A Fat Purple Fig

I can’t seem to get up early on this holiday, or even at what might be considered a reasonable time. And it is bothering me…but obviously not enough to do it. Note that I said ‘get up’, and not ‘wake up’. It’s not a matter of setting an alarm, or leaving the curtains open, but of making the effort to follow the path of the righteous. I am carrying the dead weight of resistance, a stone’s throw from spending the rest of the trip eating salt & vinegar chips and watching The Office. There is a battle being waged between my halves: setter and breaker, order and chaos, builder and burn-it-to-the-ground.

Kitty is an enabler. Near comatose when asleep and utterly even-paced in daylight, she responds to all confessions of inner turmoil with a variation of ‘you’ll be right.‘ Case in point: we join the dining room for puffy pancakes, a fried egg, and maple syrup for breakfast, after which I curl up in bed to watch just-a-little-bit of Dance Moms before heading out to ride the cable car at Montmorency Falls. ‘We shouldn’t waste time in bed, watching television,‘ I advise.

‘We can do whatever we want.’ she replies, curling up to read a book on her phone.

We waste the day, under the guise (truth?) that it is raining, and emerge late in the afternoon. I dare not wonder what might have happened (UberEats) if we didn’t have pretty-decent seats to a presentation ice hockey match between the Los Angeles Kings and the Florida Panthers. Kitty picks up a retro Kings jersey at the sports store on the way – in the absence of her favourite team (New York Rangers), she has decided to back the Kings, and she’s loyal like that.

We are stuck between times – too early to hit the arena, and too late to enjoy a dinner in Old Quebec without watching the clock – so we decide to jump in a cab and hover if necessary. As it turns out, the Videotron is thumping like the pre-show at a dance party, with an earnest DJ pumping out tunes for the lines of Canadians, smiles on their faces and a spring in their steps, filtering through the metal detectors. The excitement is palpable.

We buy Coronas in giant cans and pull up a couple of bar stools to soak up the atmosphere. The crowd is varied; children swimming in adult jerseys, dad-and-son duos, a buck and his entourage, matching couples, and many variations of came-straight-from-work. We are approached by the bewigged buck and one of his mates, who is wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with his face. The friend begins in French, then switches. ‘My friend is having a wen-ding,‘ he implores, ‘can you sign his jersey?’ He seems surprised when I hold my hand out for the pen, so perhaps it was only meant for once-were-conquests.

We follow the river of spectators up to the next level and join a lengthy queue for food. The options are limited and overpriced, but par for the course, so we listen to the anthems as we shell out a king’s ransom for hot dogs and poutine. Kitty is pleased our seats are on the first level. The curds are slightly rubbery, and salty. I know I’m eating the fast-food version of poutine, but wonder if that’s the appeal…the salt. I don’t hate it; but it’s hard to hate chips and gravy, whatever the accoutrements.

The music in the arena hits in staccato bursts, filling the spaces between hockey moments. The experience is like listening to someone choose a track to play, before changing their mind, over and over again. The JumboTron, suspended in the middle of the arena, displays a steady stream of action: hockey plays, kissing couples, dance-offs, the DJ booth, and mascot-cam.

I learn a bit about ice. Three times in every period (hockey matches are split into thirds) a team of black-clad skaters, called the NHL Ice Crew, has two minutes to shovel up all the ice-shavings that have built up on the rink. Two minutes, that’s it. What a feat! It’s almost as much fun to watch as the game. In between periods, two machines called ‘Zambonis’ resurface the rink, by shaving the top surface of the ice, and spreading out a new layer of water to freeze.

If I had to describe the actual ice hockey in two words, I would choose ‘fast’ and ‘rough’ – good, salt-of-the-earth words that get the job done.

‘Fast’ because it’s so difficult to keep track of what is happening. No sooner than I’ve spotted it, the puck is en route to its next stick. I witness a goal from beginning to end and have no idea it has happened, but for the crowd filling me in. Repeatedly, I think to myself, ‘now, where did that go?‘ only to see the goalie open his hand and reveal the puck hiding in his glove, as if by magic. He must practice by catching flies…or bolts of lightening.

Ice hockey is so fast, the players don’t stay on the ice for any longer than ninety seconds at a time, so are constantly being replaced. This means I generally don’t know where the puck is, and I don’t really know where specific players are either. My favourites are the goalies. I enjoy watching them enact pretzel-stretches, and squirt water on their faces after shots at goal.

‘If the ref can’t break them up,‘ Kitty tells me, after yet another push-off, ‘he just lets them fight it out.‘ That sounds outlandish, until I discover it is so. If you don’t believe me, look up ‘hockey players picking up teeth‘ on YouTube. The barrier-slamming is insane. It’s just ninety-second bursts of chasing down a miniature, flat cannonball with wooden sticks, and shoving the hell out of each other.

It’s thrilling.

The Kings are losing, and I am far more bothered about it than I should be. Kitty and I ‘oooh‘ and ‘ahhh‘ and ‘c’mon!‘ for the duration. It gets super-exciting towards the end, when the Kings swap out their goalie for an extra player, in a kind of do-or-die, double-or-nothing, winner-take-all push in the final moments. It doesn’t work, and the Panthers manage to swish another goal into the Kings’ unprotected net, but I appreciate the all-in sentiment.

In the taxi queue, I hear someone say ‘sacrebleu‘ and wonder why it sounds like it belongs in the vocabulary of an animated French chef. I use Google Translate in the cab back to our B&B, but can’t find anything that makes sense. We overtip our driver, who responds with, ‘merci beaucoup!‘

I stay up late, learning that ‘sacrebleu‘ is a minced oath, or a type of euphemism that has been modified to exclude the objectionable parts. Once ‘sacré Dieu‘ (or sacred God) the change from ‘Dieu‘ to ‘bleu’ meant the speaker could use it to exclaim, while avoiding blaspheming – a bit like saying ‘heck’ instead of ‘hell’. It’s outdated, and is mostly used today to stereotype French speakers. Who was our mysterious speaker, then? Did he say it with irony, or was it a blow-in, hoping to sound French?

These are the questions one must ponder.

I split my should-be-sleeping focus between Hells Kitchen and YouTube clips of hockey players losing their teeth.

The battle rages.