Ice that dream, please
Oh my, but the crazy talk is goin’ on round here. Talk might be cheap, but some folks really want to spend tax dollars like the pit was bottomless. Right now, it’s hockey fever, and the local fans want more than a seat by their big screen TV, if you know what I mean.
Tomorrow, there’ll be a walk (synonym for a parade without a reason), as a show of faith that professional hockey will return to the city. Although there is a collective amnesia over how the last time around, some people became much richer with the sale of a potentially winning team to another city, the rah-rah gang want to do it all over again, except bigger.
Back when the Nordiques received their NHL franchise, the local arena was “only” 30 years old. Big enough (after some expensive renovations) to hold the cheering hordes. Comfortable enough for the moment. But times changed, and the team has been a “not so distant” memory for fifteen long years. The fans still have sweaters and car flags and other paraphenlia, ready for the return of the phoenix from, well, Phoenix. It’s not the players, it’s the franchise.
But, the book-keepers (not the same as bookies) have made it clear. No new stadium, no new team. And the rant is underway. This evening, an open forum in a local shopping center; the mayor, politicians of all stripes, journalists, economists, even some old hockey players. To and fro, for and against. The demand is for lots of public money and the rebuttal is for the private sector to do its part in buying the dream.
Here’s how I see it: if you asked people to pay for a new shopping centre, a big one, with submarines and all, they’d be reticent. If you said that “we the people” should build the dream and hand it over to private enterprise to sell all and sundry, they’d be reduced to tears of mirth. Yet, the same rational souls want “we the people” to do it for some hockey millionaires.
Hit the showers, folks.
