Feb. 01, 2012 - Issue #850: Godot
Geoff Berner
Sat, Feb 4, the Artery
One Saturday in February last year, I had my second brush with death in the North in as many days. This time, it was from an overdose of sheer Canadianity. It was my single most Canadian day ever. It got to the point where I came dangerously close to having a Canadianeurysm. Let me itemize the Canadianness:
I woke up to the sound of the phone ringing in Whitehorse, Yukon, in the True North, Strong and (arguably, relatively speaking, for the time being) Free.
Dave Bidini, Canadian author, leader of Bidiniband, late of the band the Rheostatics, was on the horn. The Rheostatics, indie Canada's greatest band, who put Canadian place names in every single song they ever wrote, and also wrote about the Group of Seven, Canada's most iconic painters, for Chrissakes. He was the guy who'd invited me up to the Yukon in the first place, to play a song about a hockey player for the CBC's "Hockey Day in Canada" show. My song is about Gino Odjick.
Dave invited me to come play "shinny," which means, in Canadianese, an informal game of ice hockey.
I had breakfast, including Canadian back bacon.
I played ice hockey outside, on a community rink. I was wearing a toque. I played against, among many lovely people, Bidini, and John K Samson, of the Weakerthans, whose every brilliant song is about the city of Winnipeg, or a TB sanitarium nearby. We also drank Yukon Gold beer. The extremely good Canadian singer/songwriter, Sarah Harmer was there. She writes songs that are like Alice Munro short stories. But her last name would be a great hockey goon nickname. "The Harmer." And she was the only one who brought her own helmet, which was intimidating. I was knocked down several times by "The Harmer." But I don't think it was on purpose. Or was it? Watch out for her, she is tricky.
Then we went to the Official Yukon "Hockey Day in Canada" game.
Since we were part of the festivities, we got to go to the VIP box to watch the game. That's when I pulled off the quadruple-whammy of drinking a cold Molson Canadian while chatting with soon-to-be-former Liberal MP and legendary Montréal Canadiens goalie Ken Dryden, about the bright future of Canada's multicultural policies. When the PA started playing Rush in the background, that was when I felt the beginnings of a stroke coming on. If someone had started reciting "The Cremation of Sam McGee" I'm sure that I would have expired on the spot.
I had to go to the bathroom and breath deeply with my head between my knees for 40 minutes. Luckily, I recovered. Close call, though.
So if you see me out there, I'll still be celebrating my survival.
Sat, Feb 4 (8:30 pm)
With Carolyn Mark
The Artery, $10 vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
Privacy Policy:
Vue respects your privacy. We will not forward your personal information to any other organization except as required by law, and will use your e-mail address only to respond to your comments. We reserve the right to edit and remove comments for length, clarity and/or if they are illegal or inappropriate. Your email address is never shown to visitors to vueweekly.com. Read the whole policy at: http://vueweekly.com/privacy
Comments policy
Comments go online directly without first being seen or reviewed by editors at Vue. Don't personally attack people, don't be defamatory, don't be spam-atory, don't hawk your band, don't pretend to be someone else, be clear, be on topic, be nice. Read our extended comments policy here. »
We use Disqus for our comments system. What's that all about?
We found that managing the comment community at Vue was easier to do with a system like Disqus. If this isn't straightforward to you, get help here.