As close to a chat at the bar as PM is going to get
Offers anecdote about a hockey bet with Obama
Stephen Harper had, until Friday, never struck me as the pints-at-your-corner-pub kind of fella. He has always seemed, at least to me, a little too square, a little too serious — not a bad thing for a prime minister to be — and a little too suit and tie, with a country to run, to stop running it long enough to sidle up to the bar and talk to some ordinary people in a way that ordinary people actually talk.
But then there he was, Stephen Harper, our PM, at 8 a.m. Friday on TSN 1050, a Toronto sports talk radio station, speaking with co-hosts Mike Richards and David Bastl like any other hockey-loving hoser. Especially one deeply and historically invested in his devotion to the Toronto Maple Leafs, his hometown team.
Listen to him recount his first-ever visit to Maple Leaf Gardens in 1969 — or maybe it was 1970 — and hear his voice fill-up with wonder at the re- collection, teetering, precariously, on a ledge, sounding somewhere between responsible adulthood and happy-asa-little-kid-with-the-giggles:
“It was an exhibition game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens and so I went there and, you know, a few things stand out. I remember seeing [Leafs captain] Davey Keon, and he was my idol, and he was standing, like, 15 feet away from me,” Mr. Harper told TSN 1050.
“The Leafs came back. I believe they tied it in the final minute, to make it 2-2. But what I remember, and I was just a kid, but I went into the Gardens — and I had seen [the arena on TV] — but I remember sitting down and looking up and seeing those catwalks at the top of the building, way up there.
“I couldn’t imagine someone walking on those catwalks. It must have been terrifying. And it was just one of those things. It was overwhelming, but also a very different era, we wore a suit and tie. Everybody, not just in the [good seats], people put on nice duds to go to a hockey game, and you had a coat, especially down at ice level, because it was cold.”
The prime minister was just getting warmed up.
He wisely and correctly
They are still going to the rink every day for the
love of it
blasted the NHL shootout as a “terrible” way to decide a game. (He wants more sudden death overtime). He applauded our Canadian women’s team for being everything a Canadian should be, because they aren’t getting rich, our “girls,” like the pros that make gobs of money only a king could relate to. “They are still going to the rink every day for the love of it,” Mr. Harper said.
Nothing reveals the Canadian competitive spirit more than playing the Americans and nothing triggers a celebration quite like beating them, twice in Vancouver — as our men and women did — and twice again in Sochi. Mr. Harper had a side interest in the outcome — a wager with U.S. President Barack Obama.
Has Obama paid up for 2014?
“I haven’t received [payment] yet,” Mr. Harper told TSN 1050. “But, in fairness to President Obama, he has lost [hockey] bets to me before [laughter] and has always paid up. The last time what happened was then-U.S. ambassador [David] Jacobson brought over this, it was actually good American beer, I can’t remember what it was, but it was good. President Obama had signed it. So I thought, ‘ Oh Geez, I can’t really keep it. It has got the signature of the president of the United States on it.’ So we shipped it to the Hockey Hall of Fame for their collection.”
It is a great anecdote about a Canadian doing right by hockey by not drinking American beer. Any hockey story that starts with Obama and the Olympics, and a bet, and ends in the Hockey Hall of Fame is one worth retelling. Perhaps over some pints, some time.