Happy Tommy Douglas Day Weekend

Happy Victoria Day! A friend of mine is an emergency room nurse in a small but busy hospital which serves a large hinterland of cottage country in eastern Ontario. He tells me that the Victoria Day long weekend is always the busiest three-day period of the year as his hospital is inundated with injured patrons who have been in car or boat accidents, chopped or cut themselves with axes or chainsaws, fallen off ladders or roofs or otherwise maimed themselves often with alcohol-fueled carelessness. 

We stopped marking Queen Victoria's birthday on the 24^th of May in 1952 (although we still do every seven years) in favour of observing it on the Monday closest to but not after the 24^th. Victoria ruled the British Empire for 64 years, ending with her death in 1901. At the risk of offending Monarchists or United Empire Loyalists, Queen Victoria’s relevance to most Canadians has pretty much disappeared. Sure, she was an important figure in British history but maybe it’s time to change the name of our spring holiday long weekend, which marks the unofficial start to the summer season, to something more Canadian. I suggest that we call it Tommy Douglas Day. Douglas clearly deserves recognition as the driving force behind Canada's publicly funded healthcare system. It seems entirely appropriate to name this long weekend after him so that when dangerous drivers, drunken boaters and over-zealous weekend-warriors end up in the hospital over the next few days as a result of their letting loose on this long weekend, they can thank Tommy Douglas for bringing us the universal, single-payer healthcare insurance system we value so much. Have a great (and hopefully safe) Tommy Douglas Day long weekend!

Easter Greetings

Easter certainly has a lot of moving parts: the rabbits (which do not lay eggs), the eggs, the chocolate, the egg-shaped chocolates, the rabbit-shaped chocolates, the crucifixion of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus two days later, the traffic and shopping mayhem on Bad Thursday because everything imaginable is closed for the next four days…..and when we mix all of these unrelated elements together and then, as a final wildcard, throw in the fact that it can take place any time between the Superbowl and Victoria Day, based on the whims of  the lunar cycle in strange combination with with the randomness of the Gregorian calendar, Easter truly is the most incomprehensible annual event we still observe. That's why everything is closed for four days - to give us a chance to try to make some sense of it. One question I do often hear leading up to Easter is about what traditional festive meal is most appropriate to mark this unique occasion. The answer, for obvious reasons, is rabbit with eggs. Happy Easter!  

A New Take on Changing Our Clocks

 

Standard Time or DST: Must it be an “Either/Or” Choice?

Some of us will be a bit bleary-eyed this coming Monday morning from the hour of sleep snatched away from us on the weekend on account of our switch to Daylight Saving Time. We’ll hear plenty of griping about it too. Questions about why exactly it is that we change our clocks twice yearly, as most of us in North America have been doing since the early 20^th century, have grown over the past decade or two.  

A construct of the World War 1 period, Daylight Saving Time (DST) was initially created to save energy. Proponents also point to certain safety benefits and to some economic advantages related to tourism and recreation. Before the advent of DST, we remained on Standard Time year-round.

A Private Member’s bill called the “Time Amendment Act” was passed in the Ontario Legislature five years ago. The bill proposed that Ontario abolish Standard Time and remain on DST year-round. This has not yet been implemented because the bill also requires (quite appropriately) that Ontario’s bordering jurisdictions of Quebec, Manitoba, Minnesota, Michigan and New York State also do the same before we proceed with it. And none has done so – yet.

We tend to hear more complaining about the twice annual switching when we “spring forward” and lose an hour’s sleep than we do in November when we gain that hour back. It’s a nuisance they say - adjusting our clocks and our circadian rhythms twice annually - and the idea of scrapping the current practice does seem to have a good measure of popular support. As with many seemingly simple and logical ideas, the devil is very much in the details so before we all proclaim our agreement to scrap Standard Time altogether, let’s look at what it would actually mean.

Under Standard Time, in Toronto, on December 21^st, the sun rises at 7.50am and sets at 4.43pm – leaving us with less than nine hours of daylight and more than 15 hours of darkness. Most of us who travel to work each day in December do so in morning daylight and return home in late afternoon darkness. Children making their way to and from school enjoy daylight for each leg of their journey.

Were we to remain on DST through the dark winter months, as the Time Amendment Act proposes, morning daylight would then come an hour later. In Toronto, between November and March, that would mean darkness until almost 9am with most commuters and students completing their morning journeys before daybreak. Yes, evening darkness would also come an hour later with the December 21^st sunset coming at 5.43pm – still well before most commuters have arrived home.

I am an early riser. I like morning daylight and would prefer not to wait until 9am before I can see it. In my view, Standard Time offers the most judicious and sensible allocation of our less than nine hours of daylight during this dark five-month period. It allows for safe and well-lit travel to and from school for children even if the afternoon commute home for most workers is done mostly in darkness.

If we were to remain on Standard Time year-round as has also been suggested, in June, early dawn light in Toronto would arrive around 4am with the actual sunrise just after 4.30am. Sunset would be just after 8pm. Do we really want daylight at 4am?

A third possibility – one that has not been widely discussed, if at all – is to scrap both Standard Time and DST and settle half-way between the two - 30 minutes earlier than DST and 30 minutes later than Standard Time. Had we decided on this solution before this weekend which is now upon us, we would be preparing to set our clocks ahead on Saturday night by 30 minutes. Then we would never have to worry - or complain - about ever having to change them again. 

We could call it “Half-Baked Time” (HBT). Under HBT, in December in Toronto, sunrise would be at 8.20am and sunset at 5.13pm. In June, sunrise would be at 5am and sunset at 8.30pm. If we are determined to do away with the twice-yearly time changes, why must it be an “either/or” choice between DST and Standard Time?

In my view, Standard Time is best for the short days of winter and DST is best for the rest of the year. I don’t mind the current twice-yearly clock changing practice (which for many of us includes changing the batteries in our smoke and CO2 detectors) but if we, along with our neighbouring jurisdictions, really are determined to scrap the practice, I say let’s go with HBT.  

 

Adult-Onset Recreational Hockey

I never played organized hockey as a kid. Oddly, swimming was my winter sport from grade 6 through high school and in university, I mostly played squash in the winter. I cannot remember where or how I learned to skate but I do remember my mother taking my sister and me to Bob Patrick’s Sports in St. Catharines, Ontario to get “new” skates every couple of years at something called the “skate exchange”. I had hockey sticks for road hockey and somehow came to own a very stiff pair of 60’s style hockey gloves at some point in my childhood but I had never owned any real hockey equipment until the fall of 1991 when a friend named Wilson finally convinced me to try playing outdoor hockey - once. I agreed to come out only once, partly because I didn’t think I would enjoy it and mostly because I wanted him off my back about it. He had started organizing weekly shinny games at various City of Toronto outdoor rinks which required an extensive and persistent working of phone lines every week to pester those of us in his rolodex.

I think we played at Jimmie Simpson rink on Queen Street East that first time. I was awful and I struggled mightily but it was an epic workout and I survived. I had no helmet, no shin pads and no jock. My feet were cold and uncomfortable in my ancient skates. I lurched around the ice trying not to get in the way. But somehow it was ok and Wilson praised my courage in coming out and I think it was then that I realized that he was never going to let me slip out of his circle of weekly hockey phone calls. I was either going to have to avoid him completely or accept the fact that I had unwittingly become a hockey player of sorts. I got some used shin pads, an old helmet and a jock at Play it Again Sports in December of 1991 and played with Wilson and the others each week through the rest of the winter without any serious injury. My skating improved a bit too.  

A few weeks into the 1992-1993 season, I decided that a skate upgrade would probably make a big difference so I purchased the first pair of new skates I had ever owned at National Sports just after Christmas. After a painful period of working them in, my skating and my confidence improved. Wilson was able to book ice consistently on Thursday nights but at a different rink and at a different time each week. He dutifully called each of us every Thursday with the where and when. We carried on that same way through the 1995-1996 season. By the fall of 1996, Wilson had married, had a baby on the way and had moved to Oakville. He made it known that he would be stepping back from his hockey organizing duties but was still happy to play if someone else made the bookings and the phone calls (which soon transitioned to emails).

In the fall of 1996, I decided to step up and contact the City of Toronto permit office to ask when the rinks were opening and to inquire about possibly making the first booking. The permit officer asked me offhandedly if I had considered a seasonal weekly permit instead of a series of one-time reservations. There is an outdoor rink called Otter Creek about 800 metres from where I live but it had never been one of the 15 or so rinks Wilson had booked over the years. I said “how about Otter Creek on Thursday nights?” He said “Would 7.15 to 8.30pm work? That slot is available.” So I booked it, contingent on filing a permit application with all of our names, addresses and ages along with a certification of sorts that 80% of our group lived in the north Toronto area. The application asked for the name of the league or organization so I wrote “The Wilson Hockey League”. The permit was issued a week later. As of this writing (February, 2025), the Wilson Hockey League is now nearing the end of its 29th season at Otter Creek. The permit cost has increased from zero in the first couple of seasons to almost $2,700 this year. We play with goalies (usually) and full equipment. People watch us play every week. For many of us, Thursday night outdoor hockey is the highlight of every Toronto winter.

I would characterize the hockey played in the Wilson Hockey League as Serious Shinny. It is, above all else, friendly and we don’t keep score (the goalies say that they do) but our games are fast and competitive. Every year, as some in the group retire or move away, we add new players who are usually younger, faster and more fit that those they replace. Those of us who are the league’s founding members are now in our early sixties and most of us have learned to play smarter than we did twenty years ago as the youngsters whirl and stick-handle around us. But we run the league so they show the requisite respect and deference to us. Such is the culture of hockey.

What I really wanted to write about - and I’m just getting to it now - is the degree of pleasure that our outdoor hockey brings us. The group, even as it changes from year to year, offers a wonderful camaraderie - but not in the macho male “locker room” sense; we share a good-spirited bonding which occasionally leads to what our parents may have called “horsing-around”. But some of us now bring our progeny who are impressionable adolescents or teenagers and we don’t have to adjust our conduct for them. We’re mature and self-censored. That’s what happens when you’re sixty.

As for what happens on the ice, at various times throughout each season we battle wind, bitter cold, snow squalls and sometimes even rain but we still enjoy our share of perfect winter evenings with no wind and temperatures somewhere between minus 5 and plus 5 (the rink is artificially cooled). We have 20 non-goalie paying members signed up for the 16-week season but never do they all show up. Goalies, who must develop an intuitive sense of their position in the net as the creases are not marked, are the most difficult to recruit. In accordance with long-standing hockey tradition, our goalies do not pay fees. Rather, we go out of our way to accommodate them by picking them up, dropping them off and generally treating them like royalty. Ideally, we will have eight skaters on each side – five on the ice and three on the bench - but there are times when vacations, challenging weather conditions or the demands of a busy city life reduce our numbers to five or six or seven. These are the times when we invite anyone else around the rink to join in, be they fast-skating teenagers, girls, boys, children or parents. The game adjusts itself to the varying skill levels of the participants, allowing even the slowest and least skilled players (like I was in 1991) to be part of the game.

The joy that our outdoor hockey brings us feels difficult to describe. When most of the city’s population is engaged in sedentary indoor activity, there we are on a cold winter night playing a game for fun, getting great exercise and enjoying a collective sense of friendship and solidarity. As long as the City of Toronto continues to offer me a permit each year, the Wilson Hockey League will endure.   

 

 

Chiefs 32, Bills 29

In the Superbowl era (post 1967), the Buffalo Bills have played in the AFC Championship Game seven times and, thanks to four consecutive wins from 1991 through 1994, they still maintain a winning record of four wins and three losses. The first of those three losses came in January, 1989 in Cincinnati after posting a 12-4 1988 break-out season which began their great run under Marv Levy and Jim Kelly. The Bills were clearly punching above their weight that year after beating the Houston Oilers at home in the Divisional round. The Bengals won the game 21-10 and went on to lose the Superbowl to the 49ers. After the four consecutive wins, the next AFC title game for Buffalo was four years ago – in the COVID season of 2020. After narrowly beating the Colts in the Wildcard round, then the Ravens in the Divisional round, the Bills, again probably punching well above their weight, took a 9-0 lead against the Chiefs in Kansas City before falling 38-24. That loss set their record in conference title games back to 4-2.

Entering last night’s contest at Arrowhead Stadium, the Bills were two-point underdogs but a plurality of pundits whose prognostications I came across thought that their time had finally come and that the Chiefs drive for an unprecedented third straight Superbowl title would fall short and the Bills would go to their first Superbowl in 31 years. It was not to be as we know on this sobering Monday morning. A 32-29 loss has broken the hearts of Bills Mafia and will cause me to perform my annual ritual of putting away my Bills hats, shirts, jackets and pins until late July when training camp begins. The difference this time, compared to the two other title game losses, is that I really did feel that they would win the game last night. I was feeling pretty good all day long – a magnificent cross-country ski in powdery fluffy snow under blue Muskoka skies followed by a relaxing and rejuvenating sauna, a few dunks in the lake, a couple of beers, lasagna, coleslaw and a cheery pie for dinner. But they lost.

Over the past week, after the Bills beat the Ravens, my thoughts naturally turned to the possibility of the Bills making it to the Superbowl in New Orleans. Had they been successful last night, as a season ticket holder, I presumably would have been offered the option to enter a lottery of sorts for a shot at a pair of the block of tickets which the NFL allocates to each participating team. How many tickets would Bills fans be allocated? How would the lottery work? Would it be based on subscription seniority or on the quality of currently held season tickets or would it just simply be a “luck-of-the-draw” lottery? What would our chances be? When would we learn any of these details? These questions swirled in my mind over the past week as I looked with mild amusement and some trepidation at the possibility of camping on Lake Pontchartrain. Thankfully, there’s no reason now to fret about accommodations in Louisiana or the answers to any of these other questions. I still know none of them except that my friend Steve whose seats are next to mine in section 111 managed to get to three of the four Superbowls 30 years ago by way of the lottery. He only missed the first one against the Giants. His dad has been a season ticket holder since the 1960s and he was pretty sure that their very high level of seniority helped them in the lotteries. As for finding accommodations in Minneapolis, Pasadena and Atlanta 30 years ago, they booked hotels in places which were a couple of hours drive from the Superbowl venues, rented vehicles and drove in the to host cities for the games. I do obviously hope to learn the answers to the lottery questions one day. Maybe I’ll know a year from now.

The countdown to the opening of the new Highmark Stadium is now well underway. Only one season remains to be played at what I will now call by its original name, Rich Stadium, the brutalist concrete slab built in 1973 about 20 miles south of Buffalo in the sleepy town of Orchard Park. Its staggering 80,000 seats almost doubled the capacity of the Bills previous home, War Memorial Stadium which opened in 1937. Its nickname was “the Rockpile” so perhaps we should use “the Slab” to describe Rich Stadium as it now enters its final year as an NFL venue. I didn’t attend my first game there until 1988 – a 9-6 Bills win over the Jets which featured a blocked field goal attempt by Fred Smerlas and fans running onto the field and tearing down the goalposts to celebrate a division win. I have many other fond memories of great games and great wins there and some not-so-fond memories of ridiculously boorish fan behaviour and epic traffic jams. The boorish fan behaviour has moderated considerably as the league’s efforts to make the stadium experience more family-friendly have paid off and the “Lord of the Flies” atmosphere thankfully is no more. As for the traffic exiting the parking lots, it’s as bad as ever and I really do hope that it is improved at the new stadium. I also really wish that Dalton Kincaid had caught that fourth down pass. If he had, I’d probably be packing up my tent for some Louisiana camping.         

Bills 27, Ravens 25

Event tickets now exist only electronically in our Apple Wallets, Google Wallets or any other phone-based wallet apps which may exist. It’s quite straightforward really – you just open the ticket on your phone and scan it on the reader at the gate. It’s much more secure than any form of paper tickets they tell us and I am sure they’re right about that. During the tailgate festivities outside Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park yesterday afternoon, I was catastrophizing about the chaos which would ensue should the wallet / scanner system go down for any length of time before the game. Tens of thousands of fans would either be late or might decide to crash the gates. What a nightmare something like that would be, I mused. Then shortly after 5.30pm, once through security, I scanned my phone several times and received not the reassuring beep of a successful scan but a series of incomprehensible error messages - not what you want to see on your phone with 70,000 well-lubricated Bills fans lined up behind you. This attracted the attention of a stadium staff member with a tablet in hand who pulled me aside and offered to help. There was a major issue today she explained with a Google Wallet update which had not reached many Samsung phones, obviously including mine. She could not have been more helpful and said several times that this was not my fault and that we would sort it all out. After verifying my identity (she had my season ticket account details on her tablet) she sent me a text message with a security code for me to re-type into an email and send somewhere. Helpless without reading glasses as I was, I handed her my phone and asked her to drive. She obliged and a couple of minutes later I was able to “scan in” on her tablet and I was finally on my way. I was worried enough about containing Derrick Henry and didn’t need that kind of stress as game-time approached. These electronic app-based systems work just fine – until they don’t.

I started on my journey as a fan of the Buffalo Bills in 1978 and 1979 and by 1980 I was fully committed. In January 1981, still on Christmas break from university, I was picking up some hours as a dishwasher at the Crock and Block restaurant in St. Catharines, Ont. In the bowels of the kitchen there, on Saturday January 3^rd I was able to catch the great Van Miller’s radio play-by-play call of the Bills first playoff game since 1974 as they fell in the Wildcard Round to the Chargers in San Diego. A year later they won a Wildcard game at Shea Stadium against the Jets then lost a heart-breaker at Cincinnati in the Divisional Round where on the potential game-tying touchdown drive, Joe Ferguson’s fourth down pass to Lou Piccone for a first down deep in Bengals territory was called back on a delay of game penalty. The Bengals then faced the Chargers a week later in the AFC Championship Game in what became known as the Freezer Bowl. The game-time temperature was minus 23C with sustained winds of 40kmh making for a windchill of minus 50C. I watched the game in London, Ont and I can clearly recall wondering why Americans choose to make football a winter sport. I’ve been wondering the same thing on-and-off ever since.

Weather forecasts in the days before last night’s NFL Divisional Round playoff game in Orchard Park portended the coldest weather to be experienced in this part of the world since the retreat of the glaciers some 10,000 years ago. No amount of insulated clothing or charcoal or electrified heated socks could keep us warm for six hours in conditions this harsh, we were warned. Turns out that the actual extreme cold weather is set to begin today and had not arrived by game-time yesterday or even by the time the game ended. Was it cold? Sure. Minus 8 or so which was fine with proper clothing which we certainly had. The game-changer was the battery-powered heated socks which performed and lasted as advertised. They seemed like a bit of a frivolous investment at $250 but the thought of them keeping my feet warm through many more January Bills home playoff games in the years to come actually makes my feet feel warmer even sitting here at my desk in north Toronto on this Buffalo Football Victory Monday.

What a game it was to be at: an electric crowd (maybe partly from the socks), a high stakes playoff game with light snow falling throughout and, in the end, a Bills win. The breaks certainly went their way as the Ravens turned the ball over three times to the Bills none and their long-tenured and reliable tight end Mark Andrews could not close the deal on a two-point conversion with a minute and thirty seconds remaining as the Bills hung on for a two-point win. Overtime seemed likely as I watched Lamar Jackson’s pass appear to land in his breadbasket but when the Bills fans in the section behind him erupted in joy, I knew he had dropped it. An easy recovery of an onside kick then one first down and it was time for victory formation. Now another January trip to Kansas City – this time for a berth in the Superbowl – is next week’s assignment for the Bills.

I got to bed just before 3am and I can say that I definitely haven’t been up that late since last year’s Divisional Round game against the Chiefs. Sitting in the parking lot for a solid hour after the game was much more enjoyable this time around as the Bills had won and the callers into WGR were happy. It took so long to finally get moving that as we inched along Southwestern Blvd toward to the 219, a convoy of sheriff’s vehicles escorted a group of buses around us and the traffic jam. We assumed that it was the Ravens players and staff enroute to the Buffalo airport for their miserable flight back to BWI. 30 minutes at the Peace Bridge then a series of lake-effect snow squalls were the last hurdles of the long but ultimately successful and enjoyable day and night.

“The right to play another week; another chance to go 1-0” is how Josh Allen described what his team accomplished last night. The Chiefs, with an extra day to prepare and playing at home will be ready. Can the Bills finally reverse the trend of playoff losses to the Chiefs? That’s why they play the games.  

Bills 31, Broncos 7

I found myself worrying more about the Ravens than the Broncos as the morning unfolded yesterday and I was hoping that wouldn’t jinx the Bills with the matter at hand – the matter of the Denver Broncos and their fearsome pass-rush, poised rookie quarterback and highly respected head coach. When the Broncos went up early with a long touchdown it seemed like my ill-advised foresight might cost us but it didn’t of course as the Bills cruised to a comfortable 31-7 win for the home fans in weather quite decent for mid-January in Orchard Park. But this morning I am more and more worried about these Ravens who come to town on Sunday night as the third seed in the AFC – the same as the Kansas City Chiefs were a year ago. Same time slot, same broadcast crew and the same seeding match-up with the third seed at the second seed. The main difference is that Taylor Swift will not be in the house.

Marv Levy, who turns 100 in August, famously said a few decades ago that to win in the NFL you must do two things: run the ball and stop the run. The game has evolved and that mantra doesn’t often apply in these times of high-flying passing offences and 41-38 games but sometimes it holds just as true as it did in the 1950s when Marv started coaching football. Yesterday was one of those times. The Bills dominated the Broncos in time of possession by more than a two-to-one margin mostly by running the ball very effectively. James Cook carried 23 times for 120 yards – an average of 5.2 yards per carry. In contrast, the Broncos featured back, Javonte Williams carried seven times for a paltry 29 yards. Marv would probably say that those two statistical measures – time of possession and rushing yards for and against – told the story of the game just like they would have in any decade in the history of the NFL.

I store my small Weber barbecue and my folding table - yes, the kind that I could jump off a van and land on, probably seriously injuring myself in the process – in an out-building at my cottage. I use it exclusively in Lot 7 at Highmark Stadium. On Friday, I went to get a snow shovel from that building and when I looked at the barbecue and table, I wondered if I would be loading them in my car before I left the cottage this time around. I figured that I would jinx things for sure were I to move them to the car before yesterday’s game was played but I did so within 30 minutes of the end of the game, along with a large bag of charcoal, lighter fluid and my heavy-duty Sorel boots. We are off to Orchard Park on Sunday for another winter evening playoff game and, while I really am worried about the Ravens, I am excited to be going once again to a football game which will be watched on television by tens of millions. Thankfully, I am past the point where I would or could jump on my folding table but I look forward to seeing other foolhardy Bills fans giving it a try. Not with my table of course.

With all but one of the Divisional round teams determined, pending tonight’s game between the Vikings and the Rams, the league announced the time slots for the four games after the Commanders win over the Bucs in Tampa. With then exception of the Bills v. Ravens, the match-ups are not as deliciously interesting as we might have hoped. The Houston Texans at Kansas City Chiefs kicks off the Divisional round at 4.30pm Saturday with the Chiefs listed now as 7.5-point favourites. That line opened at nine points and obviously some significant early money came in on the Texans who with an unlikely win over the Chiefs would give the Bills something more to play for the following evening – a chance to host the AFC Championship Game. It’s very difficult to imagine the Texans pulling off an upset of this magnitude but that’s why they play the games. Then on Saturday night, Washington plays the Lions in Detroit with the home team currently an 8.5-point favourite. Sunday at 3pm sees the winner of the Rams v. Vikings game play at Philadelphia.  

The Bills are favoured by one point against the Ravens. They say that home field is worth three points on the betting line so at a neutral site, the Ravens would be two-point favourites and if the game were to be played in Baltimore, they would be favoured by five. That line seems about right to me as Lamar Jackson, who has been spectacular recently, combined with the powerful running of Derek Henry, will present a huge challenge for the Bills “bend but don’t break” defence. Last time these teams met in the playoffs was four years ago in an empty Highmark Stadium when Taron Johnson intercepted Lamar Jackson in his own endzone and returned it more than 100 yards for a touchdown as the Bills went on to win 17-3. They will probably need a key turnover once again to win on Sunday night.

The game will feature the two top contenders for the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award. The statistical edge does go Lamar Jackson but the intangible edge – maybe within the true meaning of “most valuable to his team” – edge probably goes to Josh Allen. There is no wrong choice here as in my view they are both fully deserving of the award. I would of course love to see Josh play his best game and lead the Bills to the AFC Championship Game and (easy for me to say), I would gladly trade that for Jackson winning the MVP.