SOLD: Beautiful Happyzine

In a manner of weeks Vancouver will be awash with the spectacular noise and excitement of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Canadians at home and abroad will be glued to their television sets, willing Team Canada to win gold in both men and women’s hockey (or ice hockey if you insist), our unofficial national sport. When I started travelling many blue moons ago, I thoroughly embraced the expat lifestyle but always promised I would return home for these Games. However, as so often is the case, the best laid plans are turned to distant dreams, when life gets in the way. In my case life has become a Kiwi boy. A year ago we decided to move to New Zealand from our current home in London. So, much time and money has been invested into making this move a possibility that taking a trip to Canada in the freezing cold month of January is, alas, out of the question.

Now a few of you may have picked up on me saying hockey is our unofficial national sport – lacrosse being our official one according to the men in the blazers. All over the world Canadians can be seen as a people obsessed with ice and hulking men travelling at frightening velocities, chasing and smashing a tiny black puck. North America, the Baltic States, Scandinavia, and a handful of other countries including Russia, Czech Republic and Slovakia all see hockey as a way of life. We are not alone in our obsession with this rough and tumble religion of the masses.

The first time I visited New Zealand my cab driver from the airport to my hostel told me about Canada’s rugby team. At the time I had a vague idea what rugby was. Basically, I thought it was American football or “gridiron”, without the padding. It turns out I was wrong. The idea that Canadians played this sport at an international level was astounding – how could I not know about this?

In time I figured out first what rugby was, next where Canada stands on the international stage and finally what rugby means to the country of New Zealand. It is much the same as what hockey means to Canadians. Like hockey, rugby is typically a game played by hulking men in an aggressive manner moving quickly up and down the playing field. Maybe it’s not so different after all.

Adopting a local team in their traditional local sport can be a great way to immerse yourself in a foreign culture, to turn your house into a home. Nothing is quite as energising as the feeling that circulates a town and stadium on big match day. Here in the England, Glynn, my Kiwi boy, has adopted Arsenal football team as his own. Now he gets to cheer when the English cheer and cry when the English cry. And this windy, rainy country doesn’t seem so alien. In fact it feels downright homey.

Growing up my Dad coached hockey and my brother played it. I spent many years watching  my brother do battle, keeping the most accurate of scores or maintaining a vital vigil at the penalty box. As an expat I’ve spent the last five years without hockey. To feed my cravings I’ve caught a few games at strange hours down in the local late night pub. I’ve travelled to Latvia and Sweden to see teams I have had no affiliation with fight it out – just to hear the grate of the blades skating the ice, the soft thunk of the puck into the goalie’s glove, the muffled shouts of the players beneath their sweat filled helmets. When I first moved to the UK I even emailed the captain of the Cambridge University hockey team to ask him if he had any suggestions on how to get a little more puck and ice into my life – turns out he was also Canadian and nice enough to reply to a stranger’s request.

However, a move to New Zealand means for a distinct lack of hockey on a more permanent basis. There will no longer be those small slices of hockey in nearby countries. I will mourn the loss of my right to be a hockey mom getting up before the sun rise to get to practice. But in the months to come I’ll be brushing up on my rugby knowledge, watching the Alternative Rugby Commentary and getting myself prepped for life in a land where the opiate of the masses is rugby or not my beloved hockey.

Tags: ex-pat, sports