Promise? Fulfilled

I was nine the first time I watched Canada play on an international stage -it was September 1972, and Canada was playing a best of eight game series with the Soviets, what would come to be called the Summit Series. Everyone, whether they were actually alive to witness it or not, remembers Paul Henderson's goal in the dying seconds of game 8, which clinched the series for Canada. What far fewer people remember however, is the wildly uneven road Canada took to game 8, and the tangible possibility we would lose, at our own game, when everyone on the planet was watching us.

During the intermission before the overtime period in today's Olympic gold medal game, I couldn't help but think of the Summit Series, which was the first time I remember being aware of how hard it was for Canada to win, even though we thought it should be a lot easier.

We are raised, skating on ponds and rinks in every nook and corner of this country, our ears filled with the notion hockey is "Canada's game", and we are stuffed full of the mythology that we dominate our sport in the global arena. That alleged dominance took a pounding in 1972, and it hasn't ever really recovered, even though we tell ourselves every chance we get that this time, gold is obviously ours. We are, after all, the favorites - at least in our own minds.

The Summit Series was split, 4 games played in Canada, 4 in the USSR. Russia took the first game 7-3 at the Montreal Forum (while ghosts wept), lost 4-1 in Toronto, and the teams played to a 4 all tie in Winnipeg. By the time Team Canada dropped game 4 5-3 in Vancouver, it was booed off the ice and we seemed on the verge of perpetual international embarrassment and a national group meltdown. The Soviets took game 5 in Moscow before Canada rallied to take three consecutive one goal games and the series, 4 wins to 3.

The Series was such a significant moment in the country's young history that I remember my elementary school, like hundreds across the country, ushering us out of classrooms and into the auditorium to huddle around the TV, so we could watch the games from Moscow live. It was my first communal experience of the power of sport to unite and unify a country.

All these professional observers who have been going on and on in the media from Vancouver about the "new" Canadian pride evidently weren't around in 1972. It seemed for a month that our entire purpose on earth was to play, and win, these hockey games, to show those Soviets that while they might play our game, they couldn't win our game. Certainly not against our best NHL players. We were then, as we are now, wrapped in our flag and proud of our country, our history, and our place in the world. Those who seem surprised at the outpouring of national pride during these Olympics don't remember how empty our streets were on game night in 1972. For nearly a month, the country held its breath, not at all sure anymore that our best would be good enough. In an era before satellites, DVRs, cable and internet, you had to be at home in front of the TV (or, if unfortunately elsewhere, with a transistor radio in hand) to share the experience, to follow the game as it unfolded. And we did on more than one occasion, hold our breath.

Today, giving up a tying goal to the U.S. team with 24 seconds to go, after several minutes of panicked scrambling around in our own end, seemed like 1972 all over again. And like 1972, Team Canada found some way to rally and close out a nailbiter with a key goal at a key moment.

During the opening ceremonies, Yellowknife poet Shane Koyczan performed his poem, "We Are More", which in hindsight was quite prescient about the view Canadians have of themselves, and how that is seldom the understanding the outside world has of us. Much of the national pride that we have seen play out across the country in millions of individuals these past couple of weeks is contained in the lines of the poem, which includes my favorite phrase, "We are an idea in the process of being realized". Today, with a men's hockey gold medal in hand, Canada's 14th overall of these Games, we have fulfilled the promise contained in that one line. No other country - not the U.S.A., not the U.S.S.R. - has ever done as well in a single Winter Olympiad. That we have now done something so momentous, in our own country, proves if nothing else that, as a country, we have left our awkward adolescence behind and are now fully exploring our confident young-adulthood. Long may we reign.