Quebecers Are Like Carey Price

Quebecers are like Carey Price: damned if they do, even more damned when they don't. Or maybe it's the other way around, but there's damnation with every action, that I am positive about.

Much has been said about Exhibitiongate (or Exhibit 1, as I like to call it myself), but I'll post it here anyway: in a pre-season game that meant absolutely nothing in which both teams fielded, basically, half a roster with pros and the other half with rookies or guys who'll never ''make it'', The Anointed One let in 4 goals on a mere 9 shots before being replaced midway in the game, when a #1 goalie in the NHL should stop 91% of shots faced. 23 minutes in, and Price was already getting booed - both a result of his own poor play, but also, probably, as fans had a reason to show the team's management that they disagreed with playoff hero Jaroslav Halak being traded away to make room for Price.

Defenseman Josh Gorges had this to say after the game:

Booing the goaltender in the first preseason game, that's unfair. The fans were cheering but it was derisive. Honestly, I don't understand. It's tough for the whole team. Carey is just one player on the team. Everyone is at fault for the goals that went in. I know expectations are raised, but is he Superman? Is he supposed to save everything?

The next game, Price... let in 6 goals on 31 shots in a 6-2 loss, in Ottawa. Good thing it was on the road, because I suspect fans might have done more than boo - maybe throw shit on the ice, maybe commit murder. All in all, Jesus Price had let in 10 goals on 40 shots in less than two games, for an 0-2 record, a goals-against average of 6.67, and a save percentage of .750.

But the booing got the most attention, obviously, considering it was a meaningless game. Many called the boo-birds ''idiots'', some called them ''fairweather fans'', and other names were called. But, once again, a prominent member of the media - this time a CBC reporter - blamed ''separatists''. What he meant was ''fucking Frenchmen'', of course, the implication being that Price was only booed because he's an English-speaking aboriginal man from B.C. and that a French-speaking Québec-born goalie would not have received the same treatment.

I touch on this subject quite a lot - only because it's becoming more and more rampant in the media; I mentioned it here just two weeks ago. Funny how I don't recall anyone booing European Cristobal Huet, or even Ontarian Jeff Hackett when they were the top dogs here. But we did boo the last goalie to win hardware in this town in José Theodore. And we jeered the best goalie of all time - Patrick Roy, of course - so badly that he never played another game in a Habs uniform and instead went to Colorado to win 2 more Stanley Cups and another Conn Smythe trophy.

We weren't all ''federalists'' then, asshole. We're not all ''separatists'' now, either. What sucks is this douchebag from the only national broadcasting company - the one objective news source we have that spans the whole country coast-to-coast-to-coast - is actually from this province. What this means is he's been nurturing these fucking ''thoughts'' (if you can call them that) for his whole life, and only now laid them on paper.

Sure, he apologized, politely and from the tip of the lips - but the accusation came so fast that you can't help but come to the conclusion that these are his innermost thoughts, and that he's only apologizing for reasons of Public Relations - because you're not allowed to insult the inferior race, it's not politically correct.

Well, dude, here's a brain-twister: seems to me these feelings are ingrained in you because they were taught to you - probably by your parents - and you've lived through, first, the scare of 76-80 and then of the 1995 referendum without actually understanding the issues that were at stake. In your apology, you state you're a ''proud Quebecer, and a proud Canadian''; if so, then, how do you justify one of the two founding provinces of the country not having signed the Constitution? How can you be proud of a country that doesn't want to include you in it, nor in its decisional process - but takes your tax money without flinching? A country that hates every time you request something but doesn't allow you to leave?

The reason there were sovereignists in the first place was to no longer be under the authority of the Queen of England, a separation the Americans did two hundred years ago. Sure, it also involved protecting the French-language-based culture that had successfully resisted assimilation in the past 375 years, but once you've been hanging onto your identity for so long, you kind of do deserve a treat of some kind.

In doing so, seceding would have, essentially, made Quebecers the masters of their domain, so to speak. They would only have to answer to themselves, make their own laws according to their own beliefs, and pay taxes to only one State, effectively reducing the triple-overlap of government levels currently in place. What it meant is this (and this is even more true now in the multi-cultural Québec we have now that leaves no other choice but this one): IF YOU CONSIDERED YOURSELF A QUEBECER, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN YOUR FUCKING COUNTRY, TOO.

Full disclosure: at times, I have been for seceding, and at others, against. Currently, while I view the action per se as a - if not the - only way to preserve what is internationally known as Canadian Values (free quality health care, affordable education, poutine as the national meal, a charter of human rights where all are equal regardless of race, sex, creed, religion or sexual orientation), I DO NOT TRUST those who would be in power when that happens (Pauline Marois, Jean Charest, Mario Dumont, most members of the PQ who are over the age of 50) to not enslave us all to the highest bidder. Those I do trust - the smart, inclusive, open-minded, Obama-like charismatic - are always, inevitably, in parties too small to have an impact, or thrown away from their own for reasons of someone else's ego - that's Gilles Duceppe (the smartest and most trusted federal party leader in the Canada), Amir Khadir, André Boisclair, Richard Bergeron, Elsie Lefebvre - people with a vision for a better, safe, more communal society that includes everyone in it. Even you. Especially you.

But you'll never understand because you'd rather blindly hate. At least Carey Price can change public perception by winning us over - winning a Vezina, a Stanley Cup, outplaying Halak for a couple of seasons, overshadowing Roy's exploits. Some would say none of this is likely, at this point, but none of it is impossible, either.