First, let me say that even on good days, I miss the CBC - Mansbridge, Mercer, 22 Minutes, and that's just the TV. But you try watching hockey on American tv and things get really ugly - which leads me to this letter I've sent to NBC.

As a Canadian, Mike Milbury had me wanting to go into my tv set and beat Mr. Milbury with his own shoe. (For those of you too young to remember, or without the ability to ask former Bruins coach Bep Guidolin just what I am talking about, here's the video. Mike's at the top left of the frame at about the 38-second mark.)


***

During the second-period intermission of Saturday night's NBC broadcast of game five of the Stanley Cup finals, analyst Mike Milbury, a former NHL player with the Boston Bruins and coach and GM with both the Bruins and the Islanders, segued from a discussion of the game at hand to link it to the anniversary of D-Day. He paid tribute to the one-hundred-odd NHL players who served in the Second World War, and singled out by name Conn Smythe, Howie Meeker and Milt Schmidt.

He called them "great hockey players and great Americans."

Inspiring, except for the detail that none of them were Americans.

Conn Smythe was born in Toronto and served in the First World War, first as a member of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, where he earned the Military Cross, and then as a member of the Royal Flying Corps, spending the last year as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down. In the Second World War, Smythe volunteered again, serving in the Canadian Army; he was badly wounded in July 1944.

Howie Meeker and Milt Schmidt were both born in Kitchener, Ontario, and both served in the Second World War with the Royal Canadian Air Force. Meeker was badly wounded by a grenade, while Schmidt, along with fellow Kraut Liners Woody Dumart and Bobby Bauer, missed three years of NHL hockey wihile serving with the RCAF.

Mr. Milbury is a knowledgeable hockey man and was a fearsome defenceman, but as an amateur historian he is at best badly misinformed. His mischaracterization of Messrs. Smythe, Meeker and Schmidt as Americans is an insult to them and to their services to hockey, to their Canadian military service, and to Canadians, not to mention to American hockey players who served and died in defence of their country, such as Hobey Baker, who died in the First World War, and Frank Brimsek, Schmidt's teammate and a World War II veteran of the Coast Guard.

Mr. Milbury should immediately apologize for his error.

Idle thought after seeing a few seconds of one of the Sunday morning news shows: Doesn't Secretary of The Treasury Tim Geithner look an awful lot like Henry Spencer from Eraserhead?


Both images from Wikipedia

I'm just asking.

Julie, Your Cruise Director - one of the teachers at The Kid's high school - organizes a trip to Europe every year for students; this year's is to Madrid and Paris. We told The Kid we would spring for it as her graduation present and so she's one of about fifteen students going.

JYCD has held meetings every few weeks since last fall to prepare the students for their week abroad. For every meeting she provides a handout which is virtually identical to the handout provided at the previous one and which is only occasionally referred to for the rest of the meeting.

JYCD's favoured subjects of discussion are topics like: students on previous trips being robbed; fundraising; students on previous trips having wallets stolen; inappropriate clothing to wear while abroad; students on previous trips having cameras stolen; going out for tapas in Madrid; students on previous trips losing their money; and ways in which "those people" will figure out the group is American.

This evening's meeting was the second-last in the series, and since the students are expected to cover the costs of their meals and souvenirs, JYCD wanted to talk about money. She had several recommendations for the carrying of money in Europe.

After the standard recommendations - carry a mix of travelers' checks, cash and debit or credit cards, don't carry all of your money on your person, don't leave your purse unattended - she took questions.

"What should my child carry, then?" was the standard query. "Should it be all Euros?"

"If you want to," JYCD replied.

"How much in cash?"

"As much as you want to. But not too much."

"Well, how much in travelers' checks?"

"Some," she advised.

"In American dollars or Euros?"

"Whichever you'd prefer," JYCD advised. "But there's a fee to convert it over there. So you might want Euros. But then if you don't spend it all over there, they might not let you convert it back when you get back here."

"So it should be American dollars?"

"Well, then, some places will charge you a hefty fee to convert it there."

"So, Euros?"

"Maybe."

And what about actual Euros, or, as JYCD called the currency more than once, "their funny money"? (Presumably the funniest thing about it is that 1€ is worth about 35% more than $1 these days.) Where could they get some, and how much should each student carry?

JYCD told us that each student should give her $100USD, which she would convert to Euros at the airport.

"So $100?" asked one parent.

"Maybe."

One mom sitting near us asked her daughter if that meant she should give JYCD 100€ in travelers' checks, so that she could buy American cash and then convert it to Euro cash.

There then followed an extended discussion about the use of debit cards and credit cards. The woman who worked at Kroger said she called the numbers on the back of each of the pre-loaded credit cards carried by her store, and not one of them explicitly declared that their card would work in both Spain and France. Another said her bank told her their debit cards would work, but that she didn't believe them. Someone else said they'd heard that the US had declared Spain "a terrorist state" and wouldn't provide credit or debit cards for use there. And JYCD mentioned one student whose card didn't work once on the class trip seven years ago.

"So how much cash should we bring?" someone asked.

"As much as you want to. But not too much," she said. "One girl, a couple of years ago, put her purse down" - and JYCD indicated between her feet - "to take a picture, and someone took her wallet."

"So, we should use bank cards?" asked someone else.

Her assistant piped up. "When I lived there, I had a bank card that my bank swore would work, and when I got there it didn't. I panicked," she said, helpfully, "so just make sure you have something else, too."

"You mean like cash? Should we have US dollars or Euros? And how much?"

"Whichever you'd prefer," came the reply. "And as much as you want to. But not too much."

You know the guy talking has the audience in the palm of his hand when the stenographer in Congress stops typing to join in the applause. (He'd just talked about a schoolgirl who wrote to Congress to tell them that she and her classmates have hopes and dreams and aspirations, despite their school being described as "hopeless.")


Screen capture from C-Span.com video of the President's speech to Congress, February 24, 2009.