"I am, sorry if you think that we'd be better off annexed." -- Chantal Kreviazuk

No, Chantal, that’s not the problem, nobody is thinking that. Please, just sing the anthem normally because we are all really anxious to sing along with you.

Let me start by saying that I care deeply about our National Anthem and am still annoyed that there is a problem with the National Anthem Act, an actual mistake in the sheet music that you may have heard me complain about. And I also have a little experience performing the anthem before a game - dozens of times with the UW Warriors Band, sometimes at a pre-Olympic basketball match, occasionally with Argonotes before an Argos game and even once at the World Beer Games, a debacle that some day will earn its own blog post.

So anyway.

Last night Canada beat the USA 3-2 in Boston, in a thrilling conclusion to the 4 Nations Faceoff hockey tournament. And I am very glad we won, because if we hadn’t, we’d all be blaming Chantal Kreviazuk for the loss.

Things being how they are, the atmosphere was politically charged, and thousands of Canadians in the arena in Boston, and millions more back home (including Cathy and me at a packed Esplanade Bier Market in Toronto) were desperate to sing along.

Chantal Kreviazuk, who is a fine singer, and who I’m sure had the best of intentions, decided to change one line to make a statement and take a shot at President Trump’s persistent attempts to make Canada the 51st state. So instead of True patriot love, in all of us command! she sang True patriot love, that only us command.

She wrote the modified lyric on her hand, too, and shared this photo

OK - a nice thought - BUT ….

Somehow she fumbled the 2nd line in French also, singing O Canada! Terre nos ..aieux ..uhhhhh instead of O Canada! Terre de nos aïeux! (which is “O Canada, land of our ancestors.")

So this is how it went. With millions watching. I will annotate what many were thinking.

1. O Canada! (Canadian fans, YES LET’S GO WHOOOOOOO)
2. Terre nos aieux uhhhh! (Canadian fans: Wait, What was that? She must be nervous)
3. True patriot love! (Canadian fans: OK, back on track, here we go, I’m ready to sing)
4. That only us command! (Canadian fans: Huh? What song is she singing? She’s lost me, I need to start my social media complaint.)

She also, as is sadly common, over-elaborated on the tune.

And of course some US fans were booing the whole time. Fair enough, we booed yours.

Now, I think Ms Kreviazuk is a fine singer, and she meant well by putting in a dig at Donald Trump on line 4, and she has since apologized, sort of, writing

i am sorry if my performance of our national anthem rubbed you the wrong way. if i was a little off pitch or if it wasn’t perfect in its tone. i am sorry if i messed up the french line i inserted to bring some balance to our nation’s history without losing those words “glorious and free” in english…

i am sorry if you think that we’d be better off annexed.

here is the thing. art to me is an expression of our truth. and in this very peculiar and potentially consequential moment i truly believe that we must stand up, use our voices and try to protect ourselves… no - we should express our outrage in the face of any abuses of power. i was raised in part by music that was inspired by brave voices committed to peaceful conflict resolution.

Canada , not unlike ukraine is a sovereign nation. period. we have a culture individual to others. we are united in our values. we care. we’re kind. We are strong. #canadastrong #expressyourtruth #peaceandlove

“I am, sorry if you think that we’d be better off annexed.” NOBODY IS THINKING THAT. Here’s what we’re thinking.

Things are very politically charged between Canada and the USA right now, and we all desperately wanted to sing along with you. This is a glorious opportunity for a talented singer like yourself to lead us in belting out O Canada, but to do that, we need to be able to follow your lead!

Especially at an international match. Let us sing with you! We want you to lead us! And perhaps if you’re going to make a political statement, do it at the end when we’re all behind you, not at the beginning when we’re all rattled by this change.

I was mad at the time; now, I’m grateful for her apology, and hope she’ll get another chance but this time, sing the song as written, and let us proudly sing it with you too.

What I hope people learn from the Delta crash at YYZ:

• wear proper shoes and warm clothes; you might have to climb out into the snow;

• keep seatbelt fastened until the plane arrives in a full upright position at the terminal;

• passport, glasses, wallet in your pocket. no hunting around for your carryon in an evacuation;

• listen to the flight attendants, they’re amazing.

I am a little curious how the Canada Border Services Agency handles something like this. How do you clear the incoming transborder passengers who are all wandering around on the tarmac, some of whom have been evacuated to hospitals, etc.

Years ago, an Air France plane skidded off the YYZ runway next to Highway 401; again, miraculously, all the passengers got out, but some wandered onto the highway and flagged down passing cars. Then what? Hmm.

On the wearing-proper-shoes thing. Yes, perhaps your flight is departing from a warm place. But it might make either a scheduled or emergency landing in a cold place. (last May, Air France from Paris to Seattle landed in Iqaluit. Surprise!) Be ready.

You, over there, wearing shorts and sandals on a trip back from the Caribbean to Canada in February. Don’t be a dope.

whoops.

we bought our own UniPass transponder - cfxway.com/uni/ - and took it to Florida last month, and drove around in a rental car after updating our account to include the rental car license plate. Easy peasy.

Guess what happens if you return the rental car and neglect to update the unipass site, thinking “oh, surely it will only bill me if it actually detects my transponder, not just the license plate.”

well at least now I know where SOMEBODY was driving.

(protip: when you return the rental car, DON’T FORGET to go and unregister its license plate from your transponder account, or you might get billed for wherever the next person is driving. I thought the only thing the tollway would care about is the transponder, but apparently it falls back on license plates too.)

We really enjoyed Mirvish’s production of The Lion King last night at the Princess of Wales Theatre. It’s an incredible visual spectacle - the costumes, the sets, the clever use of perspective, just a feast for the eyes. You should go see it. The opening number where all the animals move down the aisles to the stage is just jaw-dropping. That elephant. Wow.

You kind of have to ignore the constant fart jokes in the Timon and Pumbaa sequences, but that’s left over from the cartoon.

Multiple times I was in awe of how the elaborate costumes worked. How does THAT actor manage to manipulate both arms and the head of their character? …. Oh …. there’s another actor disguised as the grass sitting beside them, operating one of the arms. Cool.

Here’s an interesting behind-the-scenes story from the New York Times (it’s a gift link) about the New York production and how they manage all these complex costumes.

You know I generally like everything, but two things in particular impressed me.

• The theatre uses an app called Gala Pro. Download this to your phone and you can see live closed captioning of all the dialogue and songs, or even translation or described audio (only through your headphones, thankfully.) What a great way to make theatre more accessible for all! I left this running on my phone all through the show (it’s in dark, dark, DARK mode, doesn’t bother anyone else) and periodically glanced down to clarify some of the trickier lyrics.

• We just happened to have a post-show drink in a nearby bar, and who should walk in to pick up his own dinner but actor David D’Lancy Wilson, who plays Mufasa. He graciously chatted with us and OF COURSE I HAD A MILLION QUESTIONS but managed to get one out. So - in several of the glorious sequences full of animals, some of the cast wave long poles on top of which are some bird puppets that fly around very convincingly. Multiple poles from multiple parts of the theatre. I had to ask - Do the poles and birds ever get tangled up? “All the time”, he replied. “One time, somebody hit one of the lights.”

It was really fun seeing this show again. We’d seen it on its original run a decade ago, and I remember asking my niece, who was maybe 4, whether she liked the live show or the original cartoon better. “The cartoon”, she replied, “because it has real lions.”

Well I thought the lions in this production were pretty amazing too. Thanks for chatting with us, Mufasa!

p.s. seeing as how we are aparently patrons of the arts, Mufasa graciously allowed us to pick up the tab. It’s the circle of fooooooooood ….

Now that we’re having another Ontario election, I have my list of Basic Questions from the 2018 election ready in case anyone knocks on my door. I think you should know some basic facts about Ontario if you want to govern.

So, candidates, get ready, I’ll even give you the questions in advance:

blog.hayman.net/2018/04/2…

(In 2018, nobody knocked, perhaps wisely.)