Lazy
Why Canadians ignore our own stories
Apologies for missing my usual monthly musings. My wife and I recently moved from an apartment into a house, and we’re still sorting ourselves out. But let’s get back to business.
Game Nobody Watched
This past weekend, the national university football championship was played in a provincial capital. It was a tight contest until midway through the fourth quarter, when the eventual winner pulled away. There were highlight plays, hard hits, and flashes of talent that will carry some of these young men into the pros next year. It was a showcase of sportsmanship and skill.
Did you tune in? Anyone? Bueller? … (crickets).
You probably didn’t. And here’s the problem: most Canadians don’t even know there is a university football league in this country. CanWest, OUA, RSEQ, and AUS oversee university sports across Canada—football, hockey, soccer, swimming, and more. These athletes train hard, compete fiercely, and some even dream of professional careers. Watching them should be a joy.
Except it isn’t. The Vanier Cup was played in Regina at Mosaic Stadium, home of the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders.
Attendance? 8,800.
Capacity? 32,000.
Thud.
It was a sunny late November day, temperatures above zero, and one of the teams was from Saskatoon—just two hours up the highway. Yet the stadium was barely a quarter full.
So why such a dismal turnout?
One Word: Lazy
Lazy Universities and USports, refuse to work together to promote the games. Each conference has their own on-line network to show the games. Some are free but most are Pay Per View. But to find the games its almost like looking for the holy grail, and unless you have a family or alumni interest in the game, the casual fan will give up after being severely frustrated by the attempt. One bright spot is that they at least show all the games.
Lazy linear TV Networks, the CBC despite all their warts showed the semi finals and the final Vanier Cup. But there was little to no hype for the game, no specials on the teams involved, nothing on the players. Our “National” sports broadcasters were even worse. Zilch, zero, nada about USports in general and football in particular. But oh boy you knew everything about Bama, Hook ‘em Horns, THE Ohio State.
Lazy Canadian Sports Fans who will spend all day Saturday watching NCAA on TSN or the myriad of channels devoted to US college football. They’ll buy the merchandise of the Oregon Ducks, cheer for Big Blue of Michigan, or sport Florida State Seminoles gear long before they’ll ride Herd on UofM Bisons (tip, that’s Manitoba not Minnesota). Worst of all is the pathetic showing in Regina for the Vanier Cup, it was a gorgeous bloody day in Regina for November and not a third of Roughrider fans could bother to show up to support a provincial team in a National Championship?
Hollywood Erases Us Too
This brings me to another issue, our movie culture, especially historical movies. Let me bring up three movies that portrayed massive historical events on the world stage and each of the true stories had major Canadian participation in each.
Cornelius Ryan’s sweeping book on the Normandy Invasion of 1944 and its film portrayal was hailed as an epic. It paid homage to the American, British, German and the French soldiers, airmen and sailors who participated in that battle. Know what it didn’t portray? Canada and their soldiers, sailors and aircrews. Our lads landed in the centre between two British beaches and was the only division who almost made their first day objectives.
John Sturges’s “The Great Escape” was the film based on the incredible planning and ingenuity of the prisoners of Stalag Luft III who engineered the escape of 76 POW’s (tragically 50 of 73 recapture prisoners were shot by the Gestapo). Once again the film focused on American POWs but the funny thing was, there were no USAAF personnel in that camp. It was all made up. And men like Wally Floody from Kirkland Lake and Barry Davidson from Calgary who were key members of the escape committee but were completely written out by the production. Instead we get Steve McQueen from the USAAF jumping barbed wire fences in his motorcycle. Good lord!
So I think this was film adaptation of the rescue of six US diplomats from Teheran after the occupation of the embassy after the fall of the Shah. In the end it seemed it was designed to scratch Ben Affleck’s desire to be a spook. The critical Canadian role in the caper was whitewashed to the point of irreverence.
So What?
In the military when we give a report or a brief to our superiors, there usually is a question from the flag officer of “So What”? Why have we gathered here to hear you talk?
The so what is this. We Canadians bitch and moan that Hollywood overlooks us, that nobody tells our stories, that our entertainers and amateur athletes get no attention from the US. Well news flash Canadians; it because they don’t give a fiddlers f*** about Canada, our stories, our entertainers, our athletes. They only care if they can make money on it, bottom line.
So if nobody else is interested in us then I guess it will be up to us to get our lazy asses off the couch, take some risks, lobby our Canadian diaspora to use their talents and contacts to tell our stories, get Canadian sports networks to concentrate on Canadian leagues instead of US ones. And it will be imperative for the Canadian public to support these endeavours with their own debit and credit cards (does anyone carry cash anymore?)
Other Nations Do It. Why Not Us?
But Don, we don’t have the money or population to do all this? My answer is this; other nations are able to tell their stories, why can’t us?
Norway -
Finland -
Ireland for crying out loud!
There is no reason why we can't have more films about Canadians and their exploits around the world. I know that Paul Gross made a valiant try but geez lets improve on the base instead of quitting!
We also have some heavy hitters in the international movie world, Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Gosling, Seth Rogan, the whole Kids in the Hall and SCTV group and many others could be persuaded to put their money and reputations on the line to really tell a damn good story. The Battle of Kapyong, Siege of Hong Kong, Siege of Batoche, Queenston Heights, Chryslers Farm, HMCS Athabaskan, the political drama between the Vice Admiral Landymore and Defence Minister Hellyer. These are just the start.
Sports: The Tougher Nut to Crack
As for our disinterest in domestic high level amateur sport, well that may be a tougher nut to crack! Most Canadians have been seduced by the slick marketing, the huge crowds, and the money that Div 1 NCAA teams put on the field every Saturday in the fall. But there is a way to pick away at the wall.
USports, cut the siloing and come together on a broadcast proposal that would be enticing to TSN and Sportsnet. The only way Canadians will get interested in the players and USports teams is if they get to know the athletes and their stories. Get the games on linear TV and make it easy for the casual fan to watch.
TSN and Sportsnet, you have a monopoly and you’re making big bucks simulcasting NCAA games. The CRTC should come down harder on these entities to be more Canadian focused
CBC, we give you enough money that you could become the USports leader. If the commercial networks won’t do it then it is incumbent on you to cut the bonuses to under employed executives and do the hard work to give these kids the coverage they deserve.
Finally, Canadians, go to USports games. They are damn good and well worth your time and money. Without you the Universities will slowly drain the life out of USports and then we’ll lament all that was lost.
Final Word
Canada has stories worth telling and athletes worth cheering and getting this to the Canadian stage is a nation building project. Making USports and Canadian movies popular is going to be very hard. Success will take time, money, and most importantly patience. There will be setbacks and failures but we must keep moving forward, because until we stop being lazy—universities, networks, fans alike—we’ll keep erasing ourselves. And then we’ll wonder why nobody else cares.