"Better than expected!" Poor Len reviews the Habs' first quarter

Salut! Poor Len Canayen icitte, with a look at the performance of Canada's team -- the Montréal Canadiens -- as we hit American Thanksgiving.

The significance of the date is that conventional wisdom says that any team which is over .500 at this point in the schedule is bound for the playoffs. Well, guess what? Les Glorieux, after their 20th game on Wednesday -- a thrilling 3-1 victory over Columbus -- are .525! Whoda thunk it?!

Here's how we get there. GP 20 - W 10 - L 9 - OL 1 - good for 21 points, 6th place in the Atlantic Division, and 18th place in the NHL overall.

Kudos to coach Martin St. Louis for moulding a group of rookies, hasbeens and neverwases into a team (or something like it) which plays entertaining hockey. Even when they fall behind 2-0 in the first two minutes. Even when a rookie defenceman scores an own goal, which happened twice in the last week. 

The Habs are fun to watch, and we fans can wear our merch with pride... unlike the fans of another team just five hours west on  the 401. [Can you avoid local references? Americans won't know what you're talking about. Ed.] [Who cares? Len.]

Star performers include the dynamic duo of Captain Nick Suzuki and Cole "Goal" Caufield. Gotta love those kids! They need a better player on the right of that top line, but even so, they're right up there with the likes of Crosby and Malkin or Bergeron and Marchand. Ils ont gagné leurs épaulettes!

Unfortunately, that's about it for the stars. The clubs No. 1 draft pick, Juraj Slafkovsky, has potential, and they're being careful not to push him too far too fast, but I wouldn't count on him for much this season.

Rookie defenceman Kaiden Guhle is proving reliable, if unspectacular,  whereas Arber Xekaj (unaccountably pronounced "Jackeye") is the opposite -- spectacular (already a fan favourite) but unreliable.  

In goal, Samuel Montembault shows considerable improvement, and a good thing too as the old pro, Jake Allen, is starting to suffer from shell-shock. As the +/- stat, -9, shows, they need a better defence in front of them. Weak links need to be replaced if the Habs are going to make it into the playoffs. 

That said, I humbly revise my pre-season prediction that the Canadiens would finish out of the playoffs. Now I think that, with a bit of puck luck, le Canadien sera là! Lifetime pct .988.

UPDATE ADDED 26/11: Yesterday afternoon the Habs eked out a 3-2 shootout win over Chicago, with shootout goals by Caufield, Suzuki and linemate Kirby Dach. 

How about those Blackhawks retro sweaters? Chief Black Hawk has been reduced to a tiny patch on one shoulder. I expect he'll soon disappear altogether, like Cleveland's Chief Wahoo. When will the wokeness stop?!

What next? No more "fighting Irish"?

We live in a time of unparalleled iconoclasm. First it was statues that offended or "triggered" snowflakes and SJWs. Now it's mascots, logos and even team names. See "'Racist' logos, 'racist' mascots, 'racist' names - Where will it end?", WWW 20/1/18.

The great "racist" mascot controversy, occasioned by the Cleveland Indians pussified owner's decision to get rid of Chief Wahoo, is far from over. In the first of these posts, I warned that the PC police wouldn't stop at banning "racist" visual depictions of Native Americans. Historic team names -- Kansas City Chiefs, Washington Redskins, Atlanta Braves and Chicago Blackhawks -- will have to go. And why stop with Indians? What about other "marginalized people"?

Like who (I hear you ask)? Well, how about the poor, down-trodden Irish? You know, people like the Kennedys. Haven't they been offended by the stereotype of Irish men as a bunch of combative drunks? You know... the Fighting Irish... which also happens to be the name of the Notre Dame football team. The team has a mascot/logo too, an angry leprechaun whose name I'm waiting for Poor Len to tell me.

As surely as day follows night, during a debate over Chief Wahoo on ESPN's First Take today, co-host Max Kellerman called on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish to follow the lead of the Cleveland team and get rid of their "pernicious" mascot (whatever his name is) because a minority in the Irish community group are offended by it. "[M]any Irish Americans are not offended, but many are," Mr Kellerman said. And should [the mascot] also change? The answer is unequivocally yes! ... Pernicious, negative stereotypes of marginalized people that offend even some among them should be changed. It's not that hard."

So Mr Kellerman thinks. As someone with about a pint of Irish in his blood, I'm warning him and all the other PC pussies that oi'll fight ivry man-jack o' yez if ye try to mess with our beloved mascot, whoever he is. Bejaysus it makes me blood boil! Why, oi'll..." Oh... wait... Well, stereotypes usually have some basis in fact, don't they. I say, take your political correctness and stick it!

"Racist" logos, "racist" mascots, "racist" names - Where will it end?

It was bound to happen. Towards the end of yesterday's fond (but somewhat premature) farewell to the Cleveland Indians' beloved Chief Wahoo, I wrote that the Chicago Blackhawks' mascot, Tommy Hawk, "is the coolest Indian in all of sports." The Indian ink [sic. Ed.] was no sooner dry on the parchment when Poor Len Canayen was on the horn to correct me. Tommy Hawk, he told me, is not an Indian or First Nations person or whatever term's PC these days, but, as shown in the picture at the left, is actually... wait for it... a hawk... a black hawk. Geddit?

The only Indian in the picture at upper left is the rather noble-looking chap whose visage adorns the Chicago team's sweaters. (And they are sweaters, by the way -- hockey sweaters. Don Cherry gets his hair all on fire when commentators -- usually American -- call them "jerseys". Quite right, too.) That Indian, complete with coppery skin, feathers and war paint, is a logo, not a mascot. (A cunning linguist would debate even that point. A purist would say a "logo" should be a word, but in modern times it has come to mean any distinctive design.)

OK, the Chicago Blackhawks have an Indian for a logo. And a fine-looking logo it is, too. But who is that person? Is he supposed to be Chief Blackhawk (or Black Hawk)? There was such a person -- Black Hawk, born Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak in 1767. He was a band leader and warrior of the Sauk American Indian tribe in what is now flyover country -- the midwestern USA. Black Hawk was not a hereditary civil chief. He earned his status as a war chief or captain by his actions: leading raiding and war parties as a young man, and a band of Sauk warriors during the Black Hawk War of 1832.

During the War of 1812 -- the only war America lost until Vietnam -- Black Hawk fought on the side of the British, hoping to push white American settlers away from Sauk territory. Later he led a band of Sauk and Fox warriors, known as the British Band, against European-American settlers in Illinois and present-day Wisconsin in the 1832 Black Hawk War. After the war, he was captured by US forces and taken to the eastern states, where, in true American entrepreneurial fashion, he and other war leaders were put on display on a tour of several cities.

Shortly before being released from custody, Black Hawk told his story to an interpreter. Aided also by a newspaper reporter, he published Autobiography of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, or Black Hawk, Embracing the Traditions of his Nation in Cincinnati iin 1833. His book was the first autobiography of a Native American [That's today's PC term, in the USA. Ed.] to be published in the USA. It became an immediate bestseller and went through several editions. Black Hawk died in 1838 in what is now southeastern Iowa. He has been honoured by an enduring legacy: his book, many eponyms, and other tributes, including (I would suggest) the Chicago team's name and logo.

I must admit, though, that the logo doesn't greatly resemble the real Black Hawk. That's him, looking askance from the top right. Is that logo racist? How about the mascot? Why does Tommy Hawk have to be black? Has the NAACP heard about this? Will the Chicago hockey team be forced to remove the Chief from their uniforms and merchandise, just as Cleveland has been forced to do away with Chief Wahoo? Will either team also have to change its name to satisfy the SJWs and PC police? Stay tuned.

So, farewell then, Chief Wahoo

An assiduous reader reminds us that the Toronto District School Board has been justly ridiculed on WWW prior to the Islamophiliac nonsense described in "Canada's loony left, pro-Muslim 'public' school board", WWW 16/1/18. Last fall, in "PC gone mad! Toronto public school board drops 'Chief' from job titles", WWW 11/10/17, Walt quoted at length from Post Media's Christie Blatchford, who took the TDSB to task for its decision to excise the word "Chief" from all its job titles, in the interests of not giving offence to Canada's First Nations (read: indigenous peoples... or... wait for it... Indians).

The TDSB's ultra-liberal, ultra-PC diktat was provoked by the fake-news controversy in the Excited States of America about whether the Cleveland baseball team, known for decades as the "Indians", should change their name to something less "racist". Since that idea was a non-starter, the SJWs were demanding that the team get rid of its mascot, whose smiling face has adorned its caps, uniforms and other paraphernalia since 1947. His name is... or was... Chief Wahoo.

I say "was" because today the Cleveland Indians caved. Team owner Paul Dolan announced that the Chief would be around for the 2018 season, but would then go to the Happy Hunting Ground to join Mr Rebel (Boone County KY High School), Colonel Reb (Ole Miss), and the old Darkie toothpaste guy.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred told the meeja, "The club ultimately agreed with my position that the logo is no longer appropriate for on-field use." Playing Mortimer Snerd to Mr Manfred's Edgar Bergen, Mr Dolan said, "We have consistently maintained that we are cognizant and sensitive to both sides of the discussion. While we recognize many of our fans have a longstanding attachment to Chief Wahoo, I'm ultimately in agreement with Commissioner Manfred's desire to remove the logo from our uniforms in 2019."

So Walt's use of the past tense was premature. Chief Wahoo gets one more year, during which the Indians will continue to wear his image on their sleeves and caps. Merchandise featuring the beloved mascot will continue to be sold in northeast Ohio "to retain the trademark."

What happens in 2019? Will the designers just kind of lighten Chief Wahoo up, changing him to pink and then to white, like they did with the Darkie dark guy who became the Darlie white guy? Or will they paint out the feather, make him darker and change his name to something more in line with the city he represents, like, say, "Prince Leroy"? I can hardly wait to find out.

Oh (as Columbo used to say), there's one more thing. The forces of political correctness hit a double on this one, but the inning isn't over yet. They'll keep batting until they force the Cleveland team to drop the moniker "Indians" as well. And then? There will be other racist team names to expunge from the vocabulary of American sports: the Kansas City Chiefs, the Washington Redskins, the Atlanta Braves and the Chicago Blackhawks, whose mascot is the coolest Indian in all of sports. His name is Tommy Hawk.

PC gone mad! Toronto public school board drops "Chief" from job titles

"If there were any doubt, there is no more: Canada is the stupidest country ever," writes Christie Blatchford in Canada's National Post, in an article headlined "Toronto school board declares war on 'chief' and all sense".

As we all know, Canada is kind of a nitwit nation. Particularly under the double-liberal government of Justin "Junior" Trudeau, the mania for political correctness and embracing diversity ("It's what makes Canada what it is!" says Junior) has reached dizzying new heights. The passion of the Canadian government for cultural sensitivity, inclusiveness and such-like BS is ridiculous, to the point of being mocked (quietly, of course) by ordinary "old stock" Canadians.

The Ontario government of proudly lesbian Premier Kathleen Wynne is worse. And now, Ms Blatchford reports, the Toronto District School Board, in its efforts to remain ahead of the Ontario government curve on all gender-cultural-political sensitivities, is not only contenting itself with following Education Minister Mitzie Hunter’s directive of early this year to review all potentially indigenous-offensive team names and mascots, but also has declared war on the word "chief".

"Chief"? What's wrong with that? TDSB spokesthingy Ryan Bird e-mailed Postmedia to "confirm that the title 'chief' is being phased out in various departments at the TDSB" as " part of the ongoing work that the school board does through the TDSB’s Aboriginal Education Centre with regards to Truth and Reconciliation (Commission, or the TRC, which produced its massive final report in 2015)."

Apparently the problem stems from the controversy south of the world's longest undefended border (subject to change without notice) over characters such as Cleveland Indians' beloved Chief Wahoo, pictured here.

Ms Blatchford continues: Attempts to find out precisely where in the TRC’s Calls to Action section there is any cry for the de-chiefing of the language in Canadian schools went unanswered. The board spokesman, Bird, tried hard on Postmedia’s behalf to get someone to respond but to no avail.

The best he could do, he said, was to suggest that the move didn’t necessarily come out of the TRC itself, but was "an aspect of a larger conversation staff have had" since the report was issued. Bird said he consulted with a TDSB elder who told him that probably "every Aboriginal person has been referred to as 'chief'" in a derogatory way at some point in his or her life.

But the fact of the matter is that the word is Latin in origin and comes from the Latin "caput", meaning head or leader, via the French, where chef is short for chef de cuisine, or boss of the kitchen.

If many people understand that caricatures such as Chief Wahoo...might be offensive to Indigenous ears and eyes, it’s a struggle to get the notion that a non-Indigenous word such as "chief" is equally insulting.

Anyhoo, there will be a lot of changes in nomenclature at the TDSB. While some key titles, such as "Chief Financial Officer" were changed a few years ago, recent casualties include the former Chief Caretaker at Glenview Public School, who arrived at work last week to find the word "Chief" on her office door blacked out. (Ooops. Could that term be offensive?) The Chair (Chairman? Chairperson?) of the TDSM will have to review and correct his résumé, where he is still described as "former Chief Student Achievement Officer" for the provincial education ministry. Presumably, Ms Blatchford concludes, the Board’s Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Officer and Chief Social Worker will all have to do the same. The entire C-suite could soon be history -- culturally sensitive history, to be sure.

Interesting factoid: One of Walt's agents, who must be numberless, worked for a time for the Saskatchewan Legal Services Commission, the public defender in that Godforsaken hinterland. 97% of the people he defended were Indians (or Indigenous People or First Nations, whatever is PC today). There were two main clans, he says, the Bears and Birds. He wonders if Ryan Bird, mentioned above, is one of those Birds. That would explain a lot.