you say “breaks slow,” what do you mean? What happens, actually, at the gate?
FM: They break, the horses start running, and when he sees the horses in front of him, that’s when he goes.
ML: When they’re
all
in front of him.
FM: Right.
ML: Has he ever won you any money?
FM: To me, yes. He pays his own way.
ML: He does! How does he do that?
FM: Well, at the beginning of the year, he got two or three seconds—I’m making money. He finishes fourth or third and there’s a little money to pay his own dinner, his own food.
ML: So you want to keep racing him.
FM: I hope I can keep racing him, yes.
ML: Because if he’s going to be the losing-est horse ever, he might as well go for the record, I guess, huh?
FM: Well, I cannot say that, because if he run again and he wins, you know … I’m not going to tell him
not
to win! If he can win, why not?
ML: Yeah, why not?
FM: Right. I think one of those days, he will come up and say,
Hell, let me run!
and do what he’s doing best—running. To me, he’s a winner every time he runs.
ML: How long has he been racing?
FM: Hmm … He’s seven years old—the last five years.
ML: Maybe he thinks it’s time to go to the stud farm.
FM: Nah, he cannot be that: he’s a gelding. He’ll have to keep earning a living running.
ML: Oh dear. Does he know that?
FM: Well, I think he knows, here’s a guy, a good father, right here that’s not going to let him down. Whatever he do, it will be okay for me. If he don’t run, he will be in my barn like a pony. I will keep him no matter what. He’s like part of my family here. He will stay.
ML: Is he a pretty horse?
FM: Um … They say he’s ugly.
ML: They say he’s
ugly?
FM: He’s ugly—and he’s a little mean. But it’s okay for me. He’s just a big show-off. He don’t do nothin’.
ML: You love him.
FM: Yeah. He try to bite, but he don’t bite. He try to kick, but he don’t kick.
ML: He tries to run, but he don’t run!
FM: Right. He try to run as hard as he can, but he cannot catch the front runner.
ML: Has he ever won a race?
FM: No, no. It’s amazing.
ML: Never!
FM: Never.
ML: His record is
85—
zip.
FM: No zip! He got
85
[losses] and he got a couple of seconds and thirds. No
wins,
but he shows a little bit sometimes he can run.
ML: Well, you let us know when he runs again, and we’ll be rooting for him, one way or the other.
Felix Monserrate
said
that he wanted his horse to win, but I wonder. Zippy Chippy—who, incidentally, made
People
magazine’s 2000 list of “most interesting personalities”—did go on running, if that’s the word and, er, celebrated his hundredth loss on September 11, 2004, in Northampton, Massachusetts. Felix tells me Zippy Chippy retired that December because they were going to make a movie about him, so of course, he had to be well rested and looking his best. Last I heard, the movie deal was still on, as soon as they could get the financing and all.
And by the way, Zippy Chippy did eventually win a race, although not against another horse. In August 2001, he came first in a 120-foot race against a minor league baseball player. Then he won another—which still only makes him 2
for 3 against humans, because back in August 2000, he lost a 40-yard race to Rochester Red Wings outfielder Jose Herrera.
I don’t know how the Lady Chaparrals are faring, but I’ve since learned that there are fewer than 150 students at their school, the Christway Academy in Duncanville, Texas, and that’s counting all grades—kindergarten to Grade 12, boys and girls. So I have a new appreciation for the difficulties they face in trying to form a girls’ basketball team, never mind a winning one. Sadly, their good-natured former coach, Jennifer Marks, died in March 2008 giving birth to her second child. She was 32.
As for our dear Mississauga IceDogs, they had some success, too: they got to the finals in 2004 and came first in their division in the 2004/05 season. In 2006/07, they had their best year ever in terms of wins (43), but the team got sold and moved to St. Catharines, so they’re now the
Niagara
IceDogs. I wish them all the luck in the world. You, too, Grapes.
The Maple Leaf Forever
Radio that carries all the way to the back benches
H
ockey isn’t Canada’s only national sport; the other one is politics. Some people think it’s lacrosse, but they’re wrong. Politics commands way more attention, although not necessarily from all our listeners. I remember a call from an American listener pleading with us not to talk so much about Canadian politics because it was so boring. Never mind that we weren’t actually making the show for an American audience—although we love to have them on board—the man had a point: when you compare Canada to Poland, say, where identical twins can hold the jobs of Prime Minister and President, respectively, or the Balkans or Russia or even Nepal, our politics might seem not only trivial in the stakes department but also wholly lacking in entertainment value. But it’s not true.
Granted, you won’t likely find people clinging to the edges of their seats over the outcome of a federal-provincial conference or even a federal election, and our issues are not like the issues they have in the Middle East. But as Stephen Leacock and other humorists have demonstrated, if you can’t find something funny about what’s going on in Ottawa, St. John’s or Moose Jaw, you’re just not paying attention.
I mean, this is a country where a party that advocates destroying the country (the Bloc Québécois) not only elects members to Parliament and may be called Her Majesty’s
Loyal
Opposition, but thanks to an overhaul of the
Elections Act
by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, is supported with
federal
tax dollars. Even Canadians who couldn’t vote for the Bloc if they wanted to, because they don’t live in Quebec, are required to help finance the separatists.
This is a country with two official languages, English and French, but English signs may be outlawed—and a person can become Prime Minister without speaking either of them. Just ask Jean Chrétien.
This is a country whose premiers have sported names like “Wacky” Bennett and “Wacky Junior” and where a big-city mayor (Toronto’s Mel Lastman) shakes hands with the Hell’s Angels and welcomes them to town.
The New Democratic Party, believing itself to be the conscience of the country, is humorous only in its sincere belief that it speaks for
all
Canadians while regularly attracting about 15 percent of the vote, but the Progressive Conservative Party—which spawned the Bloc Québécois and the Reform Party, which then became the Canadian Alliance, which then re-merged with the Progressive Conservatives to become the Conservative Party (non-progressive)—has provided more than enough material for levity, especially during Stockwell Day’s term as Leader. Apart from holding his first press conference as a federal MP wearing a wetsuit and sitting astride a Jet Ski on the shores of Lake Okanagan, Stock made quite a splash when it was revealed that the world as he knew it was no more than six thousand years old. He also believed that the Niagara River ran from north to south (which would, presumably, mean that Niagara Falls falls up).
Needless to say, Stock quickly became a media darling, and when his Canadian Alliance Party decided to find a new name, we had a field day. The
National Post
thought the new party should be called the Canadian Reform Alliance Party,
or CRAP. Comedian Rick Mercer started a campaign to get Stockwell Day to change
his
name to Doris.
Our listeners lobbied Talkback with their own suggestions for what to call the new Canadian Alliance:
The Reform Party
Stock on the Rocks
The New Alliance Party (NAP)
The Day Old
The Liberalized Progressive Reform Alliance Party
The Twilight Zone (“It comes at the end of the day, and there’s an eerie sense of otherworldly danger.”)
Misalliance
Stock Option
Day Care (“They’re all a bunch of babies.”)
The Party Formerly Known as Alliance Formerly
Known as Reform Formerly Known as Tory
PITA, or Pain in the Alliance Party
When he wasn’t casting about for a new name, Stockwell Day was doing things like apparently spying on the Prime Minister. To be fair, I don’t actually know if he was spying on the PM, because the story got a bit mixed up, as things tended to do when Stock was around. But here’s the story as
Globe and Mail
reporter Andrew Mitrovica related it to us in April
2001.
A meeting had taken place in the Centre Block on Parliament Hill with Day and his Chief of Staff and two Alliance MPs—and a private investigator whom the party was thinking of hiring to try to dig up some dirt on the Prime Minister in connection with a golf club in Shawinigan, Quebec. Day at first confirmed that the meeting had taken place, but a bit later, he said that after checking his daytimer, he realized he
had never met the man in question; he only
thought
he had, because he’d read it in the
Globe and Mail.
And they weren’t looking to spy on the PM; they wanted more information on organized crime.
