Canada the brave.

If there's a sporting entity that is quintessentially Canadian it's Ice Hockey - the national sport and something of a religion in these parts. And if there was a Canadian game to go to it probably would be one between Montréal and Toronto. Admittedly the tickets were up in the gods and it was a pre-season friendly but my suspicion would be that no game between these two was likely to be friendly aside from Ice Hockey being a fairly brutal and combative sport anyway. Short hop to the Bell Centre - part of the subterranean city, then lots of stairs - no escalators - hmmm. Grabbed a snack & then to the seats and this is no ordinary ice rink - absolutely massive. Some gratuitous national anthem singing & then the main event - lots of men flying around the ice hitting a chunk of metal at high speeds and ramming each other into the rink wall. What's not to like. Other than when they scored not a clue what was going on but it was fun if a bit stop - start. Bizarrely they had 3 halfs of 20 mins and after two of those Half's 90 minutes had passed it dawned that with an early start tomorrow it might be prudent to call it a day. Montreal were 5 - 2 down so things were a bit subdued. Getting out of the arena was a little challenging but made it back to see the final whistle / siren on TV. Montreal conceded 2 more goals.Read more