The day was perfect — sunny and warm — a great day to have a parade with the Stanley Cup. To top it off, it was Sid’s birthday. I will never forget how it felt seeing him in person with hockey’s “holy grail,” the Stanley Cup. I had admired this gifted hockey player for so many years and now he was here — the youngest captain in hockey history to win the Stanley Cup. It was truly a WOW experience!
Fast-forward to 2016. My family and I were watching in excitement as Sid the Kid did it again — won another Stanley Cup — and in the process got himself voted “Playoff MVP.” I was so happy for him! Then I started thinking seriously about an idea I’d been playing with. I wanted to make a sign asking Sidney Crosby to sign my jersey. Why not? Neighbours reported that Sid would sometimes travel the area during the summer while at home in Cole Harbour.
So I got creative, and with the help of my wife Trish, my daughter Breanna, and her friend Morgan, I painted a big sign on a 4x8 sheet of plywood. In big gold letters on a white background the sign read simply, “SID, PLEASE SIGN MY JERSEY.” In the top right corner we added what was probably the worst picture of a Stanley Cup ever drawn! Then I hung my game-worn Pittsburgh Penguins #87 jersey in the lower left corner, with a pen, in case he drove past while I was at work. At night I’d bring it in and hang it in the living room window with a light on, so he could see it from the road.
At first I had high expectations. You hear all the time about what a great guy Sidney Crosby is, and how he’s always signing items for his fans. You read how he has showed up at the homes of Pittsburgh Penguins fans and personally delivered their season tickets. But as the days passed I started to think that well, maybe he hadn’t seen it yet, or maybe he was just too busy. After all, not only is he the world’s best player, but he’s also the only player in the history of the game to win a Stanley Cup, an Olympic gold medal and a World Hockey Championship — while Captain of each team! I can only imagine how many people want a piece of him, and how many different directions he must be pulled in. After a week had passed I had to take the sign down — I needed the plywood for a project that had to get done. I figured it was a nice try. Still, I hung the jersey in my living room window, leaving the light on day and night so it could be seen from the road.
After a couple of weeks I let go of the idea that Sid might stop by to sign my jersey. Then, one Friday morning I was at work checking my e-mails when a message from my wife arrived. Her e-mails always catch my eye, but I was particularly intrigued by the subject line; “Check this out. An old friend dropped by.”
When I opened the message, there was a picture attached. When I opened the picture I saw two people, one of whom was my daughter Madisyn, but then I looked at the other person. Who’s that guy standing there next to my daughter? I wondered. It looks like Sidney Crosby. I looked closer. It is Sidney Crosby! Where did Madisyn get a picture with Sidney Crosby? Then I noticed the pictures on the walls in the background, and then I remembered the subject line, “Check this out. An old friend dropped by.” And that’s when I got it.
Suddenly I started yelling out loud, “HE’S IN MY HOUSE, HE’S IN MY HOUSE!” Naturally my co-workers came over to see what was going on, asking, “Who? Who’s in your house?”
“Sidney Crosby!” I bellowed. “Look, look at the picture, he’s in my house!” I was filled with awe, excitement and disbelief all at the same time. Because sure enough, Sidney Crosby had stopped by my home. He’d remembered the house with the sign and the jersey, and stopped. He’d parked his SUV in my driveway, walked up the walkway, rang the bell and when my wife answered he said, “Hi, I’m here to sign a jersey.” It was unbelievable! Sidney came to my house!
While he was there that day, Sidney signed three hockey jerseys, a T-shirt and a picture of my daughter from when she played minor hockey with the Tasa Ducks. When I got home from work that day and looked at all the Sidney Crosby-signed memorabilia, I was simply amazed at how incredible this was. Sidney Crosby had been here, in my house and had signed my jerseys!
Even after several months had passed since Sidney Crosby had taken time out of his day to drop into my house to sign my jersey, I was still shocked. This was not a publicity stunt. There was no cameraman, reporter or team representative with him. This was just Sidney Crosby, world’s best hockey player, making a fan’s dream come true!
~Darryl Pottie
Enfield, Nova Scotia
Joni and Me
Keep a good heart. That’s the most important thing in life. It’s not how much money you make or what you can acquire. The art of it is to keep a good heart.
~Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell is my Canadian talisman. She has provided the soundtrack for my life. I remember hearing her sweet voice on the radio when I was in the backseat of my mom’s Pinto, and how it made me feel safe and happy. When I was madly in love, it was Joni who played on the CD player while we drove to my boyfriend’s cottage, the landscape of the Canadian Shield becoming more rocky and rugged as we blew smoke rings out the window. Her songs were the perfect backdrop for sparkling lakes and feeling wild and free. Her voice mingled with the smell of pine trees, and the magical sight of the northern lights crossing over each other like glowing sheets on a celestial clothesline.
Joni had the voice of the sweetest songbird and the soul of a poet. She spoke to me when she was an outsider at other people’s parties, and when she felt like a gypsy with jangling silver bracelets on her arm. Later, when that boyfriend broke my heart, it was Joni who patched it back together. Somehow Joni could sing about heartbreak but remain wry and sane. I’d listen to her sing, “dreaming of the pleasure I’m gonna have/watching your hairline recede my vain darling,” and marvel that she could still sound affectionate in her lyrics. Her optimism managed to steer me away from bitterness. For a while I toyed with the idea that I was Joni’s long lost daughter whom she sings about in “Little Green.” After all, I was the right age, and my sister did always tell me I was adopted whenever we fought as children.
“Are you serious?” my mother scoffed when I presented my theory. “You and your sister both have my feet. Sorry to break it to you sweetheart, but you’re my daughter through and through.” It was true. My sister, mother and I do have identical feet — strange, solid potato-farmer paws. Perhaps my bulky feet explain why I hate skating. I find ice skates incredibly uncomfortable and the whole ordeal to be treacherous. I’m sure Joni has delicate fairy-like feet that slip easily into ice skates. There is a photograph of Joni on her Hejira album, where she is skating like an exotic bird on a frozen pond, a cape of feathers spread out behind her. She looks like she could stay on the ice forever, untouched by the cold, impervious to tumbles and broken limbs.
Not long after Joni nursed me back from my broken heart, I was working on call as a massage therapist for a big Toronto hotel. But it was not the glamorous gig I had envisioned. In fact, I hated the creepy guests and the last-minute appointments. Usually I’d get a call in the evenings when I was already in my pyjamas and safely ensconced behind a TV tray of supper. Although I needed the money, I would often turn the work down. One night, when I was in my bathrobe with a bowl of ice cream, the hotel called. I was already saying that I was busy when the manager said the guest requesting a massage was Joni Mitchell. I was in a cab within minutes.
As I rushed to the hotel I worried that my icon would disappoint me, be dismissive, or rude or self-important. I was also afraid that I’d disappoint her, that my touch would feel hesitant or pokey, that she’d be alarmed by the nervous tremble in my hands and it would set her on edge.
When Joni opened her hotel room door she was on the phone talking in a low voice. She was lovely. I saw her guitar case leaning against the wall and squealed inwardly. I pretended to be a professional while I set up my table, but on the inside I was trying not to pass out. We didn’t talk beyond which muscles needed extra attention, and somehow I miraculously kept my cool.
At the end of her treatment she thanked me and said it was “delish.??
?
Joni thought my hands were delish. I almost did back flips. When I was at the door I managed to squeak that it was an honour to meet her. I didn’t try to keep the receipt she signed or palm a small item from her room as a souvenir. I don’t remember if she tipped me, and I didn’t try to shake her hand. I was almost cross-eyed with giddiness.
It’s amazing that meeting Joni Mitchell in a hotel room was a pivotal moment in my life, while I was merely a blip in her evening. I tap-danced the entire way home while she probably smoked a cigarette, fell asleep and forgot all about me.
It’s okay to meet your heroes when your hero is Joni Mitchell. She remains a legend and someone I would like to emulate. She is an embodiment of Canada: lonely and wild, harsh and poetic. Unapologetic and fierce. You can’t put her in a box, say she is just a folky-hippy or a jazz artist or a painter or a poet. Likewise, you can’t say Canada is just snow and ice and big trees.
Recently, at age seventy-one, Joni became the new face for Saint Laurent, leading the wave of older, strong women who are being featured in fashion campaigns. The photo shoot features Joni in a long white dress with flowing sleeves, those cheekbones as fierce as ever, and when she swoops her arms it reminds me again of the Hejira image of her skating across the ice. When talking about the campaign in New York Magazine she reminisced about how Warren Beatty once admonished her for carrying a Chanel bag when she should have been representing hippy/artist ideals. She scoffed and asked why she had to give up her individuality to belong to the club. She could have a wild heart and also love high fashion.
No one can pigeonhole Joni. She will never be tamed. Neither will Canada. The landscape will always be wild, the climate can be brutal, but overall it is awe-inspiring. The rest of us can just stand back and admire, and be grateful we are a part of it. I’ll never like the cold and embrace winter. I’ll never skate on a frozen pond like a mythical bird. I may not be Joni Mitchell’s long lost daughter, but I basked in her presence for a moment, and she thought my hands were delicious.
~Kristine Groskaufmanis
Toronto, Ontario
Never Give Up on Your Dreams
I honestly believe that my best work is in front, not behind me. I am driven by a deep passion and need to make a difference and leave this world a little better than when I arrived. That’s what keeps me going.
~Rick Hansen
In 1985, like most Canadians at the time, I watched in awe the heroic efforts of Rick Hansen as he set out on his Man in Motion World Tour to raise awareness for spinal cord research. For the next twenty-six months I checked the news daily for updates as Hansen made his way around the globe, wheeling the equivalent of two marathons every day through thirty-four countries on four continents. We all watched in amazement as he pushed himself in his wheelchair through the most dismal of weather conditions, up and down mountains that would reduce the sturdiest and most able-bodied among us to quivering masses of jelly. He hauled himself up the Great Wall of China, over deserts and rocky terrain, enduring blizzards, freezing rain, and scorching heat as the seasons unleashed their harshest, most dramatic conditions.
Most days there was film footage of Rick Hansen on the news, his massive biceps working at a level of strength most of us can only imagine as he moved with grace and total concentration. I was particularly struck by the sight of his index finger poking through torn gloves, swollen and bandaged, bloodied from wear and tear after thousands of hours spent pushing his wheelchair.
Early in 1987, Hansen and his team were nearing the end of his Man in Motion World Tour, making their way through Ontario. On a chilly March day I joined a cheering crowd of thousands gathered along Princess Street in Kingston, Ontario to catch a glimpse of the tour. The wind off the lake sent stinging hits of icy snow in our faces, which nobody seemed to notice. I found a telephone pole to lean on while I waited; at the time I was eight months pregnant with my first child and grateful for something to lean against.
There was a celebratory air as we waited to see our national hero. And then, all of a sudden, there he was. Rick Hansen sped past us, smiling as we cheered and waved, his arms pumping their familiar rhythm as he pushed his chair through the whipping snow. I had a very real sense of being in the presence of greatness. And I vividly remember wrapping my arm around the telephone pole and crying, overcome by the enormity of the moment.
* * *
Ten years later I was living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, raising a young family and working full-time as a musician. Rick Hansen was due to make a stop at the Metro Centre in Halifax to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Man in Motion World Tour. He’d be available for a meet-and-greet with the public. My admiration and hero-worship of Hansen hadn’t lessened since my sighting of him in Kingston, so on the day of his appearance I slipped out on my lunch break and made my way down to the Metro Centre at top speed.
I arrived too late to hear him speak, so I satisfied myself by standing at the back of the crowd peering over heads, absorbing the excitement in the room while officials and civilians took to the stage alongside Rick Hansen. People spoke from their hearts with gratitude for all he had done — his strength and perseverance in the face of adversity. The speeches were brief, some presentations were made, and then it was announced that Rick had a half hour to spend with the crowd. I rummaged in my purse for a pen, and clutching my Man in Motion Tenth Anniversary Tour brochure, I joined the waiting crowd.
As he made his way down the ramp from the stage I was so unnerved, I considered leaving. At that moment Rick Hansen smiled and extended his hand to a young man in a wheelchair and I watched, fascinated, as the two men began to talk. Rick’s focus was so complete, his interest so genuine, it was as though they were the only people in the room.
I managed to pull myself together, and reminded myself that here was a person who had pushed himself around the world in a wheelchair to further a cause he believed in. The least I could do was to gather my courage and thank him for doing so!
Along with everyone else in the room I fell under Rick Hansen’s spell, his ability to put people at ease, and his genuine interest in their stories. One woman wept as she spoke to him; he held her hand and smiled his encouragement, not once breaking eye contact with her as she struggled to find the words. A tall, strapping man warmly shook Rick’s hand and thanked him. He had broken his back in an industrial accident a decade earlier. “I’m one of the lucky ones,” he said before shaking Rick’s hand and walking away. Rick nodded and smiled and gave him a thumbs-up.
And then Rick Hansen turned and looked directly at me. He held out his hand — the very hand that had pushed him in his wheelchair up the Great Wall of China and around the world. I looked at that well-muscled hand, the index finger bearing scars from his journey, scars I had seen as open wounds on news clips ten years earlier. He smiled as I took his hand and shook it.
To my complete surprise, I was calm and articulate. Like the others before me I spoke from my heart. I told him that in March of 1987 I had stood on Princess Street in Kingston, Ontario, vast with child, weeping as he wheeled by with his entourage. I added that some magic dust must have flown up from his wheels and landed on us, because there we were, ten years later, my daughter — that very same daughter — recently diagnosed with juvenile diabetes and taking the changes in her life in stride, making the best of a lousy situation. I thanked Rick for his example, and told him that our whole family had taken inspiration from him, a man who had become a paraplegic at age fifteen in an accident.
At which point Rick Hansen smiled and thanked me — me! — and asked me to wish my daughter all the best. Then he signed my brochure for my two children: To Tamsyn and Avery — Never give up on your dreams!
I’m pleased to say that they haven’t.
~Binnie Brennan
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Keep Moving
True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others, at what
ever the cost.
~Arthur Ashe
The arid landscape is hot and dry. Our heavily laden steps kick up swirls of fine dust that mark the patrol’s serpentine movement through the grape rows and mud walls of Kandahar.
Everything feels routine. My only concern is my struggle with the eighty or so pounds of weapons, armour and assorted kit on my body — actually a light load for this day — and where my rifle is pointing as I stomp the trail behind the soldier ahead of me. My mind loves to drift at times like this. It shies away from discomfort quicker than I can shackle it to the here and now. I try to focus. Left foot forward. My mind drifts. Right foot forward.
I ponder the ridiculousness of where I am. I’m the first born of a first-born child, and the first Canadian-born of a family line. I am an heir to Canada and a son of the Philippines. My destiny is to be short, well fed, momma-loved, and working in something technical and safe. I’m supposed to be married to a short, well fed, papa-loved Filipina beauty who does teeth for a living or some such noble way of life.
I’m not supposed to be who I am, but fate didn’t bring me here. I’m a volunteer, like every other soldier in this patrol, and I’m on my second tour in Canada’s latest war. My entire life at this point is devoted to this duty, and I’ve never been happier. I’m the first of my line to serve our new country. I’m a son of immigrants, just like most of my fellows were in the big wars decades ago.
The column suddenly stops and the dust settles. My mind quickly returns to the here and now. I’m aware of the heavy weight of the kit pulling down on me. The man ahead sets his rifle on a mound of dirt toward the right. I do the same toward the left. I don’t quite know what’s going on, but something is definitely up. Others closer to the front are making gestures about something in the distance. The normally idle chatter of the radio is now an unending ramble of grids and descriptions, “…to our direct front… likely enemy… imminent contact…”