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No? You probably don't own this then..

I was just listening to Monday's PM via the magic of the interweb. One of the definite upsides of living in a different timezone is that I get to listen to Eddie Mair way more than I ever did back home. It's impossible for me to heart Eddie any more than I do, what a radio god!

Anyway, there was a piece on some insane new initiative to find a motto or mission statement or something for Britain. Who thinks of these things? And then who sits there in a meeting and says "Yeah - great idea!" But since it's on the agenda here's my suggestion:

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the Calgary Olympics and of course the event wouldn't be the same without Eddie the Eagle. He arrived in town yesterday to quite the media fanfare, although one local source did refer to him as Britain's "ski jump chump". A little churlish, I thought: he put this town on the map!

Things have come full circle. I came to Canada excited about the thought of getting out to the mountains at every opportunity but all week I've been looking forward to this weekend because I WASN'T going skiing! My plan was to do nothing at all and it's been bliss. Yesterday I didn't leave the house, I didn't change out of my PJs, I drank tea and I watched a lot of ice hockey on the telly.

I'd chosen a good day for sloth. Yesterday was CBC's Hockey Day in Canada where the entire network stops to celebrate the game. As an outsider it was a really good way to look at Canada and understand some of the positive differences with home.

The event has been running for 8 years now and each year they choose a community somewhere to be the base. This year it was the turn of Winkler, Manitoba. The national evening news even came from Winkler on Friday night but all day yesterday there were outside broadcasts from across the country. There were also filmed segments with stories about the game at grass roots level around the country. The story of 93 year old "Mush" Morehouse who drives the Zamboni in Lennoxville, Quebec, the story of the oldest rink in Montreal where players put pepper in their skates to try and keep their feet warm and pictures and stories of outdoor rinks across the country. There was little talk of the professional side, it was more a celebration of the game at grass roots level and the part that it plays in community life. The more I watched the more I found it hard to imagine a football version back home. I think that similar stories exist but I'm not sure there's a mindset to tell them. It struck me that during hockey commentaries many references are made to the home towns of the the players. When Sidney Crosby plays, his home town of Cole Harbour Nova Scotia always gets a namecheck. I know that Jonathan Cheechoo is from Moose Factory, Ontario (who could forget!) but I don't know where Joe Cole came from beyond some rough idea that it was London. Player X will be from Hardisty, Alberta or Riviere-du-loup Quebec. The only participants in a premiership match who ever get localised in the same way are the referees! Is there a more famous resident of Tring than Graham Poll? Maybe it's because Canada is so huge and these communities so small but I also think it's part of an unconscious mythologising and an expression of the Canadian dream. You people from thousands of miles apart, divided by so much land and in some cases so much history, you all want the same thing. Chip made it to the top all the way from Buttfuck, Saskatchewan. So can you!

One really inspiring tale was of a former NHL player, Joe Juneau, who had moved to the village of Kuujjuaq in northern Quebec where he had practically single handedly started a formal junior hockey program. They had great footage of Inuit women in traditional parkas with their babies on their backs leaning on the boards of an outdoor rink whilst tiny kids skated around chasing the puck. Parkas for goalposts. Marvellous!

The other feature of Hockey Day in Canada is that all 6 Canadian NHL teams play that day. Ideally they'll play each other but the schedule meant that Toronto played Detroit and Vancouver played Colorado. We were treated to the Battle of Alberta (Edmonton vs Calgary) and Ottawa vs Montreal but we'll gloss over that as my beloved Canadiens got stuffed :( In a bid to extend the reach of hockey to "new Canadians" CBC were offering online coverage in other languages. So the Toronto game was available in Mandarin, the Montreal game in Hindi and the Vancouver game in Cantonese! Alas I got more buffering messages than actual commentary when I tried to listen in online but the showed a bit on the TV in the other languages. Ice hockey in Hindi - that's weird!

This weekend was ThoughtBoarder, the TW Canada ski trip. I was delighted to hear it was going to be in Fernie this year but I feel a lot of hometown pride for that place so I wanted Fernie to put on a good show. The old girl did me proud!

The stats this winter are just crazy: year to date they have had 741cms of snow, of which 156 fell in the week before we arrived! That, my friends, all adds up to a perfect storm of winter sports awesomeness.


I thought we had missed most of the deep fresh snow and Saturday was the busiest I've ever seen Fernie but the conditions were so good and the snow so deep that it was still tremendous fun. We went from first lift till last and I haven't had a better ski day for ages.

Today however was even better and I had one of those Fernie moments I'd only ever listened to enviously in other people's stories. Fernie gets a lot of snow and the ski patrol works really hard trying to keep the place safe. All over the mountain there are signposts and rope lines that say whether an area is open or not. After a big dump lots of areas are closed while the patrol try and make it safe from avalanches. But when they reckon an area is safe they'll flip the signs to open and drop the rope and you can have at her. Obviously if you can be there when they drop the rope then the juiciest pickings are yours but I'd never been so lucky, until today. We came off the top of the White Pass chairlift and as we looked across Currie Bowl I could see folks traversing towards the Saddles, pretty much only the only closed terrain left on the mountain. I thought if they had opened the Saddles, three steep chutes into Lizard Bowl, we could get ourself some fresh, fresh tracks at last. Some of that BC tea, the cold smoke, the white gold - you get the picture....

In fact it was better than I hoped. We got to Corner Pocket just as the ski patrol dropped the rope and I was the fifth guy in. The run down was simply the most fantastic skiing experience I've ever had. Beautiful light untracked snow up to my waist in places. Now that's what I call awesome!