I Still Love Vermont (Again)

Patrick Leahy, Con­gress­man from Ver­mont, takes Attor­ney Gen­eral Alberto Gon­za­les to task for the Maher Arar case in a Sen­ate Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee Hear­ing. It’s good to see some­one in the US Gov­ern­ment real­iz­ing that Canada (as well as the rest of the world) some­times won­ders what has hap­pened to the USA that they thought they used to know. It’s cer­tainly not the kind of coun­try that now sends a Cana­dian cit­i­zen off to the Syria because they sus­pect that he might be a terrorist.

We knew damn well if he went to Canada, he wouldn’t be tor­tured! If he were held, he would be inves­ti­gated. We also knew damn well if he went to Syria, he’d be tortured.

Here’s the whole exchange:

Some­one here the other day told me that the US today (as it relates to Canada) was like ‘Some­one had stolen away your big brother and replaced him with some­one that you don’t rec­og­nize any more.’ With peo­ple like Gon­za­les run­ning things, it’s no won­der that they don’t rec­og­nize the US. I cer­tainly don’t.

BTW, for those out­side Canada who don’t know of the case, Maher Arar was a Cana­dian cit­i­zen who was stopped at JFK air­port, sent to Syria to be tor­tured and later was found to be com­pletely inno­cent. He got a for­mal apol­ogy from the Cana­dian gov­ern­ment, along with $10.5 mil­lion in dam­ages. Say what you will about Harper, he’s no snake like Gonzales.

Inescapable

I thought I knew how a city could get when its home team was fight­ing its way toward a cham­pi­onship. I lived in Boston dur­ing that remark­able 2004 World Series vic­tory that ‘reversed the curse’, etc. There is still a sec­tion in the Boston.com web site that may end up immor­tal­iz­ing the event for the next 86 years — which was the length of time between the two World Series tro­phies — if they have to. For all I know, there are prob­a­bly folk songs about the Sox of ’04 and hun­dreds of new baby boys chris­tened ‘Johnny’, ‘Jason’ and ‘Manny’.

But for Cana­di­ans, Hockey seems to be more than just a sport. It’s a glue for coun­try, includ­ing the new cit­i­zens (and landed immi­grants), maybe because we all agree that Canada invented the sport, and deserves to be the world cham­pi­ons in it, even if things haven’t always worked out that way.

Add to that, a tro­phy drought of sim­i­lar length to the Sox. Van­cou­ver, who have not won the Stan­ley Cup since the ‘Mil­lion­aires’ won it back in 1917–1918, is notice­ably hockey crazy, even for Canada. You see the cars every­where, with the flags all over them. Today at the mar­ket I couldn’t help notic­ing more than a few guys wear­ing Canucks Jer­seys. The CBC is run­ning a photo con­test of the cra­zi­est Canuck fan (you know, the ones who do the whole face-paint thing). If the team does win the cup, they are esti­mat­ing a $2.1 mil­lion cost in Police pro­tec­tion to keep all of the cel­e­bra­tors from run­ning amuck. Speak­ing of costs, tick­ets for tonights game were going for $320 for a pair from scalpers.

Some of my fel­low Van­cou­ver blog­gers are also pod­cast­ers. One of them was high­lighted for their increas­ingly pop­u­lar pod­cast, Crazy Canucks. Check out the spot on the local TV sta­tion at John’s other blog: John Boll­witt blog or his wife and co-podcaster, Miss604. I think they’ve tapped into a real vein of Hockey Madness.

I write this after the home team lost in over­time. It seems that every time I watch they lose. So I’m not sure I’m going to watch the next again on Sat­ur­day, when they are away in Dallas.

As for the sports bar own­ers. I’m sure that although they do want the Canucks to win as much as every­body else, they’d much rather stretch this ini­tial set of play­off games with the Dal­las Flames to the full seven. Noth­ing crazy about that.