Canadian Team Championships

As many of you know I am planning to go to the Canadian team trials in British Columbia in a while.  I would like to do something to let people know about the trials.  I am going to think about how I can profile the teams a bit and maybe publish some material from the site.  It may be a bit hard when I am playing but I am on a six person team so I should have some time.  I compare this to the US trials and it is pretty sad really.

Our team trials are basically self funding, using mostly the player entry fees (and some profits from an adjacent regional) to produce the money the teams get to go to the World Championships.  It is not nearly enough, even flying on the cheapest charter to cover expenses.  All our teams pretty well, are amateur teams.  This I suppose in some ways is a blessing and a curse.  Some years I have done some fund raising but I am going to be too busy this summer to help out much and the event is earlier than usual and closer to the trials.

Of course I love this country but sometimes it does make me sigh just a bit.  I was thinking about the characteristics of Canadians.  In general you could say we are rule abiding, honest, polite, a bit cautious and have a strong sense of fair play.  I am not going to use the word nice because it makes me shiver.  I remember when Michael Moore was shocked to come to Toronto and find that most people left their door open, often even when nobody was home and pretty well always when someone was.  Toronto has been called New York if it was run by the Swiss.

I was listening today while walking in the gorgeous weather to a Canadian humorous singing group called the Arrogant Worms.  They have this song called Proud to Be Canadian.  Here are some of the lyrics:

We know that you’ve got Disneyworld and you keep it very clean

We don’t have Bob Dole and we can drink when we’re nineteen.

We may watch your TV shows for hours and hour and hours

We’ll give you Allen Thicke but Shania Twain is ours.

We’re proud to be Canadian

We’re awfully nice to strangers, our manners be our curse.

It’s cool in many ways to be Canadian

We won’t say that we’re better, it’s just that we’re less worse.

I think that is the problem with our teams is that we do try to be “less worse”. We produce some talent, it would be great if we could produce a really good team or even teams this year and be better than less worse.