A year like no other
One year ago today, Canada qualified for the World Cup. It's been a trip since.
I was wearing a Belleville Bulls jersey. It made sense, trust me.
First off, you needed to wear multiple layers at BMO Field on March 27, 2022. It was as cold as it has ever been standing in the south stands, with the NW winds making things particularly brisk. It was the type of day that I might have stayed home for on another day.
But, not this day. No, this was a day that had been coming for a more than 30 years. The Canadian Men’s National Team was going to qualify for the World Cup. A team that had compelled me — and destroyed me — on more than one occasion throughout my entire life as a sports fan was finally about to reward me with the golden ticket that I had dreamed of for all of that time.
So, I needed to wear something that spoke to those early days of my fandom. The hockey jersey of my hometown team just made sense. I was there representing Belleville. I was standing beside people from Brockville, Barrie, Brandon, Beloeil and every city in between. It was beautiful.
The game is a blur of joy, dancing and the smiling faces of hundreds of people that I had grown to call friends because of our shared love of the game.
Many days fail to live up to how you imagined them. This day, however, was better than I ever could have dreamed it to be. In every way.
The afterglow didn’t last long.
I won’t bore you with the blow-by-blow account of the year that followed that day at BMO because we all lived it. To say it was disheartening is an understatement. Logically, we understood that just making a World Cup wasn’t going to magically make everything perfect here, but few of us realized just how dysfunctional the next 12 months would be.
To the point that now, 365 days later, it seems impossible to think that we could ever get back to the high that was that day again. That might seem unnecessarily negative, but it’s hard to imagine the scenario that allows us to be as pure and full of joy as we were in the stadium on that day.
At a World Cup game in Canada in 2026, perhaps? I fear what the cost of such an experience is going to be, but maybe.
Not before some serious work is done though. Work from everyone, including the players. Yes, the CSA has made mistakes in the past and, no, they haven’t moved as fast to make the changes we think need to happen, but the reality is constant conflict and protests are only going to make the scoreboard goals harder to achieve.
We need to remember that we are all in this together again and get back to the spirit of a day, now 365 days past, when people from Tofino stood beside those from Timmins, Truro, and Thunder Bay on that cold day in Toronto.
Allez Les Rouges.
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