Читать книгу Let It Snow. Keeping Canada's Winter Sports Alive онлайн

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This is a country

where a man can die

simply from being

Caught outside

Likewise, Roch Carrier’s famous hockey sweater story incorporates all facets of Canada’s winter culture, from both a French and English perspective and the horror of having to wear the uniform of one’s dreaded rival in an unsympathetic public place. Winter shrivels in its impact besides such humiliation.

First Peoples curling five, possibly at Washakada Indian School in Elkhorn, circa 1898.

Perhaps the relationship between Canadians and the winter is best understood by Canadians transplanted from their homeland. It is now common for Canadian entertainers to head to the United States exporting their talents to a larger audience, but intriguingly, it appears that many of these entertainers can’t help sharing stories about their Canadian upbringing in interviews. Comedians such as Howie Mandell and Mike Myers are notorious for going off topic in interviews with stories about their Canadian childhoods. Myers’s connection with Canada resulted in a movie project based entirely on his love of Canada’s national game. Myers’s film, The Love Guru, centred around the main character helping to turn around the career of a hockey player on his favourite team, the Toronto Maple Leafs. The movie was a critical and commercial bust, but it affirmed the idea that while Myers hasn’t lived in Canada for years, his upbringing certainly remains influential in his writing and producing.