By: Izzy Cheung, SFU Student
My dad was the reason I first learned about you. He was like you, in a way, having been brought to Vancouver at a young age and not knowing anyone in the area. Unlike you, he hadn’t been traded here for Alex Stojanov. Being a recent immigrant from Kowloon, Hong Kong, money wasn’t the easiest to come by for him. The only way my dad could show support for the Canucks was by searching for jerseys to wear at the Salvation Army on East Hastings.
He didn’t go to his first Canucks game until he was in his 20s. It was a matchup between the hometown team and prolific skater Petr Klima of the Detroit Red Wings. What stood out to my dad the most wasn’t the game itself, but the fact that he could hear Klima’s skates cutting into the ice like a saw into wood for the first time in person.
My dad was the biggest fan of the 1994 Canucks team, and in his eyes, the greatest Canuck of all time was Trevor Linden. Not to say that he didn’t like you — after all, he still has your jersey — but it was only natural that his favourite player was the captain of his favourite era of Canucks hockey. In a way, he passed the habit of gravitating towards captains onto me.
I was born during the league domination of the West Coast Express: the line of you, Brendan Morrison, and Todd Bertuzzi. When I look back, even though my memories of watching you play are fuzzy, I can still visualize myself sitting in my dad’s lap, on those maroon, movie-theatre-style arena seats, with that orca-blimp floating over our heads.
Through middle and high school, I became less interested in sports, and geared towards arts instead. By this time, the more my dad’s role increased within his company’s branch, the harder it became to find ways to bond with him.
This is where you came in.
In grade 11, I tried watching hockey again; although, by “watching,” I mean only attempting to memorize players and their jersey numbers. Hockey as a sport didn’t really fascinate me until the night the Colorado Avalanche rolled into town. I use “rolled” as the verb knowing fully well that, after the Canucks climbed back to tie that game 4–4, you completely “rolled” over us in overtime.
My dad and I watched, starstruck, as you blew past all three Canucks, before burying the puck top-shelf against Thatcher Demko. Not to sound dramatic, but you earned both my dad and I’s respect that night. Since then, the Avalanche have become a team I follow and support closely, and I’ve even managed to get my dad to do the same. Although, he was already a big fan of Colorado Avalanche royalty and hometown kid Joe Sakic, so it wasn’t hard to get him on board.
At the end of the day, I don’t think the beauty of sports is MacKinnon’s single-handed overtime efforts to win his team the game, nor was it Naslund’s deke to bury the puck behind Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender Curtis Joseph. The beauty of sports is the relationships they can create and sustain. Hockey helped me grow closer to my dad, and brought me to this wonderful position where I can write about the things I enjoy.
