Hockey might be played tonight. Bruins @ Bell Centre, 7:30PM (SN360, RDS)

[Neech]

2. Although the players are international, and the franchises are businesses, the team nevertheless bears the community's name - these are the guys that Montreal, or Toronto, or Vancouver, etc., are symbolically sending out to do battle in their names - and sporting events are community events, rare moments when we come together and cheer for the same common goal. The city is a community, and it exists within the framework of a national one. Singing the anthem acknowledges that communal framework by referencing our highest point of political/civic allegiance. That's why it makes sense.

Surely you can see how far you're stretching here. We come together to cheer for a sports team, therefore it follows that we should sing our allegiance to our nation-state? The politics inherent in a national anthem aren't needed at a sporting event, and I'd feel the same sense of warm communal glow if we all hummed the theme to 'The Simpsons' before the game.

It doesn't bother me that much, but it is annoying to have unnecessary, rote moments of political solemnity inserted into my relatively mindless entertainment. We might as well pledge our allegiance to the garbage man or sing the anthem before seeing the next episode of Game of Thrones. That's why the Boston anthem guy is my favourite, his blustery, quavering vocals and fist-pumps parody the pomp of this obsolescent tradition.

[The Chicoutimi Cucumber]

These analogies with movies and TV shows are simply false. We don't have 20 000 people coming together in one place to watch those entertainments, nor do those entertainments have anything to do with the specific civic community to which we belong - unlike sports teams, which carry the city's name and generally serve as one common locus of solidarity and identification within the city.

The connection with nationhood comes from the recognition that the city is itself embedded within a wider civil framework. Just as our identification with the team connects us to our local community, that local community is connected to the national one. That's how civic identities work.

Now, we always have the option of

1. Denying the value of civic community, attachment, and belonging. That seems to be Joe's stance, although his separatism suggests some hypocrisy or confusion on his part about this. What he might really mean is that he doesn't give a whoop about Canada as a site of identification, that he would like to see it replaced by Quebec as an exclusive such site. This is different from repudiating all sites of civic/national allegiance as such, which seems to be the direction in which he's claiming to go.

2. Denying that pro sports have any connection to civic community, attachment, and belonging. This is perfectly plausible, but it crashes up against what are, to me, the obvious civic effects of pro sports teams, which I've tried to articulate in my last two posts. What Neech describes is the attitude of an atomized consumer. "This has no connection whatsoever with community, it's just about me enjoying a product." Of course, it is about you enjoying a product. It is also about the community coming together to cheer for its team. Once we concede that point, the connection to national anthems makes a fair bit of sense.

[Machine of Loving Grace]

Whenever I hear a national anthem at a sporting event, I just think of whenever pro wrestling uses it to get bad guys over or that scene in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia where the national anthem playing made people forget about three guys in chicken suits doing an NSYNC style dance routine and singing about being BIRDS OF PREY.

[Neech]

"This has no connection whatsoever with community, it's just about me enjoying a product." Of course, it is about you enjoying a product. It is also about the community coming together to cheer for its team. Once we concede that point, the connection to national anthems makes a fair bit of sense.

This is just building a straw man. Yes, the community comes together to cheer for the team, but the community also comes together to take the bus to work in the morning. There's no reason why this one specific form of entertainment needs the political ceremony of a national anthem which has no connection to the team besides the stretch of 'everything exists within the nation's framework'. Then we might as well sing the national anthem at the next Adam Sandler film.

[Machine of Loving Grace]

This is just building a straw man. Yes, the community comes together to cheer for the team, but the community also comes together to take the bus to work in the morning. There's no reason why this one specific form of entertainment needs the political ceremony of a national anthem which has no connection to the team besides the stretch of 'everything exists within the nation's framework'. Then we might as well sing the national anthem at the next Adam Sandler film.

Better comparisons would be music concerts. Aside from stuff like Woodstock you never hear the national anthem, even if 20,000 people are there.

[The Chicoutimi Cucumber]

Again, you guys keep overlooking the explicitly civic symbolism of sports teams. They're the MONTREAL Canadiens. The ambiguity between simple consumer product and wider "civic" entity - often captured in the argument that this or that team is a "public trust" - is genuine. You guys want to reduce it down only to "consumer product." I say no, it's both, and the anthem ritual grows out of the other side of the picture.

I find it especially hard to believe that Habs' fans, of all people, insist on denying any connection between the hockey team and our wider communal identities. The Habs have been a powerfully-loaded symbol of (a) the French Canadian people and (b) the city of Montreal, for generations. This is so obvious I am amazed people want to work so hard to talk themselves out of it.

The "bus" analogy is ridiculous, but the "concert" one is closer to the mark in that a huge number of people are descending en masse to one place to share a common event/experience. The difference is twofold: first, that experience has no necessary connection to the civic context - going to see AC/DC in Montreal has zero to do with "Montreal" as such; and second, the event is a one-time-only affair, not part of a semi-permanent, ongoing point of shared identification within the community, which is what sports teams are.

I'd also note that, when a concert does have some sort of explicit link to the civic identities of the people involved, you ARE likely to have displays of patriotism break out. You only have to go to one Tragically Hip concert to understand that.

[Neech]

The stretch is from 'MONTREAL' Canadiens to 'CANADIAN' national anthem. Sure, Montreal is a part of Canada, but so what? By that logic, we should acknowledge our larger global framework and be singing 'We Are The World'.

If there was a song that was about the club or the city, like 'You Never Walk Alone', it would make sense. You keep on hammering the straw man that we deny any connection between the hockey team and the community because we think the national anthem has no place before the game. Sure, cities love their sports teams and identify with them. Where does the NATIONAL anthem come in?

[Machine of Loving Grace]

You're right in that it isn't about sport but patriotism.

The national anthem wasn't sung at sports events until post-World War II. We didn't play both anthems in the NHL until 1967 and it didn't become mandatory until 1987.

For me, I see the national anthem as a way to allow the private corporations to wrap themselves up in the flag and make money off of it. Call me a cynic but it's the same way I feel whenever Don Cherry talks about the troops. It's his shield, his proof of humanity when denigrating and dehumanizing others. The Blue Jackets use war imagery to promote their hockey club. It's all accepted until someone does something that might look bad for war and patriotism (like when the Habs fans booed the American National Anthem after the announcement of the war in Iraq). Then it's suddenly no longer a cute sports thing and now a big serious thing.

These are world sports now. More people in China watch NHL games at 5 in the morning (their time) than people watch NHL games in Canada. Time to consider that.

[The Chicoutimi Cucumber]

The stretch is from 'MONTREAL' Canadiens to 'CANADIAN' national anthem. Sure, Montreal is a part of Canada, but so what? By that logic, we should acknowledge our larger global framework and be singing 'We Are The World'.

If there was a song that was about the club or the city, like 'You Never Walk Alone', it would make sense. You keep on hammering the straw man that we deny any connection between the hockey team and the community because we think the national anthem has no place before the game. Sure, cities love their sports teams and identify with them. Where does the NATIONAL anthem come in?

Now we're getting somewhere. You're right, there is no automatic or necessary move from the local civic identity (the city) to the national one. All I'm saying is that the move makes sense as an extension of the motif of shared belonging and community that the sports experience (in part) represents. But we don't have to make the move.

I do disagree with the attitude expressed by the claim that "Montreal is part of Canada, but so what?" As if there is no difference at all between our membership in a specific community, and belonging to a planet that lacks any meaningful form of organization, community, or identity. "The world" does not act as a cohesive or even meaningful unit, and for all practical (and existential) purposes its inhabitants are broken up into more localized identities - while hopefully also having enough of a broader perspective not to become completely blinkered to other societies and cultures, or intolerant toward them. Montreal is embedded in Quebec, which is in turn embedded in Canada; that's the highest horizon of our citizenship as a meaningful (as opposed to hypothetical) category.

Of course, some people do see it as a lamentable thing that human beings have broken themselves into specific communities, and argue that we should all be "citizens of the world." I'm not sympathetic, but it's a popular position among those who wish to position themselves as superior in enlightenment or sophistication to the broad mass of souls out there who live their lives engaged with specific sets of others in specific communities, and correspondingly have allegiances to them.

[KoRP]

Great post CC, maybe the enlightenment is the other way around....

[JoeLassister]

These analogies with movies and TV shows are simply false. We don't have 20 000 people coming together in one place to watch those entertainments, nor do those entertainments have anything to do with the specific civic community to which we belong - unlike sports teams, which carry the city's name and generally serve as one common locus of solidarity and identification within the city.

The connection with nationhood comes from the recognition that the city is itself embedded within a wider civil framework. Just as our identification with the team connects us to our local community, that local community is connected to the national one. That's how civic identities work.

Now, we always have the option of

1. Denying the value of civic community, attachment, and belonging. That seems to be Joe's stance, although his separatism suggests some hypocrisy or confusion on his part about this. What he might really mean is that he doesn't give a whoop about Canada as a site of identification, that he would like to see it replaced by Quebec as an exclusive such site. This is different from repudiating all sites of civic/national allegiance as such, which seems to be the direction in which he's claiming to go.

2. Denying that pro sports have any connection to civic community, attachment, and belonging. This is perfectly plausible, but it crashes up against what are, to me, the obvious civic effects of pro sports teams, which I've tried to articulate in my last two posts. What Neech describes is the attitude of an atomized consumer. "This has no connection whatsoever with community, it's just about me enjoying a product." Of course, it is about you enjoying a product. It is also about the community coming together to cheer for its team. Once we concede that point, the connection to national anthems makes a fair bit of sense.

My separatism comes from the fact that the Canadian Constitution Act starts with : "Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:"

I'd like my province to be independant because of that and to exclude ANY and ALL religious reference from public institutions / school / well, anywhere in our society.

In other words, I'd love my country to be officially atheistic (is that a word ?).

That won't happen since there will always be the "freedom of religion" (which wouldn't exist in my definition of an ideal world), but anyway, I can live with that.

The stretch is from 'MONTREAL' Canadiens to 'CANADIAN' national anthem. Sure, Montreal is a part of Canada, but so what? By that logic, we should acknowledge our larger global framework and be singing 'We Are The World'.

If there was a song that was about the club or the city, like 'You Never Walk Alone', it would make sense. You keep on hammering the straw man that we deny any connection between the hockey team and the community because we think the national anthem has no place before the game. Sure, cities love their sports teams and identify with them. Where does the NATIONAL anthem come in?

Exactly. Why fans from Toronto that want my Habs to lose game in game out sing the same exact song as we do is just beyond me.

Remember when Komisarek (an American) got beat by Lucic (a Canadian) and Boston's fans were chanting USA, USA, USA ?

For me, that was the summum of this patriotic non-sense. WAAAAAY too much emphasis on patriotism in pro sports in general, IMHO.

[Habs30/31]

Surely you can see how far you're stretching here. We come together to cheer for a sports team, therefore it follows that we should sing our allegiance to our nation-state? The politics inherent in a national anthem aren't needed at a sporting event, and I'd feel the same sense of warm communal glow if we all hummed the theme to 'The Simpsons' before the game.

It doesn't bother me that much, but it is annoying to have unnecessary, rote moments of political solemnity inserted into my relatively mindless entertainment. We might as well pledge our allegiance to the garbage man or sing the anthem before seeing the next episode of Game of Thrones. That's why the Boston anthem guy is my favourite, his blustery, quavering vocals and fist-pumps parody the pomp of this obsolescent tradition.

Funny and bang on. Great post.

[Neech]

Now we're getting somewhere. You're right, there is no automatic or necessary move from the local civic identity (the city) to the national one. All I'm saying is that the move makes sense as an extension of the motif of shared belonging and community that the sports experience (in part) represents. But we don't have to make the move.

I see it as not only unnecessary, but pernicious, for reasons that Machine outlined earlier. We're in the arena for the ra-ra tribalism of cheering for a hockey team, and extending that to our nation-state is a dangerous habit.

[KoRP]

Bahahaha... BS.

All it really boils down to is you guys spent way too much time on this already... this isn't some political forum, where you get to super impose your views of the world on all us Hab fans here to talk hockey..

A tradition to an NHL game, and a patriotic salute to the country, that's it.

Lobby the NHL to change it.

Realize that generations past, who I might add were very patriotic, fighting/losing family to/in world wars has that effect, and the NHL has moved through those generations when it was built in these two countries, all while singing both anthems.... so what?

You not from this shore or what?

Don't want to hear it, then bury your head in your cell phone...

Just shudup already....

[habs rule]

"My separatism comes from the fact that the Canadian Constitution Act starts with : "Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:"

I'd like my province to be independant because of that and to exclude ANY and ALL religious reference from public institutions / school / well, anywhere in our society.

In other words, I'd love my country to be officially atheistic (is that a word ?).
That won't happen since there will always be the "freedom of religion" (which wouldn't exist in my definition of an ideal world), but anyway, I can live with that."

I happen to agree with you wholeheartedly on this point, but that doesn't mean I think the country needs to break up. I find that ludicrous. The separation of church and state is a long held ideal that has never been adhered to here or in the united states. I for one would like the "supremacy of god" either deleted or replaced by the great pumpkin or even better the great spaghetti monster, then we could all wear colanders. Anyways this has gotten way off topic. I believe the national anthems are played at sports events because they couldn't think of anything else to do. It helps businesses disguise the fact that they want your money and is probably the most disingenuous thing we do. There is a time and place for our patriotic outpourings, and in my opinion, it is not a hockey game. Unless it actually is Canada playing another country, that is perfectly acceptable. As we do it now merely cheapens and makes a mockery of our national anthem. I happen to be a pretty patriotic guy having spent some years in our nations Navy, and I don't see the point of playing the national anthem at an event that has absolutely zip to do with our nation as a whole. Let's play The Good Old Hockey Game before every NHL game. Now that would make sense.

[DON]

Belief in some "superhuman controlling power" sounds all well & good; but I would prefer to have a hard hitting, puck moving top 4 d-man on Habs.

Stompin Tom also would suffice for me.

Would kind of be like the Canadian version of a hot Faith Hill on Monday Night Football.

[habs rule]

Belief in some "superhuman controlling power" sounds all well & good; but I would prefer to have a hard hitting, puck moving top 4 d-man on Habs.

Stompin Tom also would suffice for me.

Would kind of be like the Canadian version of a hot Faith Hill on Monday Night Football.

now you are talking.

[xXx..CK..xXx]

I have to chime in here with perhaps, my more naive view, but why is it mentioned that the last "Canadian team" to win a cup were the 1993 Montreal Canadiens? Why do we hear things like "Bring the cup back to Canada"? Why do we have Canadians from all over the country supporting the idea of bringing in more Canadian teams to cities like Winnipeg? Why is this called Canada's game? Now I'm not saying any of us would like to see the Maple Leafs win the cup but I do think many of us would feel differently if a team like the Edmonton Oilers won the cup instead of a team like Nashville. I get that a lot of Canadians play for American teams but we aren't singing the national anthem for the players on the team. We are singing it for the fans who are more often than not local to the city they are cheering for which in turn is part of the country as a whole. If you want to suggest anything different than perhaps we can sing local city anthems if they even exist but that would be even more odd to viewers who weren't local.

[PMAC]

"My separatism comes from the fact that the Canadian Constitution Act starts with : "Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law:"

"I'd like my province to be independant because of that and to exclude ANY and ALL religious reference from public institutions / school / well, anywhere in our society.

In other words, I'd love my country to be officially atheistic (is that a word ?).
That won't happen since there will always be the "freedom of religion" (which wouldn't exist in my definition of an ideal world), but anyway, I can live with that." "

Three points:

1. You want to separate and break-up one of the best functioning countries on the planet because you disagree with the wording in our constitution that reflects the historical reality of the founding of the country??! Really? Is that the best rationale for separatism you can come up with? The freedom of religion that you disparage also guarantees freedom from religion. In other words, in Canada you are free to be an atheist, a great pumpkin-ist or whatever you want as long as your freedom of religious expression does not impinge on the rights of others

2. You claim that "there will always be freedom of religion". Uh, no there won't. In fact, freedom of worship has historically been quite rare.

3. There have been, and are, numerous countries that are officially atheist. e.g., the Soviet Union, China, North Korea etcetera. The problem with countries that prohibit religion is that they like to have a great deal of control over their populations so they tend to prohibit a great number of other freedoms as well. They also tend to develop a program of propaganda to deify their leader.

I respect your right to be an atheist-- and I have strong leanings that way myself-- as I am highly skeptical of organized religion. However, it is the freedom to choose that makes Canada great and that is why I oppose anyone who would like to impose their preferences on others whether they be Christian, Muslim, Atheist or Other.

In my ideal world, tolerance is the norm and we would not constantly have to be on guard against those--secular and religious-- who desire to impose their views on others.

I am not trying to say, or imply, that you are a radical, fundamentalist atheist, but the removal of any freedom to satisfy a particular group is a very slippery slope.

Peace