It's that time of year again...

The Stanley Cup

In 2 days time, on April 16, the 2014 Stanley Cup Playoffs begin.

It is the only time of year where I find myself 'glued' to the 'tube.

The time of year when hopes and dreams unite, and where crushing defeats mean you switch to golf (that right Leafs?)

Yes, for the 8th time in 9 years my beloved Maple Leafs will be golfing instead of playing for The Cup. They have yet to make the playoffs after a full 82 game schedule (since the '05 lockout (the only team, by the way.)

They are among a group of 6 Canadian franchises that did not make the playoffs.

They are the only Original Six team to not have made the grade.

Oh woe is me...

Where are Wendel and Dougie when you need them?

We had scoring, we had goaltending (well, at least one of them), and we had a power play.

What we didn't have (again) was the ability to keep the puck out of our net, heck, we couldn't even get the puck out of our zone.

Want an idea of just how badly we played?

Read one of many end of season report cards on the players/coaches/management. This one from the Toronto Sun's Lance Hornsby.

Pathetic, no?

"Defensive liability", "not hard on the forecheck", "weak in own end", "mistake prone"... these are the common thread that 'unites' my team.

And one of the many reasons why they will not partake in the '14 playoffs.

Funny I should be writing this today, as it is also the day of the arrival of our latest saviour.

Brendan Shanahan has been named as Team President (and Alternate Governer) of The Leafs. Today is the team pressser introducing him to the masses. And there will be masses in this hockey mad city.

Good luck Shanny, you're going to need it.

That being said, I am looking forward to the playoffs. I've not made up my mind (as yet) to cheer for the only Canadian team to make the playoffs... that being the Hated Habs. Yes, the Montreal Canadiens are the only Canadian team to have what it takes to play for the hardest trophy to win. I'm not convinced they can win it, but as a Canadian I have to cheer for them, don't I?

I just don't know.

Here are the first round matchups for the 2014 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Round 1 matchups

Philly and the Rangers should be a good show, as should the Sharks/Kings.

I'd like to say Chicago and the Blues would be a good series, but with the Black Hawks having lost their top to players to injury, I can't see them making it out of the first round. You never know though with the Blues entering the playoffs on a six-game losing streak.

Perhaps I'll watch Detroit/Boston... in the hopes of the Red Wings (23 straight playoff appearances) can take down the dreaded Bruins (sorry guys.)

About the Stanley Cup, did you know that the Stanley Cup is two feet, 11 inches tall and weighs 34.5 pounds?

Or that the first team to win the silver trophy was the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association, who won Lord Stanley's Cup in 1893?

Here then are some fun facts, trivia and history on The Cup, and the NHL in general.

* The Stanley Cup was purchased in 1892 by the Governor General of Canada, Lord Frederick Stanley, who wanted a challenge cup that the best hockey teams in Canada could compete for.
* It has been around the NHL longer than any other team, player or coach.
* The Montreal Canadiens have won the Stanley Cup 24 times - more than any other team in NHL history.
* Henri Richard, of the Montreal Canadiens, won a record 11 Stanley Cup titles.
* In 1988, Wayne Gretzky set a Stanley Cup Finals record by scoring 13 points (three goals, 10 assists) against the Boston Bruins.
* Patrick Roy has been named the Stanley Cup Playoff MVP three times, more than any other player.
* During the 1905 Stanley Cup Finals, Frank McGee of the Ottawa Silver Seven scored 14 goals in one game.
* In 1905, a team from Dawson City, Yukon traveled for 23 days by dogsled, boat and train to Ottawa to play for the Stanley Cup against the Ottawa Silver Seven. After finally arriving in Ottawa, the team from Dawson City got smoked in both games: 9-2 and 22-3.
* When the New Jersey Devils won the Stanley Cup in 2003, goaltender, Martin Brodeur took the Cup to a movie theatre and ate popcorn out of it.
* In 1996, Sylvain Lefebvre of the Colorado Avalanche had his first child baptized in the Stanley Cup.
* The Stanley Cup has travelled to several different coutries including the Czech Republic, Sweden, Russia, Finland, Japan, Switzerland and the Bahamas.
* The Stanley Cup is now accompanied by a body guard on all its adventures.
* The Stanley Cup is two feet, 11 inches tall and weighs 34.5 pounds.
* There are more than 2,200 different names engraved on the Stanley Cup, including players, coaches and owners of the Cup-winning teams.
* Every 13 years, a new ring is added to the bottom of the Stanley Cup to add more names of the Cup's winners.
* The original Stanley Cup was just seven inches high. The names of every player from each winning team is engraved on the base of the Cup. The cup and base now stands 35 inches high.
* The Montreal Canadiens have won the most Stanley Cups, a total of 23. The Toronto Maple Leafs are second on the list with 13.
* Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieuxare the only players to be named MVP of three NHL All-Star games.
* Superstar Wayne Gretzky has won the NHL scoring title a record 10 times.
* Bernie Geoffrion is credited with bringing the slapshot to the NHL in 1951. He was given the nickname “Boom Boom” because his shot was so hard and fast.
* The first goaltender to regularly wear a face mask during a game was Montreal's Jacques Plante . A shot broke his nose in 1959 and he decided to wear one ever since. He was made fun of at first, but now every goaltender wears a mask. Thanks to him, many broken bones and stitches have been avoided.
* The first player who accumulate more than 300 penalty minutes in a single season was Philadelphia Flyer Dave Schultz, who had 348 penalty minuted in 1974. The next year, he broke his record with 472 penalty minutes, still the record.
* In the 1985-86 season, Edmonton Oilers center Wayne Gretzky scored 215 points, breaking his own record that he set four years earlier. Of the top 10 best-scoring seasons of all-time, “The Great One” has eight of them.
* Michigan has won the most Division I College Hockey Championships with nine, the last one in 1998.
* Toronto Maple Leaf Darryl Sittler scored 10 points in one game (six goals, four assists) against the Boston Bruins in 1976.
* Quebec's Joe Malone holds the record for most goals scored in a game with seven against Toronto in 1920.
* The World Hockey Association was a rival hockey league from 1973 to 1979. Hockey legends Gordie Howe, Bobby Hull, and Wayne Gretzky played in the league, but it couldn't compete with the NHL. Four current NHL teams came from the WHA. The Edmonton Oilers, Hartford Whalers (now Carolina Hurricanes), Quebec Nordiques (now Colorado Avalanche), and Winnipeg Jets (now Phoenix Coyotes). The Jets made a triumphant return to Winnipeg just a few seasons ago.
* Canada is widely considered to be the birthplace of hockey. The Hockey Hall of Fame is in Toronto, Canada. There is also a U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame for the players, coaches, etc. who are American born.

Not too shabby for a trophy that has been played/bled/fought for over 100 years.

Here is a slideshow on some more history, and a compendium of facts.

Finally, here is a complete list of past Cup winners.

April 16... two days from now, the hunt for the 2014 Stanley Cup Champion begins.

I'll be watching. Read More...

The end of an era...

I awoke this morning to news that The Owl's Nest had burned to the ground.

Apparently overnight, and it is suspected that faulty wiring is the cause.

***Please see below for an update***

July 15, 2011

The loss to the community of Pubnico cannot be quantified. I myself had the 'pleasure' of visiting... uh... on a number of occasions. My first night in Nova Scotia was my introduction to what is known as Richard Owl's. I was introduced to and embraced Hold 'Em. It was my first real bootleggers. It was where I made some life-long friends.

It is a place that I will visit again (not simply because my son is a commercial fisherman there, and has a family of his own now), but because it is a place where I felt like it was home. I was adopted as an infant, my origins are Acadian, and my 2yr stay in 2011-2013 was my first real exposure to the French culture. (I don't/won't include my Army experience in Cornwallis... for obvious reasons.)

Pubnico is located in what was called, before the Expulsion, CAPE SABLE, which, even at the beginning, around 1614, had as its center what is now Port La Tour, called then Port Lomeron, David Lomeron having here a trading post, dealing with fur and fish. Charles de Biencourt, who was at the head of the small group of Frenchmen of what was then Acadia, comprising the south-western part of the peninsula, died around 1624. In 1631. Louis XIII named as Governor of Acadia Charles de La Tour, who had been a faithful companion of Charles de Biencourt. It is then that the name of Port Lomeron was changed to the name of Port La Tour. He was named Governor of Acadia again in 1651, while in France, from where he came back, bringing with him Philippe Mius d'Entremont, who was to be his Major. It is Philippe Mius d'Entremont who was to be the founder of Pubnico.

Pubnico comprises three different sections. There are West Pubnico, whose people are almost all French speaking, Pubnico proper, better known as Pubnico Head, whose people are mostly all English speaking, and East Pubnico, the part where is believed to have been located the barony, being occupied by English speaking people, and the rest, up to the Shelburne county line, which is occupied mostly by French speaking people.

The first Acadians who came from the surrounding communities to settle in Pubnico were the Surettes. They were followed by the LeBlancs. Today, the surnames in Pubnico are very numerous, comprising a certain number of anglophones. But it is still the d'Entremont family which is the most numerous, followed by the Amirault and d'Eon families.

According to the census of 1981, there were in West Pubnico 1877 people; in Pubnico (Head) 173 people, and in East Pubnico 140 people in the anglophone section and 423 people in the francophone section.
I will miss the place.

I will miss most those friends that I made there.

Never would've thought to find these two on Google.

Some of those from Owl's

It's hard for me to imagine Pubnico without Richard Owl's. It is such a small community and his Nest has been around so long. It's more than a simple bootlegger. It's a hub for the community. 'Church' occurs there Sunday mornings (you have to be there to believe it), poker happens most nights, music, laughter and general silliness occur on a nightly basis.

1877 people... and I'm sure I met most of them. Either walking along HWY 335, or working at the Shipyard, at the library or at T-Paul's (the local Petro-Can, owned by a descendant of one of the founders of Pubnico.)

Trying to 'explain' The Head to the uninitiated is near impossible. I often refer to Owen & Gerry singing If I Caught a Million Lobster, or Rock & Roll Pubnico (in the thickest of French accents.)

I tell people that there are three things that happen in Pubnico... fishing, fighting and f**king.

And they do all three well.

Richard and I

Irish Richard

It is uniquely Canadian, and I will never find another place like it.

Nor will I ever come across someone as unique as Richard 'Owl'. He is a one of a kind man.

Richard 'Owl' LeBlanc
But this... this is what has come of The Nest.

2014-04-13

2014-04-13

2014-04-13

2014-04-13

As I said to my kids today, Pubnico will never be the same, their world has changed forever.

Here though, here are some pics of The Nest in full swing...

The Gangs...

all here.

Some have spoken/posted about rebuilding.

Thought the sentiment is nice, I simply don't see it happening. It's 2014. You can't simply throw a couple of boards together anymore. There is a building code, a fire code... not the least of which is good luck getting a building permit.

No, the county and the police have let this slide for too long, and see this as an opportunity to reign in the 'silliness'.

And that, people, is a shame.

No more poker, no more late night 'drop buys', no more pool/darts and pissing on the porch... no more walking in with a dead rabbit that has been trapped, dead deers on the hood of your truck, fires in the field (right Joey?), and sadly... no more Nest.

I'd like to be proven wrong... but I don't think I will.

The cantankerous, curmudgeonly Big Man will carry on. Of that I am sure. But I am just as sure that he too, is suffering today.

I leave you with this bit of nonsense from the Big Man himself...

Richard Owl
Thanks for the memories...

UPDATE Please visit here, a gofundme.com page set up to help Richard. Read More...

Have we gone too far... or not far enough?

Stand Alone.

In today's National Post, Rex Murphy writes an op-ed piece on how universities are failing our young, failing society really.

He goes on to suggest that universities have set up intellectual quarantines lest the immature and frightened be made uncomfortable or to feel unwelcome.

He questions whether universities are in fact schools or daycares.

And finishes off his paragraph with Giving into such adolescent whimpering is despicable; giving in to in on a university campus is unforgivable.

I find it hard to disagree with him.

The comments on the Post's Facebook page have fallen into name calling and accusations of Big Oil influencing Murphy.

I kid thee not.

Have we, as a people, really forgotten what it means to educate? What it means to disagree? Have we lost all respect for those simply because someone may have a different opinion that us?

How about this... are we now falling over backwards to avoid disagreement?
Or what about this... are we afraid of being labelled intolerant? Afraid of being called Islamaphobic?

That's right, the article is about how Brandeis University in Massachusetts had first offered an honourary degree to a world renown "advocate for women’s rights under Islam", Ayaan Hirsi Ali (full name: Ayaan Hirsi Magan Isse Guleid Ali Wai’ays Muhammad Ali Umar Osman Mahamud), then rescinded it after an outcry from the Council on American–Islamic Relations, a controversial organization that deals with Islamic advocacy issues.

Ms. Ali is a Somali-born American (formerly Dutch) women's rights and atheist activist, writer and politician who is known for her views critical of female genital mutilation and Islam.

"Hirsi Ali is the remarkable woman whose life story she has told in three books (Infidel, The Caged Virgin and Nomad). Born among the poorest of the poor in Somalia, genitally mutilated at the age of five, a refugee as a young woman fleeing an arranged marriage, she immigrated to the Netherlands and in but a few years, having learned the language, became a distinguished member of parliament."
In other words, this is a woman unafraid of those who would oppose her views on women's rights. Someone who deserves our support and admiration.

"Her friend Theo van Gogh, a locally famous filmmaker, made a short film (Submission) on Islam and women. Shortly after he was stabbed to death, murdered in a public street, and a note threatening Hirsi Ali was pinned — with a knife — to the dying man’s chest. It read in part: “Ayaan Hirsi Ali, you will break yourself to pieces on Islam.”"
You may remember that event, he was shot eight times by his killer, had his throat cut, almost decapitated with "a large knife, after which he stabbed the knife deep into Van Gogh's chest, reaching his spinal cord. He then attached a note to the body with a smaller knife. Van Gogh died on the spot. The two knives were left implanted. The note was addressed and contained a death threat to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was subsequently forced to go into hiding, threatened Western countries and Jews and also referred to the ideologies of the Egyptian organization Takfir wal-Hijra".

Yet still she refused to submit.

"In 2005, she was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She has also received several awards, including a free speech award from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the Swedish Liberal Party's Democracy Prize, and the Moral Courage Award for commitment to conflict resolution, ethics, and world citizenship. In 2006 she published a memoir. The English translation in 2007 is titled Infidel. As of 2013 Hirsi Ali is a fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, a member of The Future of Diplomacy Project at the Belfer Center."

Someone with credentials... someone who knows what it means to live a life of inequality, a life of suppression.

But no, instead of 'standing up' to a little criticism the school of 'higher learning' caves.

All for one?

A few weeks back there someone made a remark that it was 'amazing' how we now have 2mm camera's on mosquito's. He was very serious, and despite my politely disagreeing with him, and pointing out that in fact, it was the manufactured bug itself that was being used by governments, he make 'upset' and was "offended." Yup, he was offended that I disagreed with him.

At that point I simply smiled at him and put my head back into the book I was reading, I knew there was no point. Didn't stop him though, nope. I was 'this and that', 'ignorant and unclean'(?). and on it went.

For weeks.
...
:l

And this typifies what our society has indeed come to. We shut-up lest we 'offend' someone. I miss the time of healthy debate, sitting around a kitchen table (remember those parties?) and yakking for hours on end, about anything and everything.

No more, now we must conform, hold the same ideas and ideals, the same goals... all for one and all for one. Stand up for what you believe in at your own risk.

Read the article, click those links. Educate yourself, your children (above all educate your children) to question everything and everyone.

Before it's too late... Read More...

Bacon at the AGO

Yesterday was the members preview at the AGO for the BaconMoore exhibit.

It also happened to be the day that Ali and I decided to go to the AGO.

Yes indeed, the day we go to the AGO is the day that bacon is prevalent. How fitting is that?

"Although they were neither friends nor collaborators, painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992) and sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986) were contemporaries who shared an obsession with expressing themes of suffering, struggle and survival in relation to the human body. Both artists survived the Second World War and were subsequently haunted by the conflict, which they represented through manifestations of the body in various states of contortion. Drawing on the artists’ own personal experiences during the London Blitz, the exhibition examines how confinement and angst fostered their extraordinary creativity and unique visions."

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, graphic and emotionally raw imagery. His painterly but abstracted figures typically appear isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds. Bacon began painting during his early 20s and worked only sporadically until his mid-30s. Unsure of his ability as a painter, he drifted and earned his living as an interior decorator and designer of furniture and rugs. Later, he admitted that his career was delayed because he had spent too long looking for a subject that would sustain his interest. His breakthrough came with the 1944 triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion which sealed his reputation as a uniquely bleak chronicler of the human condition.

He often said in interviews that he saw images "in series", and his artistic output typically focused on a single subject or format for sustained periods. His output can be crudely drawn as consisting of sequences or variations on a single motif; beginning with the 1940s male heads isolated in rooms, the early 1950s screaming popes, and mid to late 1950s animals and lone figures suspended in geometric structures. These were followed by his early 1960s modern variations of the crucifixion in the triptych format. From the mid-1960s to early 1970s, Bacon mainly produced strikingly compassionate portraits of friends, either as single or triptych panels. Following the 1971 suicide of his lover George Dyer, his art became more personal, inward looking and preoccupied with themes and motifs of death. The climax of this period came with his 1982 "Study for Self-Portrait", and his late masterpiece Study for a Self Portrait -Triptych, 1985-86. Despite his bleak existentialist outlook, solidified in the public mind through his articulate and vivid set of interviews with David Sylvester, Bacon in person was a bon vivant and notably and unapologetically gay. A prolific artist, he nonetheless spent many of the evenings of his middle age eating, drinking and gambling in London's Soho with friends such as Lucian Freud, John Deakin, Muriel Belcher, Henrietta Moraes, Daniel Farson and Jeffrey Bernard. After Dyer's suicide he largely distanced himself from this circle, and while his social life was still active and his passion for gambling continued, he settled into a platonic relationship with his eventual heir, John Edwards.

Head I

Crucifixion (1933)

Head VI

During his lifetime, Bacon was equally reviled and acclaimed. Margaret Thatcher described him as "that man who paints those dreadful pictures", and he was the subject of two Tate retrospectives and a major showing in 1971 at the Grand Palais in Paris. Since his death, his reputation and market value has steadily grown. In the late 1990s a number of major works previously assumed to have been destroyed, including popes from the early 1950s and portraits from the 1960s, surfaced on the art market and set record prices at auction. On 12 November 2013 his painting Three Studies of Lucian Freud set the record as the most expensive piece of art ever auctioned, selling for $142,405,000.

Henry Moore

Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA RBS (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art.

His forms are usually abstractions of the human figure, typically depicting mother-and-child or reclining figures. Moore's works are usually suggestive of the female body, apart from a phase in the 1950s when he sculpted family groups. His forms are generally pierced or contain hollow spaces. Many interpreters liken the undulating form of his reclining figures to the landscape and hills of his birthplace, Yorkshire.

Moore was born in Castleford, the son of a coal miner. He became well-known through his carved marble and larger-scale abstract cast bronze sculptures, and was instrumental in introducing a particular form of modernism to the United Kingdom. His ability in later life to fulfill large-scale commissions made him exceptionally wealthy. Yet he lived frugally and most of the money he earned went towards endowing the Henry Moore Foundation, which continues to support education and promotion of the arts.

Reclining Connected Forms

And yes, the above sculpture should look familiar to you as there is another sitting in front of our City Hall.

"Henry Moore has always been an important artist for the city of Toronto. In 1958, Finnish architect Viljo Revell won an international competition to design Toronto's City Hall. Revell admired the work of Moore and recommended that the city purchase one of his bronze sculptures for the new building. A controversy over cost erupted, and the sculpture, The Archer, became the most talked about work of art in the history of the city."
I know that Ali would agree with me when I say that the exhibit will not be forgotten. It was meant to disturb, and that it did.
I am glad that I had the opportunity to experience it with my daughter. Read More...