The SBP Archives - Your less than frequent dose of SBP!

I'm not a historian by any means, and certainly a city like Ottawa won't exactly excite the masses when you reveal how it came be to be and what it has gone through to get to where it's at today.

But, I live here. And I also have a passion for professional ice hockey. So by accident, coming across "Win, Tie, or Wrangle: The Inside Story of the Old Ottawa Senators", it was easy for me to pick up.

Back in grade 3, my homeroom teacher, Ms. Christie, had a class discussion about the old Senators, and this would be the only time in school, university, or anywhere else in my entire life that this era was ever discussed. I specifically remember her talking about the infamous Ottawa Silver Seven. To show how memory can be be somewhat obscured or tainted over a period of time, I had always thought the name referenced seven Stanley Cup victories. Rather, it comes from silver nuggets awarded to each of the seven members of the team after winning their first Stanley Cup. One of them remarked they should be called the Silver Seven, and the name caught on from there.

I'm just over half way through the book, and I'm not going to bore you with a simple book review. But what I want to share with you is what I felt as I've been reading it (getting in an hour here or there in between taking care of Sophie-Anne, of course). To me, it is just awesome to read how, on the corner of Bay and Gladstone, the Ottawa Senators won their first Stanley Cup in 1903, at a rink known as Dey's Arena. The building was destroyed by fire in 1920, and with it, a lot of hockey and Ottawa history. But they have a marker there posted to commemorate their Stanley Cup win, and if you use Google maps, and have the patience, you can actually see the blurry marker located in front of a retail cleaners now operating there. The oldest trophy in North American sports, at the time only 10 years old, was won by the Ottawa Hockey Club at that very location, five blocks away from where I park my car for work more than 100 years ago. Fascinating.

During this time, the term "professional" was a dirty word that took some time before being accepted by the public. Athletes, team owners, etc. took pride in their "amateur" standing, playing for the love of the sport, and working a regular full-time job when they weren't at practice or playing a game. The Stanley Cup was originally intended for amateur teams to compete for, however, many players were heading to places like Pittsburgh to earn a salary for their athletic abilities. Canadian teams, to compete with this "brawn" drain (Ottawa included) would give "bonuses" at the end of the season, away from the public eye in a manner that wouldn't ruin a person's so-called amateur standing. Or find a nice government job for their top scoring winger, away from the factories and the mills. Perhaps it was around this time that playing solely for the love of the game was lost.

In any case, I'm really enjoying this book, knowing the layout of the city and picturing an old arena being located, for example, on Laurier Ave in front of what's now City Hall. I'll be writing some stories from time to time about the actual history of the old Senators, be it a special game they played or a story about one of the many Hall of Famers the Ottawa hockey clubs produced until their last season in 1934. Ottawa is a relatively young town, and to me it's a shame their past hockey history isn't talked about more.

Or perhaps I just haven't been paying enough attention.

I spent the start of grade 10 all the way until the end of University working at the place: Videoflicks.

It was originally called Videoland when it first opened in 1990, and the business model involved video store owners paying upwards of $100 for each new release VHS tape to rent out to customers who didn't have choices like zip.ca or Rogers on Demand.

Five years would pass and the business would double the store size and become part of the franchise known as Videoflicks. It was big enough that even Burt Reynolds himself, finding some spare time from acting in the next huge Hollywood blockbuster, endorsed them when they had their own web page:



You know what even more strange, or perhaps somewhat pathetic, is that I actually still remember a large number of membership numbers to this day: Shepherd #20, Locke #1211, Gray #290, Pilon #368, Ouimet #1635 (an absolute a**-hole, I should add) Blackmore #4450 (or was it #3450? She was a sweet lady, gave me a "Canada, eh!" t-shirt before I quit and left for eight months to travel to Australia), and that's just a sampling. Anyway, tons of regulars, to the point where whenever I'd go into the local Loeb to pick up some groceries, I'd usually bump into a customer who would say hi.

But, I guess it couldn't last forever, with downloading and torrent sites becoming more and more common. 20 years after it opened, the doors will be permanently shut at the end of the month. I visited the store a few days ago and spoke to my old boss, who at the time the store first opened was pregnant with her first child. Now her daughter is attending University in her third year. And here I am a new father, just 2 1/2 months into that gig.

It's like this Videoflicks closure is telling me I'm getting all growns-up.

If I do get my hands on this game, it might take weeks and weeks of sporadic video-gaming to finish it, but it still looks pretty awesome!

Sophie-Anne was great today. We went to a family lunch thing this morning and followed that up with a friend's birthday party for their newly adopted one year old son. Sophie-Anne was being the ham like she usually is for these get-togethers, flashing her smiles for anyone that will give her 10 seconds of attention. She fussed just a couple of times because she wanted to take a nap so all in all, no complaints about her today.

But when we had her down in her chair just to play around with her tonight, as she sort of started talking back to us in ways only a baby can, she just started to cry for no apparent reason. When I took her out of chair she screamed like I've never heard her scream before, almost like she was in dire pain. I took her upstairs to change her like M-C suggested, mostly because we thought maybe her diaper was on too tight or something. You never really know, you can only take a guess. As I put her down on the bed, she screamed so loud she lost her voice and started to cough. And that's when I got so scared, I scooped her up and tried to calm her down but she still cried. We laid out a mat and put her on it then took off her diaper and let her have her naked time as we call it, as she likes just being "au naturel" for some reason. M-C had just fed her less than an hour before, but when gets upset it's usually because she's hungry, so we went that route.

Sophie-Anne seems okay now. She dozed off while feeding and we put her down in her moses basket. She got up and started to fuss some more, but her soother calmed her down and she's still sleeping as I type this. Likely, it's just nothing. But...I really don't want to hear that scream again. I'm going to remember that one for a long time.

I know I've mentioned this before, but those big, thick, gaudy championship rings are pretty sweet. Pictured above is Dan Boyle's ring for winning the ice hockey gold medal at the 2010 Olympics. He gets the gold medal as well, but you're not going to wear that out in the town. The ring gives you the option to show off your accolades in a more compact form, although again, it's so big I'm not sure how comfortable it can be on your finger.

And yeah, that's all I really wanted to say for now. That and my Xbox went on the fritz. What a screwjob that is!