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Tag Archives: dalhousie tigers

A reassuring voice will be missed

10 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by teamoakville in AUS, AUS sport, CIS sports, family life, Health, hockey

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AUS Hockey, AUS sports, Bill McLean, dalhousie tigers, hockey


When you first start a family, it is inevitable that someone is going to tell you to enjoy every minute because the years pass in a blink of an eye, or some other cliché. And it’s almost true.

Two decades is 20 years whether you’re sitting on a desert island or enjoying watching your family blossom. Beyond the feeding, clothing, and care, parenting is about making sure your kids are loved and equipped with the skills to go out confidently into the world on their own.

And when that day comes, you hope that the people they meet will look out for them. We are all battle-hardened veterans of parenting wars, and we all regard our kids as fragile cargo.

We have been fairly lucky. Our boys had the luxury and privilege of living in a comfortable, safe, home in a nice town in a great country. They made solid friendships. They got educated. They played sports, learned the value of teamwork and joined social groups. They learned right from wrong. They are confident, smart, fit, handsome and *just* worldly enough. Continue reading →

A travel day

03 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by teamoakville in canada, CIS sports, cycling, diet, family life, fine dining, fitness, Health, hockey, minor hockey, oakville

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AUS Hockey, cape Breton, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, general, hockey


Before leaving Ben Eoin I spent some time just sitting on the shore enjoying the quiet. It was cold. I was the only human in sight. It was wonderful.

Before leaving Ben Eoin I spent some time just sitting on the shore enjoying the quiet. It wasn’t cold. I was the only human in sight. It was wonderful.

I think I have to chalk up Monday as a travel day.

We awoke in Ben Eion after having a great evening visiting with Laura’s family. The weather was classic Nova Scotia indifference — cool but not cold, cloudy with a spit of rain now and then, sunny with dark rolling clouds, and then rain. A good day to drive the four hours back to Halifax.

Today is Day 6 with out working out for me and I’m getting a little twitchy, but I’ve got a bunch of things going on that are preoccupying my time. It just means I’ll be all the more motivated when I get back. Right?

Right. Continue reading →

Five for Friday, Vol II (Monday edition)

02 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by teamoakville in antigonish, canada, CIS sports, cycling, diet, family life, fine dining, fitness, Health, mother webbs, orthotics, Travel

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AUS Hockey, cape Breton, cycling, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, general, hockey, Mother Webbs


The view from the shotgun seat.

The view from the shotgun seat.

Five for Friday seemed like such a clever idea 10 days ago. Then the combination of work, travel, and my diminishing memory conspired to override that thought.

So just to keep it going, let’s pretend today’s update is just a late version of Friday.  On with the show.

  1. I’m actually writing this portion of the entry on Saturday morning. Dal lost 4-2 last night to Moncton. It was a decent game and except for about an eight minute stretch it could have gone either way. Our guy played well I thought and was certainly the most physical presence in the game, delivering one highlight reel open ice hit that was a show stopper. But he’d rather have two points for a win. Back at it tonight again St. Thomas and Dal really needs to win this one. Obviously I’ll update things later.

Continue reading →

They met in a hurricane …

30 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by teamoakville in blue rodeo, canada, CIS sports, cycling, diet, family life, fitness, Health, hockey, jim cuddy, minor hockey, Music, oakville, running

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AUS Hockey, Blue rodeo, cycling, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, general, hockey, jim cuddy, music


“They met in a hurricane,
standing in an Airbus out of the rain …”
— with apologies to Blue Rodeo

It took two tries, but we landed safely in Halifax, our Airbus pushed by massive tailwinds that were once a Hurricane Patricia in Mexico.

Rain lashed the plane on our final approach and winds buffeted the craft, moving the metal beast not just in a turbulent up and down bounce but also left to right. Wisely our pilot bailed out on his first attempt to land and circled and tried it again, this time with success.

Boarding the flight held its own adventure. The Canadian folk rock band Blue Rodeo were on the flight and crooner-in-chief Jim Cuddy was seated in business class, row 1 on the aisle.

To say Laura is a fan of Jim’s would be a disservice to 50-something women everywhere. She knows all the words by heart, has seen the band multiple times and likes the cut of his jib, shall we say.

She boarded ahead of me — the miracle of Air Miles may have allowed us cheap flights, just not seats together — and as she walked by Cuddy she noted the seat next to him was empty. Continue reading →

Five for Friday; Vol I

23 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by teamoakville in baseball, canada, CIS sports, cycling, diet, family life, fitness, Health, hockey, journalism, lacrosse, minor hockey, oakville, politics, running, Training, working out

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blue jays, canadian politics, cycling, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, general, hockey, ropes, sit ups


A new, intended-to-be-regular feature. Let’s call it Five for Friday where I pontificate pointlessly on random, recurring and unrelated things. Or perhaps related. It depends. I won’t really know until I’m done.

– – –

Firstly, I did it again.

I was just past the entrance to Glen Abbey Golf Club on Dorval this morning when I realized I had forgotten my chest belt. Stop laughing.

For the benefit of the new and/or uninterested, we wear MyZone chest belts at ATC when we work out to monitor heart rate and gather data on the intensity of our effort. I had already forgotten my belt once this week.

And not that it really matters, but the computerized data base records your “effort points” so if you forget your belt, you get zero effort points even if you work your butt off. On a month-to-month basis, the cumulative effort points benchmark yourself against the group and against your own previous effort. And in a room full of competitive people, the points matter whether we admit it or not.

If I showed up without the belt again I was in for grief.

So. U-turn. Go home. Retrieve belt. Onward. I have no idea whether Laura heard me. If she’s smart she now knows I can show up just about any time looking for shoes or clothes. Mostly she just ignores me now because this is becoming so common.

I worked out three mornings this week and once at noon. For each of the 6a workouts I forgot something. My shirt. My belt. My suit. My shirt and my belt. My Shoes. A water bottle. My mind. Continue reading →

. . . and my head, if it wasn’t attached

22 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by teamoakville in baseball, canada, CIS sports, cycling, diet, family life, fitness, Health, hockey, minor hockey, oakville, running

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AUS Hockey, blue jays, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, general, hockey


One of the best parts of my day is the brief interlude early in the day when I sit on the turf at the Athlete Training Centre and pull on my sneakers.

The regulars file in, in varying states of readiness – physical, sartorial, and otherwise. Richard walks through the building snapping on lights, turning on the computers and monitoring systems, and firing up the music. The gym comes alive before the gym rats. We banter about the Jays.

Occasionally someone is tired from a late work night or business event. Rarer still is the weekday hangover (but they do happen.) A unifying point of conversation — a rallying point for those of us about to feel the hurt — is the earliness of the hour, the darkness of the sky, and more and more, the coming cold of winter.

But in those few minutes we are part of something a little bigger. Almost a team. I hear people share something from their lives – a mom’s birthday party, a hockey game on the road, a weekend plan, where they were when the Jays won or lost. It’s fun and it’s light and you realize that we’re all different and we’re all the same and we’re all there at 6a.

The thing that is the most the same is that at 6a, five mornings a week, we’re all there to work. No one makes us go. And we can leave whenever we want. But I really respect those people for just showing up, let alone the things Richard makes us do.

I don’t think it has occurred to most of those people that their example is actually changing other peoples’ lives. But I know that to be true.

–

On Tuesday after the election – I worked very late – I didn’t go to the gym. On Wednesday I did go but I was still tired. So tired, in fact, that I forgot both the chest belt that we wear to monitor heart rate and effort, and I forgot a dress shirt to wear after my shower.

It was a pain in the ass to drive home to get a shirt but unless you have a butler in your employ, it’s a self-inflicted injury.

Today, Richard chirped me during warm ups. “Did you bring your chest belt? Did you bring a shirt? Did you bring a tie?”

Yes on all three counts, actually, but with an asterisk. First, I rarely wear a tie. But I have a board meeting today and ties are pretty much board-room mandatory.

Second, the asterisk. I actually forgot my suit. And tie. And shoes. I was halfway to the gym when I realized it. I always put out my work clothes the night before and hang them in the mud room and I did that last night, too. But for some reason I walked past them this morning and out to the garage with the blissful ignorance of the utterly unprepared, utterly unaware.

I turned around and went home. If Laura knew I returned she never said so.

I may have to start putting everything in the car – not just the mud room – the night before, to counteract my apparent creeping senility. But that won’t work well when it’s -20 – changing into frozen clothes is one of those circles-of-hell kinda things.

Eventually, I got all my clothes in the right place today. We had a good workout, including a hard, flop-sweat-inducing 30-minute spin, which if it doesn’t kill you will certainly wake you up.

And I got to pull on my sneakers with some friends, inside a sparsely populated gym where the light from the door at 5:55am pierced the darkness like an arrow and the promise of the day to come bled into the morning.

I enjoy the 6a workout. And like the strawman in Wizard of Oz, maybe I could remember my clothes if I only had a brain.

–

Like thousands of others in Toronto, I left work a little early Wednesday afternoon to go home and watch the game. Unlike most of them I wasn’t hurrying to see the Blue Jays and Royals, but rather I was dialled in for the Dal Tiger and Acadia Axemen.

Last night was Dal’s home opener and Acadia was sure to be a handful as the 6th ranked university team in Canada. Dal’s program is improving but is still a work in progress, although a tight 3-2 loss to #2 UNB on the weekend gave reason for optimism.

Dal went into last night’s game with four of its eight rostered defencemen injured. Two or three forwards were also on the shelf. It was hardly a portent of glory.

But glory, there would be.

Long story short, the Tigers prevailed 4-3 in an overtime shootout. Acadia scored with just four seconds left to tie the game after the Tigers carried a 3-2 lead for most of the third, with my kid picking up an assist on that goal. Yeah, I  was excited for him and all of them.

In overtime, the Tigers played like giants. Patrick drew the only penalty of the frame, taking a high stick to the face. He never missed a shift and they rode him like a $2 pony at the fair.

It was such a great way to end my day and such a great moment for the Dal players. It doesn’t get any easier on Friday night when they travel to Antigonish to play St FX. That’s the thing about the Atlantic conference – every night is a tough night.

Our guy knows from hard experience that nothing worth having comes easily. I think about that all the time lately, too. Even at 6a.

Beyond polls and scores

19 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by teamoakville in CIS sports, cycling, diet, family life, fitness, Health, hockey, journalism, oakville, Training, working out

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AUS Hockey, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, general, hockey, journalism


Sometimes, things that matter don’t get reflected in poll results or on scoreboards on even on a scale at a gym.

Today is election day in Canada. It sounds incredibly trite to say this, but go vote. It matters.

And that’s the first stop in today’s sermon. There are things going on in the land, in the hearts of voters, that just don’t get reflected in numbers on a scoreboard — a pollster’s tally sheet in this case. How happy or dissatisfied are you with the government? Enough either way to bother voting?

If it doesn’t matter to you, then have the decency to understand that people have actually died defending your rights, including the right to vote. Have the decency to understand that at this moment, people around the world — literally billions of people — either have no right to vote or only to participate in some pretend election that doesn’t reflect democratic will.

I think voting should be required under law, as it is in Australia and nine or 10 other countries where they enforce the requirement to vote. Another dozen or so have legislated the requirement to vote, but don’t enforce it. Continue reading →

A sporting life

16 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by teamoakville in baseball, CIS sports, colds, cycling, diet, family life, fitness, Health, hockey, minor hockey, oakville, Training, working out

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AUS Hockey, baseball, blue jays, cycling, cycling in cold weather, dalhousie tigers, diet, exercise, family, fitness, general, junior hockey, kids hockey


Too much on the calendar this weekend. A high-quality, first-world problem.

There’s a junior A game in Milton tonight that I would like to see, because it’s Milton vs. Cobourg and there will be several kids in the game I know, not the least of whom is Will the Thrill.

But.

The Dal Tigers are on the road this weekend, playing at UPEI and that game will be webcast. Through the miracle of Apple TV I can stream the webcast from my iphone to the Apple TV box and onto the big screen in the family room. While it’s not HNIC, it is to us, and it’s free.

UPEI also has the best and most entertaining play-by-play and colour commentators in the Atlantic university conference, and that coupled with my personal interest in the game makes it must-see TV. Sorry Will.

Then, there’s also a baseball game of note tonight – the Blue Jays open the ALCS in Kansas City tonight and that is also must-see TV. And the Leafs host Columbus in what will be perhaps the least-viewed Toronto hockey game of the season. Both teams stink and the Jays are in the ALCS? Good luck.

So, tonight I will be grateful for the invention of time zones. The 7p start for Dalhousie in Charlottetown is 6p here and the hockey game will be almost over when the Jays take to the field for a scheduled 8:07p start. Continue reading →

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