Running for Your Life: Go, Leafs, Go

Here’s a birthright moment for you.

I’ve identified the bonfire smell on the northern breeze as the uncommon but unmistakable odor of Maple Leafs on fire.

The Toronto Maple Leafs, that is.

In the US where I now live, NBC cable channels carry all the Stanley Cup playoff games. And if you happened to land on one of them last night (April 17), say about 10 p.m., all hell was breaking out on Yonge Street in Toronto.

The Maple Leafs had just won an overtime game against the powerhouse Washington Capitals. Its second overtime triumph over the Caps in as many games. They could have a stranglehold on the series had they managed to win the first overtime game. Instead, they are up 2-1, and have the Caps on their heels.

Maple Leafs haven’t been burning this hot since 1967. When they last won the Cup. That’s a lot of Don Cherry jackets and ties.

Who knows where this will lead? Who cares? But if you’re looking for something to do on Wednesday night, track down Game 4 of the Leafs-Caps series on NBC in the US, and see what all the fuss up north is about. You won’t be sorry.

Next: Running for Your Life: Balance Beam

Running for Your Life: This Hour Has Seven Hours

You might have to be Canadian-born (and a reporter) of a certain age to get this reference. But if there was a single TV show influence that drew me to work in public affairs it is the CBC news show called:

“This Hour Has Seven Days.”

I have to admit that I was too young to enjoy the short-run show (from 1964-66, only 50 episodes), but while a student at the Carleton University School of Journalism I studied it. Man, was it ahead of its time (and still is)!

Imagine this, cribbed from a Canadian Press review:

“The final segment featured unflappable Robert Hoyt interviewing two Georgia-based Grand Dragons of the Ku Klux Klan. Wearing hoods, the two elders had no idea Hoyt was going to invite a black civil rights leader onto the panel. By the end of the tense segment, you could barely see any of them through the thick haze of cigarette smoke.”

Which brings me the latest running-longevity study. So a new survey widely published says that one hour of running equates to an additional seven hours in the life department …

Let’s do the gazintas … Beginning in 1976, I started running every other day (as has been the subject of this blog since 2010). Let’s say the early, not-too-strenuous jogging years cancel out the marathon training years (eight), leaving, conservatively, 2.5 hours per week X 52 weeks, or 130 hours per year, X 41 years = 5,330 hours of running, X 7, or 37,310 additional hours, or expressed in days, 1,555, for a grand total of 4.3 additional years.

All this for a measly 4.3 years … ? Hmmm, I’ll have to think about that J

Next: Running for Your Life: Go, Leafs, Go !

Running for Your Life: If the Greats Were With Us Thursday

Maigret in the USA ! Maigret in the USA !

Alas, Georges Simenon – the intuitive author of the Jules Maigret detective novel series – is no longer with us, but, man, his books! They are some legacy.

Most especially – when it comes to trying to come to grips with just what has happened (and is happening) in US politics. Especially in places that don’t begin with “New” or “Los.”

I’m talking about the slim, 174-page novel, “Maigret at the Coroner’s.”

Do yourself a favor and pick it up. Our hero visits a coroner’s inquest in desert Arizona, and Wow!, do his observations about American justice and fair play deliver. As in the dark side of 1949 America sure has lessons for those of us trying to get some insights into 2017 America.

Consider:

Our hero is dubbed “Julius” by the folks he encounters … The idea of a man called Jules? Unheard of.

Then, this on page 77:

“There was a Bible on the night stand. In hundreds of thousands of hotel rooms, an identical Bible with a black cover sat waiting for the traveler.

In short (in America): the bar or the Bible.”

As to the bar:

“There were no terraces where people could have an aperitif, watch passersby in the setting sun and breathe the scent of chestnut trees.

They drank, but to do so had to shut themselves up inside bars sealed off from the eyes of others, as if satisfying some shameful need.”

And that’s not even to mention the pervasive misogyny in the story, a coroner’s inquest into the tragic death of a young women who was in the company of five airmen in the desert.

Next: Running for Your Life: One Hour Equals Seven Hours

Running for Your Life: Spring Tickets to Nowhere

Here we go. Spring !

Well, actually summer.

I can’t believe that just a week ago I bundled myself into a long winter coat to attend an evening wedding in Jersey City.

Today (April 11) is hot in New York City. Summer. And the puck has yet to drop on the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Talk about climate change.

This is not the first time that we New Yorkers have gone flush into summer from winter.

Okay, okay, I’m exaggerating. In the United States, we’ve got climate change deniers in the White House, so a denial-impulse has to be acknowledged.

On the face of it, doesn’t it make sense to say that in the parts of the US Northeast, famous for their four distinct seasons (mud season being the fifth in some), in which we lose a season, say, in this case, spring, that it amounts to a change?

Me, I’m all Annie Proulx (Barkskins) when it comes to climate change. I’ve just turned the final page on this magnificent novel, as Sapatisia Sel, descendant of Rene Sel, the protagonist whose second impression of New France (Canada) was: “a dark, vast forest, inimical wilderness,” demonstrates “the female urge to repair the damage humans have done to nature.”

What’s in fashion this spring? Climate change protests, that’s what.

Next: Running for Your Life: Maigret in the USA

Running for Your Life: Hockey Hockey Hockey Hockey

The Mercurys did it the last time in 1927: won the Memorial Cup for an Owen Sound team.

Now, 90 years later, the Attack is on.

The Owen Sound Attack, that is.

This year marks a special moment as a hockey-loving Owen Sounder. The Attack, the junior club that has distinguished itself in competition in recent years is seen as being a genuine contender for the Memorial Cup, the trophy signifying supremacy in Canadian junior hockey.

The Attack is down 2-1 against the Soo Greyhounds, a team known for graduating a gangly kid from Brantford, Ontario, to the WHA, and then the NHL, back in the spring of 1978. (Yeah, Wayne Gretzky). But its next game is on Tuesday night in Owen Sound.

I’m counting on the Attack coming back strong on Tuesday, a day before the Stanley Cup playoffs open.

Most years at this time my focus is on my favorite team, the Pittsburgh Penguins. And the Canadian clubs: this year a good crop: Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and TORONTO !!

But, for now, that’ll have to take a back seat to the Attack. 

I mean when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994, they ended a 54-year drought. When it comes to major junior clubs, it has been ninety years for Owen Sound. 

Time to put another team in orbit. Go, Attack, Go !!

Next: Running for Your Life: Spring Tickets