Karin Nelson

Yesterday, my anxiety was sky high. Everything seemed bleak, and depression set it. I couldn’t concentrate on work, and nothing seemed to matter anymore. After after seeing the devastation Trump and his cronies were not only causing to American citizens but to people all around the world, after watching Macron’s speech where he invited French people to join the military, after understanding that if the Ukraine is lost, Putin will come after the rest of Europe, with the very real possibility of a 3rd world war and Finland’s preparations for it, a sense of deep depression settled over me.

Then, last night, a hockey game. THE hockey game. USA vs Canada. A game that for all intents and purposes should not have mattered much. It was part of a 4 Nations Hockey tournament, a replacement for the All Star Game the NHL puts together every year. This year, everything was different. The game didn’t just put team vs team, east vs west. It put up nation vs nation. A small country, currently bullied and ridiculed by its powerful neighbour, blackmailing it with tariffs and annexation threats, playing against this very neighbour.

But that small country did not flinch. We’re small in numbers, a mere 41,000,000 – but mighty in strength. Canada doesn’t have tropical beaches, or summer year round like our neighbour to the south. Canada has rugged mountains, icy plains, blackflies, bears, isolation. We do wear flip-flops and shorts year round, but as a result, we are not weak. Especially not when it comes to hockey.

Now I tell you the truth: I don’t like hockey. I’m originally from Europe. My sport is football (soccer), where, if you ever should have the misfortune to throw a punch at an opponent, you would be disqualified not only from the game but from the rest of the season. So hockey isn’t my thing. But it was my thing last night.

We don’t have that Sportsnet channel that charges you $ 24.99 per month to watch hockey. So we watched the game by tuning in someone’s TikTok live stream (thank you, btw!). It was French, to boot. But we didn’t care. I didn’t want to watch because I was so nervous, but I couldn’t look away either. And then, it happened. Canada won. WE won. The good guys. The little country. The bullied nation. We beat the Americans in this tournament that should have not mattered one bit. But matter it did.

This morning, the world looks different. A weight has been lifted from my shoulders. People seem to have woken up from a state of shock, and things are starting to move. The New York Post, one of the most right wing newspapers in the US is scolding Trump on their FRONT PAGE. Ruby Dhalla (a conservative plant) is getting barred from running in the Liberal leadership. There are town halls around American where people are protesting to their elected leaders. An opposition is forming. We are now ready to fight, just like the Canadian hockey players were.

24 hours, and there is hope again.