The circus is coming to town
■ Pictou County will be wellrepresented when the Nova Scotia School Athletic Federation (NSSAF) holds its provincial cross-country championship meet at Trenton Park next Monday afternoon. According to track and field campaigner Pat Carty – who is newlyinducted into the Pictou County sports hall of fame, we should add – an estimated 20 athletes from local junior high and high schools are expected to lace ’em up and hit the ground running. If that number seems on the low side (it kind of does), it’s only because Pictou County has been a major force in track and field over the past number of years.
■ Maybe the biggest issue with the Toronto Maple Leafs is they don’t have enough sandpaper. They’re not abrasive enough, in other words.
■ With files from Captain Obvious: the Pictou County Scotians are giving up way, WAY too many goals in the Nova Scotia Junior Hockey League (16 in two games this past weekend). You can’t win that way, but they’ll get it straightened out. On the plus side, they aren’t nearly as bad as the Brookfield Elks, a team whose losing shows no sign of slowing down. The Elks, to their credit (not really) have actually won a game this year, when the Cumberland County Blues had to forfeit.
Update from Cleveland: things have gotten back to normal since the Browns were in first place a couple weeks ago: we have glaring problems to deal with.
These aren’t all of them, but they sure are biggies. 1.): the Browns are no longer in first place; and 2.): they must solve all the other ones – minor, little things such as back-breaking turnovers and brain-camp penalties – before they go to New England on Sunday to play the unbeaten and terrifyingly efficient Patriots.
■ A Question and Answer: Q: Will all those people who jumped on the Toronto Raptors bandwagon last spring still be there when and if the going gets tough this season?
A: No. But that’s alright. The Raptors still have tonnes of fans, and if a few of them jump off the ’wagon, so be it. They’ll never duplicate the magical run they had a few months ago, when the whole country was in their corner as they gutted their way to an NBA title.
NON-SPORTS THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
■ So long Maxime Bernier, we hardly knew ’ya. He certainly didn’t have much of a party on Oct. 21, and not for the first time (cymbal crash).
■ Isn’t there some way we can prevent the Bloc Quebecois from being a federal party? Don’t we still have treason on the books?
■ The radio had Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his rousing celebration speech early Tuesday morning.
Trudeau’s party didn’t lose the election, but to use a boxing terminology, they didn’t exactly leave the Conservatives beaten to a pulp and bleeding in the corner, either. It was at best, a technical knockout, close enough that we can expect a rematch. And oh, he’s gonna get it, too.
Trudeau showed much more enthusiasm than warranted during his speech, when you consider that more Canadians voted for Conservative leader Andrew Scheer (almost 250,000 more) than for Trudeau himself.
I guess he can take solace in the fact he’s still the PM, but Trudeau has two years – maybe not even that – to turn it around, or there’s a very good chance he will be kicked to the curb the next time we have to do this.
Which won’t take three or four years, either, and in the meantime, it’s going to be a circus in Ottawa.