One more game

Look at this deserted beach on this beautiful Vancouver Friday evening - the haunting nervous calm, as everyone is glued to a TV watching the Canucks take the Bruins in the Stanley Cup finals play-off.



No one knows to party it up like Montréalers; I know it is not very mature, but I miss the riots. But Vancouver didn't disappoint - look at all these people, the nerds, the kids, the Siekhs, the Asians, the caucasians, the homeless and even the police. As the game ended and any chance of jinxing it thus ended, this city erupted in a jubilant and noisy celebration; Canucks had wone 1-0.

A guy climbed up a lamp post, he was soon told that he can not do that, by the otherwise super nice and chummy-chummy police. The guy was (of course) wearing a Canadiens cap, but backward - some other by-stander came up to him and said 'you are used to the Canadiens' type celebrations, right?' - they both shared a good laugh.

Strangers high-five-ing eachother, all coming together, for this team. I was standing there photographing people and their emotions, occasionally responding to a high-five. As large groups of people all in unison like this often do, I was moved to tears which wasn't very comfortable - I didn't want anyone wondering why this Indian girl with a DSLR camera was crying when the Canucks are so close to winning the mighty Stanley Cup!

I have always wondered the validity of society's investment in sports - we spend all this money in building stadiums and paying professional athletes obscene amounts of money, for careers that end by the time they are 30, as opposed to, oh say, invest in a physics grad student who might produce until they are 80 years old or more. But this is the power of sports - the ability to bring people together under a single banner, a single slogan, their passion still intact. One might argue that war does the same thing, but sports does it without being destructive, if you disregard the occasional loot.

Few things can bring people together like that; Montréal's free festivals being among those. I remember my first Jazz Festival in Montréal, the musician who did one of those big free shows, played La complainte du phoque en Alaska: as the intro played, the crowd went hysterical with applause, and thousands of people joined in the singing. Speaking not any French at that time and not understanding a word, still, I remembered crying from euphoria. Later, the person next to me in broken English explained what the song meant - so I was able to look it up when I went home. To this day, even on the bleakest of days, I can listen to this song and create for myself a certain euphoria and revive my faith in humanity... and remember the beautiful city that welcomed me with wide open arms.

As whiffs of pot dot the air of this clear Vancouver night above all these people from all walks and talks of life, Canucks are one game short of winning the Stanley cup; and excuse my greed, but now I would really like to have a Stanley Cup in a city that I live in.