Ill-fitting Canadiana

Last night the Vancouver Canucks were defeated in game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. They were shut out by a supremely talented goalie and solid defenders. And they simply didn't play as well as the Bruins did. The Yanks deserved to win the cup. In fact, when the cup goes on tour to players' hometowns, it'll spend more time in Canada than it would have if Vancouver had won because there are a lot of Canadians who play for Boston.
Hardly soothes the sting of losing, though. The team that quite literally bears the name of the entire nation, the city that was our face in the Olympics - in the moment where it counted they couldn't bring it. Maybe next year. Worked for the Penguins.
I watched something today that hurt me more than watching the yellow-and black clad crushers of a national dream skate jubilantly around our ice rink carrying Lord Stanley's cup. Today I read the news and watched the videos of the riots downtown after the game.
I am ashamed of being Canadian. It's not even as easy as saying that those were some stupid drunk guys who took this too seriously. As a nation, we would have owned the victory. We would have owned the celebration and communal spirit. We would have owned the party. It behooves us to own the shame of this moment. Like it or not, these people represented us to the world and the image sticks.
I think sometimes we become too willing to distance ourselves from people we are associated with the moment they do something that's hugely inappropriate. We decide that they were never really part of the group. That way, the polluting image of their wrongdoing can seem like it settles more distantly from us. I run into this same problem every time some nutjob preacher in the South goes postal and starts burning Korans or protesting at grave sites or sleeping with prostitutes. It is too easy to say that he doesn't represent me. He does! He waves the same flag and calls himself the same name. It ought to break my heart and upset me that people misrepresent Christians that way. And it ought to break our heart; it ought to matter that Canada was so crudely misrepresented last night.
Here's the big newsflash, of course: it's not like it's the first time I've been ashamed of the maple leaf. I've been ashamed of this country, and I don't think it makes me less of a patriot to say so. I have been ashamed of this country when they ignored their own history and political system and re-elected criminals into our highest political offices. I have been ashamed of this country when it sat idly by and did nothing to ease the suffering of victims of war and turmoil in sub-Saharan Africa but jumped at the chance to be dragged into the Afghan quagmire. I was ashamed when I learned about the ongoing every-day injustices visited on our First Peoples by our governments' continuing unwillingness to follow our own laws and fulfill our own legal treaties. I was ashamed to learn that Canada was the only western non-communist nation in the UN to not ratify the UN Declaration of Human Rights when it came out this century. I was ashamed when Habs fans booed the American national anthem when they played against Boston a couple years ago in the playoffs. I was ashamed when the videos and interviews of one of our Olympic gold medalists revolved around a massive party and an equally massive stein of ale. Canadians are not good people just because they're Canadians. In fact, being Canadian may make you "peaceful" or friendly, but only because Canadians are apathetic. Canada is one of the most difficult and infertile places for the spread of the gospel. No one in this country actually cares about anything. And that is shameful. We own that.
On July 1st I'll be wearing my Canada t-shirt and waving my flag and singing along with Stompin' Tom Connors like the rest of us. But I'll do so knowing that this present shame is partly mine for waving the same flag as the ignorant and indulgent morons who lit cars on fire yesterday. The same maple syrup flows through my veins. Maybe it's about time everybody stopped trying to distance themselves from the stupid people and started wondering whether we might be taking our sports so seriously because we choose to not care about things that matter.