My favourite Snowstorm
Kenneth D. Reimer
Often, we plan to create good memories. There’s an upcoming anniversary, a surprise birthday party, or perhaps it’s just a poker game with some old buddies. Sometimes, however, the moments we cherish are the result of an unseen confluence of disparate events when Lady Fortune juggles the random elements of our lives and catches them awkwardly, resulting in an unexpected but delightful combination. She proffers them with a sly grin, as if to say, “Try it, you’ll like it.”
On February 20, 2014, near the end of the Winter Olympics, I spent time with my family in Kelowna, B.C., and our planned memory was to be a day of skiing at Big White. The weather wasn’t promising. We checked the webcams, and the day looked foggy, then came the lapse of judgment that allowed for the day to unfold the way it did. Even though the hill was blanketed in fog, we decided to make the drive and hoped it would clear by the time we got there.
My brother has his own skis, so our plan was to take him to his locker, then go to gondola and ride up to the lodge where we would wait for him to take a run to the summit and come down with a report on the conditions.
I like riding a gondola to a ski hill—you have time to ease into the morning and transition from city to mountainside. Plus, there’s a mounting sense of excitement that increases the higher you go. In Big White, the gondola passes over the village, and we were afforded a view of million dollar real estate replete with hot tubs on every balcony. The man we rode up with lamented how his young family could not appreciate the toll that skiing took on his aging body. I could empathize, but I thought the wear and tear was worth the memories. When we arrived at the lodge, we looked forlornly up the slope and saw that it was mostly obscured by mist. Visibility would be bad, but, I conceded to myself, at the speed I skied, I really didn’t need to see too far down the run.
We ordered hot chocolates and delectable cinnamon rolls, then grabbed a table and sat down to wait. The lodge was crowded with people not skiing, and no one stood in the line to rent equipment. Most people seemed to be hovering around such as we were. Out the window, we saw that snow had begun to drift down—quite beautiful if you weren’t hoping to get in some runs.
It wasn’t long before my brother came down with the news that he had spoken to one of the Big White employees and was told that the fog was really a cloud and it was laden with snow. There would be no skiing that day, and we thought that the morning was a bust.
But it was at that moment that we noticed that the gold medal game between the U.S. and Canadian women’s hockey teams was being televised on one of the flat screens. Since we weren’t done our hot chocolates, we switched tables and positioned ourselves directly in front of the television. I don’t know where we got this misperception, but we all thought we were watching a game that had been played the day before, and we believed that our girls already had the victory. Inexplicably to us, people keep stopping at our table and asking for updates on the score, which at that time was zero to zero. Awareness slowly dawned, and with it our excitement grew—it was a feeling slightly akin to that ride up the gondola. Surprised glances were tossed about the table, and we inched forward on our seats: this hadn’t been the gold medal game—this was the gold medal game!
A side note: during those Olympics, I came to the realization (rather late in life, I think) that I don’t enjoy watching live sporting events—they’re too stressful, especially if I care who wins, and that was certainly the case during the Olympics. The Grey Cup in Regina almost did me in.
The question around our table was whether to stay or make the hour drive back to my brother’s house. The skiing question was settled, but the game was starting to take hold of us. The day was changing: the planned memory had been lost, but perhaps something else could take its place. Lady Fortune had something brewing.
And it was really more than just the game: the setting also had its allure, partially because the crowd was international. The table beside us was from the U.S. I had heard some French and a language that I thought to be German. The majority of the employees at the lodge seemed to be Australians.
My sister asked one of the employees to turn up the volume on the television, and the lady agreed as long as we kept her updated on the score. More of a crowd began to form, and a bench was dragged out from the wall to provide front row seating. The atmosphere was beginning to sparkle. Who needed to ski now?
Then the U.S. scored.
And then they scored again.
Time began to drag. People began to mill away. Maybe, we thought, it was time to head home. Nothing to see here. We had already watched Virtue and Moir skate perfectly, breathtakingly, and still be awarded a silver. Who needed to go through that again? Still, one of us kept saying, “But wait, if they can only score one goal, just one, then anything can happen. They could tie it up. We could get it in overtime.” Prophetic words, but who could believe in a twist like that? It seemed too Hollywood, and anyway, in Hollywood, the “Americans” always win. We were the bad guys here.
But then Brianna Jenner changed our minds. Good God, she looked like a linebacker crashing through the defence: U.S.A. 2, Canada 1. There was no way we were going home now. People passing through the great room stopped, and a new crowd began to form. The volume on the television was turned up again. It had to be, or no one would have been able to hear the game.
I keep looking around at where I am, smiling. The mountain outside seems merely a backdrop, and the falling snow is just atmosphere. We are suddenly, unexpectedly, part of an “event.”
The clock ticks, and the realization sifts through the excitement that they’re still losing. We’re still losing. There’s not enough time.
Desperation.
Kevin Dineen pulls the goalie. Epic.
Then comes the snafu with the official, and the U.S. player sends that lonely puck sliding toward our empty net. It’s not moving that fast…. Fast enough that we can’t gather our wits to talk. Fast enough that I don’t need that breath strangled in my lungs, but it’s slow enough that my heart drops all the way down to my stomach. And then the sound of it—that sonorous “ping” as the puck hits the goal post. I can imagine that toll reverberating in the ears of the women on the U.S. team long after they have hung up their skates for good. (Ask not for whom the bell tolls.) Some will wake up at night and hear that echo for years to come.
“It hit the goal post?” we stutter, incredulous. “It hit the goal post!” The quiet pause of disbelief is followed by a roar of elation. People write this stuff; it doesn’t really ever happen. We’re riding high again, and there is no talk of going home now.
Suddenly, almost anticlimactically, Poulin ties the game, and the mass of people behind me erupt. Well, not all of them—there is that table from the U.S. The Aussies leave their posts and come rushing in to see what madness has seized us crazy Canucks.
The last minute of the game passes with a mixture of elation and apprehension—it’s not over, and they’re too damn good to discount. And then it’s overtime.
You might think you know how this story ends; after all, that overtime victory by the Canadians is now Olympic history. You’re thinking about the hockey game, however, and my topic is moments of…well, moment. On that morning, Lady Fortune betrayed my expectations. She drew a curtain on the mountain, but in doing so directed us to another stage—one of improvisation with an international audience. I have to admit that she probably didn’t do all that for me—Fortune smiles on the brave, not the megalomaniacal, yet my memories are my own, and, so far, that has been my favourite snowstorm.