Take me out to the hockey match,
Let me push through the crowd.
Buy me some beer and some fattening snacks,
I won't bother to button my slacks.
So it's root, root, root for the home team,
If they lose we'll find someone to blame,
So it's check, slash, skate towards the goal
At the old hockey game!!!

Yeppers, this past weekend for I took part for the first time in perhaps one of the most sacred of all Canadian rituals: going to a hockey game.

Some neighbors down the street gave us tickets to the annual "Legends Match" in which a group of Hockey Hall of Famers (or Hall of Famer quality players) get together and play a hockey game for charity. Apparently it's a really big deal and these folks' careers are folkloric in nature.

Considering I was raised in the NFL/AFL tradition, I suppose I appreciated as much as ble the action on the ice. However, what I found more interesting was watching people and the crowd dynamics.

Now I'm no expert what so ever on sporting events of any kind. I was forced to play in the pep band for high school football games and that's about it. But, from what I could tell there were many of the same elements that you'd expect from sports fans. People dressed in their teams' outfits; lots of beer and opportunities to clog your arteries; and the usual amount of generalized and play specific hootin' and howlin'.

But there were some interesting differences for me. First, on two occasions, complete strangers asked my partner and I to watch their "stuff" while they went foraging for food and/or bathrooms. Dude, seriously, I was flabbergasted. I can't imagine anyone I know living in NY who would ask strangers to look after their expensive coats and cameras. Despite having been here nearly 5 months, the friendliness of Canadians is still unnerving to me (see my July 7, 2006 for some of my early thoughts on this specific topic).

Second, the Canadian organizers of this match included women alongside the men as both players and coaches. It was so empowering to see them out there on the ice as equals with the men and even more empowering to see the number of young girls in the stands wearing hockey jerseys from the pee wee teams they play on.

Third, I'm still thrown off by not always being barraged by homophobia and by being "seen" as a queer person. An older man in his 60's struck up some chit chat with us that ended up with him joking with us about not necking in the bleachers and about how politically correct (or not depending on who you are) the word "dyke" is. THEN! as if having this older man being so comfortable having these kinds of conversations with us wasn't cool enough, the entertainment between periods was the Nylons, a well known gay men's a cappella quartet. Can you imagine this being the half time entertainment at the NFL All Stars Game or the Superbowl?! Man, the responses to that would make the ones to the "Janet incident" look like people just calling in for the Jerry Lewis Telethon.