Rene Rancourt is a Boston Garden Legend. Age Unknown, he has been singing the American and the Canadian National Anthems before Bruins games for 35 years. He is, quite frankly, The Man. In 2004, the Bruins' rivalry with the Montreal Canadians mixed in with politics in the first round of the playoffs. Montreal fans brutally booed the U.S. National Anthem during the first two games of the First Round of the Playoffs. In response, the Boston fans stood and cheered and knocked together those horrible thundersticks during Rancourt's stirring version of the Canadian National Anthem. I'm telling you, Rene Rancourt makes grown men cry with his Anthem singing. You may have heard the song a million times, but that dude bangs it out. I'm a much bigger fan of the Canadian National Anthem than the American National Anthem. I'm hoping at some point the U.S. could have an American Idol-like show in which we try to write a better National Anthem and everyone gets to vote. "American Anthem?" Janet Jones Gretzky could be a judge for symmetry's sake.

Anyway, the 2004 cheering of the Canadian National Anthem is a golden moment of class for a New England Fan Base that has kind of a bad reputation in the class department. But maybe unfairly. I was there the day Fenway Park gave Yankees manager Joe Torre a standing ovation on his first game back after cancer treatment. And I was there the day Charles Barkley grabbed a microphone and addressed the Boston Garden crowd to a standing ovation at the halftime of a Celtics/Rockets game one day after his career-ending injury. Fenway gave a standing O to DiMaggio during his last appearance, and they will do the same for Derek Jeter. Perhaps we pick our moments when it comes to class. Or, given the time to think about how we want to respond, our better, smarter angels are victorious.

The Canadian National Anthem is just frankly an awesome song. I wish it was played before all NHL hockey games. If I were in charge of the league there would be an even amount of Canadian and American teams and those would be the two conferences. I'd keep both New York teams (move the Islanders to Brooklyn, for my own personal convienence), Boston, Chicago, Buffalo, Washington, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Minnesota, New Jersey, Detroit, Dallas (they have a huge fanbase, what are you gonna do?), St. Louis, L.A., maybe move a team to Hartford, Anchorage or Milwaukee. Then add in a bunch of Canadian teams in Regina, British Columbia, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Hamilton, etc. Have a Canadian conference and an American conference. You can't tell me that regular season game between Quebec and Hamilton wouldn't be a barnburner. Or that, when the Toronto Maple Leafs came to your Canadian Town you wouldn't want to be at that game. Hockey is Canada's game. We're just borrowing it here.

Under that scenario, a U.S. team would always be playing a Canadian team for the Stanley Cup. The All-Star game would always be Canada v. U.S. And, if the Vancouver Gold Medal Hockey Game was any example, everyone would be happy and would probably watch. There is a healthy, awesome rivalry between the U.S. and Canada in hockey that transferred over to the ice during that Gold Medal Game. It was not just the best hockey game many of us had seen in decades, it was the most watched in, like, ever.

One drawback to the rivalry has been the booing of the American National Anthem. Maybe more understandable in 2004, when the U.S. was invading countries for no reason. I mean, we're still there, but we're trying to get out. Leaving is the hardest part, as Senator Tom Petty once sang. It may just be a Montreal thing. I don't remember if Ottawa or Edmonton booed the National Anthem during their recent Stanley Cup Finals. And, yeah, I get it. America sucks. We're the big boisterous polluting nation to your South where the sun actually comes out once in a while and Summer isn't just a week in July. All of Canada's most talented folks usually move down here and become U.S. citizens to become even bigger stars. But you guys have health care and that pronouncing "about" thing. So I'd say it's a wash. We should be Abbot and Costello, Batman and Robin. But the truth is, Robin secretly hates Batman. We saw that with Scottie Pippin's recent blasphemer statements about how Michael Jordan maybe isn't the greatest basketball player of all time. Even if he's not, Pippin should say he is. Without Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippin would be just another good basketball player with no championship rings. A less funny Charles Barkley. So I get why Canadians might hate Americans. We're such jackasses, it's true.

But that's no reason to boo our National Anthem. I'd like to think I live in a world where Canadians react to things Better Than Americans Would. Canadians are nicer than us. You don't invade countries; and when I was abroad in the Czech Republic, I frequently pretended to be Canadian so I wouldn't have to talk about American foreign policy. Which is generally asinine. If I was the President, my foreign policy would be directed by Noam Chomsky. Just whatever he wants, that's fine. Let him be our moral compass for a while.

I don't get why Canadians boo our National Anthem publicly at big hockey games. You can whistle all you want during it, we don't really get that whistling thing. Americans don't hear whistling as booing. We just think it's wolf whistle cheering. So, that's fine. But booing is booing. Have you ever heard boos? They are amazingly cutting. What a sound! It is no fun to be booed. I personally like being booed during poetry readings more than I like Poetry Applause. I have a complicated relationship with applause. Laughter I like. Applause? Eh. Booing I love! But, in general, booing is terrifying. And being booed by Canadians is even more jarring. It's one thing if you're booed in Philadelphia or Chicago. That's like being greeted warmly. Canadians booing? That's like being spit on by an angel. Or having a unicorn take a crap on your chest while you're sleeping.

Can we skip that part of the Stanley Cup Finals this year? Hockey is the one sport in which an award is given for Sportsmanship. And that the series doesn't end until all the players on both teams have shaken hands. I'd like to think that that's the Canadian influence. I wish baseball players would greet each other with handshakes before games. And American football players would all bow in prayer together for their safety before kick-offs. In soccer, they shake hands before all games. But it's easier to be charitable and sportsman-like before a game. It's quite another thing to line up and congratulate the people who just beat you. That's real sportsmanship, and that is one of the truly great things about hockey. We love our games because they teach us something about ourselves, about who we really are when all the pressure is on. Those who act with grace and humanity in such moments deserve our profound respect. In hockey, the National Anthems set the tone for the game.

No doubt, the Stanley Cup Finals will be heated affairs. Let's all set a tone of sportsmanship and civility to begin them. I honestly will be happy for Vancouver if they win the Stanley Cup over the Bruins. If the Bruins win, I will be experiencing feelings I haven't felt since 2004 or 2002. The Celtics always win, so their victories in my lifetime simply confirmed our birthright as fans. But if the Bruins end up victorious, I will be witnessing something I never thought I'd see in my lifetime. The Stanley Cup is the greatest trophy in all of sports. And to see it lifted up by my Bruins is unthinkable. I want to sip chowder from the Stanley Cup. That's what I'd rather be thinking about during these Finals. Not Booing. Booing begets stories about booing (like this one I guess). But, if you're reading this, there is still time for Vancouver to take the high road. Let's enjoy hockey! And save the booing for the actual game.

Jim Behrle tweets at @behrle for your possible amusement.

Photo by Dan4th, from Flickr.

---

See more posts by Jim Behrle

46 comments

I can deal with being emasculated by China though. It's like losing a bar fight to a bouncer named Tiny: everyone appreciates the effort and is seriously just relieved you didn't end up dead. But there are no real tough guys at the Winter Olympics, only a bunch of slippery Bradley Cooper lookalikes with names like Lljljlars Krkkynyk who are going to charm your girlfriend with their naturally rosy complexions and then ride her like a goddamn NordicTrack. These guys play ice hockey like the happy little munchkins on a frozen lake that they once were: they glide, they soar, they "use every inch of the ice." They are graceful and fleet of foot. They are really good. They are pussies.

And so the rallying cry of Team USA seems to be: if you can't join them, beat the shit out of them. Brian Burke, the U.S. men's ice hockey team team's general manager (who sounds like a butcher in his spare time), has a vision. "There will be some beef on this team; there will be some muscle," he said back in August. "We'll need some big-body guys, and guys who can win face-offs, block shots-and some bangers. We'll need some beef on the hook among those bottom six forwards."

I know. Hockey people talk really weird. But with apologies to Jonathan Safran Foer, Operation American Beef might be our mediocre team's only real chance at success. There's even something of a method to the meatness, because for the first time in, I think, ever, the games will be played on a smaller NHL-sized rink rather than the roomier "international" ice that those slippery Finns know how to use every inch of. Which means: $10 million in capital cost savings, 500ish additional seats, 13.5 fewer feet of ice width-wise and thus, according to the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences, "significantly more collisions of all types in all categories and subdivisions within categories." (The subdivisions are there to differentiate between poundings "involving the head directly or indirectly.")

In other words, per square inch of ice surface, there will be that much more glass-boarded perimeter against which Brian Burke's Big Body Bangers can subdivide the skull of Lars from Ljungby. U! S! A!

***

The rationale for the smaller rink is nothing more than that it was already there, home to the Vancouver Canuckleheads (a dis I learned in 1994 as a young Rangers fan that comes second only to "Toronto MakeBeliefs" in the annals of searing nicknames for struggling Canadian franchises). But the rink will still be getting a makeover, if only nominally: IOC rules prohibit the corporate branding of Olympic venues, and so the General Motors Place-aka The Garage-will be temporarily and blandly rechristened as the "Canada Hockey Place", as in: "...and we'll see you back here at the Canada Hockey Place right after a few words from Coca-Cola! The official soft drink of Vancouver 2010! And Visa! Proud partner of the Olympic Games! Visa: it's everywhere you want to be!"

According to the most important primary source documentation of our time, Internet Comment Sections, the locals were none too pleased to hear of the change. "Banning a Corporate name?" wrote one Dr. Andrei Smyslov on the CBC's website. "How ridiculous given the Olympics are only about Corporate advertising. Who are they trying to fool?" Word. Even amateur linguists (word!) took offense. "Canada Hockey Place sounds like an English translation from another language that didn't quite make the jump into the lexicon pool," Steve778 lamented. I LOL'd.

There is dark comedy to be found in the fact that a sad clunker of a company like General Motors, now majority-owned by the US Treasury and the Canadian government, is considered too corporate for the Olympics, while another Winter Games venue is snared in the web of a real estate development holding company that is in turn clutched in the talons of a giant private equity fund-and it gets off scot-free.

I am referring to Whistler-Blackcomb, the massive ski and par-tay destination that boasts over 200 trails and 8,000 skiable acres and-far more relevant to the bottom line-6,540 seats across 17 restaurants that will gladly welcome both the Olympic crowds and the free marketing provided by the warm fireside stylings of Bob Costas over sweeping blimp footage onnnn NBC!

You can protest all you want that Whistler is the name of the TOWN! or Blackcomb is the name of the PEAK! and I will look at you calmly and not hear a thing-it's a skill I developed as a bruised and battered country club staffer-because I know in my heart that you are wrong. Whistler-Blackcomb is the name of the brand, a brand that has been developed and managed and focus-grouped to within an inch of its life by Intrawest, the same evil emperor that finds it appropriate to charge unsuspecting n00bs EIGHTY DOLLARS for the privilege of spending one lone day on the icy, shitty, chokingly crowded slopes of another of its brands: Stratton, in Vermont. That place is the worst.
(Picture via.)

Intrawest fancies itself the "Leader in Experiential Destination Resorts", and if you initially misread that as "Experimental" the way I did it's okay because we weren't really wrong. According to a 1999 Forbes article tellingly titled "The Disney of Skiing," Intrawest prefers its properties "meticulously planned, from the serpentine path of the village (it gives a greater sense of discovery than a straight path) to the 20-foot distance between wastebaskets (studies show people will carry an empty wrapper 25 feet before dropping it on the ground)."

I think zero of those studies took place in New York.

***

The story of Intrawest since that Forbes piece was written ten years ago is really just the story of the end of the world as we know it.

The stock, range-bound around its IPO price of roughly $17 for most of the early Naughties, began to take off along with the market in 2005. By 2006, large shareholder Pirate Capital was agitating for Intrawest to put itself up for sale (aw, remember the heady days of activist hedge funds?) because "public markets could not adequately value Intrawest's landholdings, or fully appreciate its complex joint ventures." Stupid public markets! And lo, in swooped Fortress Investment Group LLC with an offer to envelop Intrawest into its dark velvet private cloaks for a cool $2.8 billion, or $35 per share, a 32% premium over the stock's then-current price. Fortress no doubt baked in that hefty extra not because it expected a small explosion in the number of gapers shredding gnar but moreso because it expected a huge explosion in the value of Intrawest's portfolio of... all together now... real estate.

And then, and then, and then and thennnnn.... Fortress Investment Group LLC itself went public in February 2007. But if you were the poor sap who thought it would be a good idea to snag some Fortress in its hot $31 IPO, well then you, pal, have lost 87% of your cash money The stock now trades around $4.

It was trading at $1 last fall, which was when Fortress had a leeeetle beeet of deeeeficulty refinancing the $1.7 billion of debt it had taken on to buy Intrawest. The deal was pushed through at literally the eleventh hour, an experience that you would think would result in a kinder-gentler private equity behemoth. But please, no one ever made any money abiding by The Golden Rule, and so right around that time Fortress callously halted funding to a Vancouver builder named Millenium that had fallen a skosh behind on its scheduled payments.

This 2007 Maclean's article about Millenium's big project (ominously marketed as "Vancouver's Last Waterfront Community") skips you down the same terrible repressed-memory lane that a 1999 ode to Pets.com would have in 2002.

$200 million of orders on the first day of sales! A smirking, Ray Bans-wearing, up-from-the-bootstraps bigwig! Trendy bells and whistles that buyers care about "not one bit!" And, with hindsight, the grim specter of impending DOOM.

Whatever, why should we care? Who wasn't getting financing pulled a year ago? Well, it's just funny cause this particular Millenium development wasn't just any old highrise project: this was the Olympic Village for the very same Games that Fortress hopes to squeeze dollars from. (Cue Al Michaels: "It's a beautiful day here at Whistler-Blackcomb mountain!") But long story short: cleverly crafted contracts included scary language like "completion guarantee" that basically meant that the city of Vancouver, and not Fortress, was ultimately on the hook; and longer story shorter: so sorry, taxpayers!

That this is complicated, and confusing, probably means the IOC is equally bewildered-which is why they don't force anyone to call the mountain Canada Ski Place.

Just last week, Intrawest announced that it was selling off its floundering property Copper Mountain, a place where a younger and much more adorable version of me first learned what it was like to fall in love with an older woman. (If you're out there, Ski Instructor Jenny, call me!) "If this had occurred in the not-too-distant past one might expect the eventual buyer to come from the hotel or real estate sector, but times have changed," understated the editorial board of the Summit (CO) Daily News following the sale. The buyer was the Web 2.0-sounding Powdr Corp, and I haven't yet decided whether I'm going to believe that the chill bro-wner is really just about the skiing, dude. (John Darnaby Cumming? He has climbed Mount Rainier 69 times.)

Anyway! One dude who really is just about the skiing is Lindsey Vonn. I have much to say about her sometime else but just know that you're going to see a lot of this lady in the coming months, which is cool by me because she is smoking hot and just about everything an American woman should be. Her sponsors include Under Armour, and Alka-Seltzer, and Red Bull, and Intrawest nemesis Vail Resorts. And, if you're lucky, YOU. Check her out at the majestic Whistler-Blackcomb resort this February! Onnnnnnnn NBC!

Katie Baker writes mostly about sports and weddings and so the Winter Olympics just kind of seemed like the next logical step.

---

See more posts by Katie Baker

58 comments