Canadians can at last all relax now.
We need not worry about anything. We need not morbidly look back at 2019 to see if the ceiling of the nation is set to fall on our heads.
We need not fret that Alberta and Quebec, both provinces with noisy separatist factions, are going to bolt.
There never ever was any real danger of that happening but they sure squawked enough to make themselves unbearably irritating.
Canada’s national junior hockey team took care of all the nation’s worries without even knowing.
Sure, this team, which beat the Russians last weekend when it mattered most, vaulted the nation once again to best in the world status, but there is so much more these high flying teens did.
Whenever The Land has an internal cardiac arrest from some sort of political tumult, as witnessed in the fall of 2019, there is always hockey to right the ship.
The game has and always will be the rightful ownership of this incredible chunk of land north of the 49th.
Never will its inhabitants, French or English, ever think otherwise. It’s a fact we just know, even if we forget once in a while over some little itsy bitsy political scrap.
With Canada’s spectacular win over Russia last weekend, and with the team desperately wanting the world to forget the 6 – 0 drubbing it took from the same team a week earlier, and with these wild-eyed and utterly focused teens determined to come from behind in the final, there was no denying this group of young teenagers’ classic and utterly Canadian lion-hearted courage and tenacity.
Millions watched. From countless bar stools and livingroom sofas they cheered.
And then Akil Thomas thundered in on goal with just 3:58 remaining, capping a three-goal, third period comeback.
Canada prevailed, just like Canadians have done in every circumstance of adversity for the past 152-plus years.
When the clock finally ticked down to zero there was a collective release across the country. Canada had won. Everything was just fine.
The Land is still, and forever more, strong.
Johnnie Bachusky is the editor of the Innisfail Province.
