On September 28 1972, Moscow USSR, Team Canada was trailing by a single point at 12:55 of the third period. It was game 8 of the historic summit series put together by the NHL in conjunction with the Soviet National team and the game was proving to be just as controversial as the previous 7. When Yvan Cournoyer scored the tying goal at 12:56, NHL commissioner Alan Eagleson stepped out of the crowd to confront the goal judge when he noticed the goal light did not go on. As he was doing so, he was grabbed from behind by Russian soldiers and led toward the exit, sparking one of the most nail biting and controversial series enders ever seen by the public eye. Pete Mohovlich then led a squad of Canadian players to Eaglesons rescue; swinging their sticks at the Russian mob, they wrestled him away and then led him back to the safety of team Canada’s bench.

At the final minute, another controversy. With the game tied at 5 a piece, a Russian delegate approached the Canadian bench and informed them that if the game remained tied at the ending buzzer, the Russians would claim victory on a goal differential; they had scored one more goal then the Canadians throughout the series. But, Team Canada would have none of it. In the dying seconds of the game, 34 seconds to be exact, Paul Henderson leapt over the boards and attempted to take a pass from Yvan Cournoyer. He slid into the boards, recovered and found himself in front of the net. Phil Esposito’s shot rebounded off of Russian goalie Vladislav Tretiak, Paul Henderson poked the puck underneath Tretiak and scored the winning goal, giving Team Canada the series and one of the most historic victories ever experienced in Canadian and international sport.

The series was tough, harrowing and controversial. Team Canada began the series flat, thinking they were going to walk all over the Russians, but the the Soviets, shrouded in mystery from the start, flattened the Canadians 7-3 in their own hockey temple; game one in Montreal. It was a wake up call, not only for the team, but for the rest of the country who looked on in shock while Canada’s hockey stars were humiliated. I remember the series vividly: game eight was so important the entire country shut down, TV’s were rolled into classrooms and we all watched while our team, who had by this time, become the underdogs, fought back relentlessly, refusing to concede defeat knowing that a loss in this arena could pivot global favor away from our way of life. The Russians would gloat over their superior conditioning and a new light would dawn on communism; people might even see it as the “better way”.

Later, when interviewed, Team Canada captain Phil Esposito remarked: “I am convinced this was not a game; this was all out war. It was our society against their society, democracy against communism”. He was not wrong.

Seventeen years later, the revolutions of 1989 formed part of a revolutionary wave that saw the end of communist rule in central and eastern Europe, and the walls began to crumble. Only a year earlier, I was there; I saw, first hand, what it was like behind the iron curtain. East Berlin, dominated by bland Stalinist block buildings and empty streets lined with Lada cars was a city split in two; divided by a no mans land of gun wielding watch towers in between two 12 foot high concrete walls. There were uniformed guards and soldiers everywhere, East Berlin loved to flex it’s authoritarian muscles and as a tourist, they led you to believe you were allowed to roam free beyond those walls, but you knew someone was always watching you. It was an eerie feeling knowing the world you walked through was just a window display; the real world of oppressive restrictions and constant surveillance was a mere shadow away.

I remember not staying long; I was with two Aussie back-packers I’d met earlier in my travels and we agreed unanimously to cut our excursion into the dark side short and get out while we still had the chance and besides, the authorities gave you only a limited right of passage, accounting for every foreign body who stepped past the checkpoint. It was a strange and bizarre world over there, and while my two Aussie friends both went off in their own directions afterward, my goal was to penetrate deeper into communist Europe with a one way ticket to Prague Czechoslovakia, where things got even stranger. I was lucky to get out at all on that trip

But how does a society get to a place like this? Where people are contained by giant guarded walls, uniformed surveillance is present on every street corner and supplies are highly regulated. Line ups at stores are a common site and vouchers are the currency, limiting what you can pull off the shelves and take home to your families? The fact that, with the right documentation, I could come and go as I pleased, yet the people who lived here were basically prisoners struck me as ludicrous. How lucky I was to be able to return to my homeland and enjoy the freedom to travel, to thrive and to prosper without persecution. To practice whatever religion I chose without the fear of being imprisoned, to speak up and say what I pleased without being muzzled. To buy and eat fresh produce and as much as I wanted without limitation and to express my opinions freely without being labeled as a dissenter, a non conformist or selfish. Yet here we are, 32 years after the walls crumbled in Europe, a society which seemed so alien to our way of life, seems to have seeped it’s foundational virtues into the fabric of our country, bypassing the constitution and the charter, and into the homes of a culture who once refused to concede defeat to our communist foe.

The first five year plan: 1928-1932, The Great Turn.

In 1928, Joseph Stalin, then ruler of the Soviet Union, implemented agricultural collectivization on his country, ending private ownership of land. The plan was to acquire larger estates with higher productive output and more advanced machinery to allow farm workers to move to city construction sites and aid in the industrialization process. Owners of large farms were considered as wealthy peasants and looked down upon as capitalist exploiters making it socially acceptable to confiscate land and transfer this wealth for distribution among the poor peasants by forming collective farms. The state then requisitioned surplus grain (which formerly was sold by peasants to the state) in order to feed the city workers.

With a growing need for scientists who expressed support to the regime, those who thought critically and opposed Stalin’s version of Marxism, were discarded in favor of the new breed of RED SPECIALISTS, being raised through the system. In 1929 the regime required that scientists, engineers and other specialists prove their loyalty to Marxist ideology and began making higher education free to youth supporters who would show steadfast allegiance, including those who were not yet fit for entrance. This flood of under skilled specialists which included those who relied on antiquated theories of biological sciences including agricultural botany, became a factor in the occurrence of large scale famine. Collectivization failed as peasants began protesting by slaughtering their livestock, as well poor planning based on antiquated theories and a shortage of farm machines all equated to a large scale slow-down in agricultural output; the state was requisitioning more grain than the peasants could spare and eventually widespread food shortages occurred. At least 4 million Ukrainian peasants died during the resulting famine in the Ukraine and southern Russia.

At this same time, The communist regime regarded religion as a form of ‘false consciousness” and therefore began transforming religious holidays into there own Soviet-style holiday. The communist party destroyed churches and synagogues, they harrassed, incarcerated and executed church leaders and then flooded the schools and the media with anti-religious teachings, introducing a belief system called “scientific atheism”

State land acquisition, redistribution of wealth, manufactured food shortages, state sanctioned educational institutions and media, back-filling the electoral battlefield with under-skilled political loyalists, a massive influx of watered down medical professionals, disintegration of religious institutions and the blanket relabeling of religious holidays. Does this all look familiar as we enter this era of cancel culture, book banning, and of the violating and toppling of our foundational history? Crown acquisitions of property and financially squeezing property owners out of their homes with unreasonable increases in living costs and unjustifiable taxes. The assault on religion and the watering down of religious holidays, the mass urbanization and the heavy focus on moving populations off of their country homes and into the “block” structures being constructed by a new wave of skilled loyalists. I am not a political analyst, but all it takes is a clear eye to notice: something is up here..

Russia was a destabilized country after World War 1; the economy had collapsed and the people were hungry which paved the way for a provisional Government made up of an allegiance between the Russian empire, the French and the British and then eventually led to the overthrow of the provisional Government by the Red Guard of Petrograd and by 1918 the Union of the Soviet Socialist republic was beginning to form.

Communism has been thrown out of most except for four remaining states in the world, mainly because, by it’s own nature, it places big government over basic human rights and for that reason alone, it fails. Yet, in my own opinion, it appears to be the natural course of government to exploit destabilization by implementing more control, which wets their appetite for even more control and then people, mainly because they have been conditioned to do so, tend to view authoritarian intervention in their lives as the white horse of revelation, charging to their rescue. Little by little they accept each new rule as being a necessary evil on their journey toward stabilization and then one day, they wake up in an oppressive and highly surveilled utopia where you can’t speak about God, you can’t discuss history and you can’t openly criticize your government without fear of severe repercussion. And that day is coming: In Canada the ramming through of Bill C10, has opened the gateway to the terrifying reality of Bill C-36 which will turn neighbors and friends into whistleblowers. Bill C-36 will allow any one individual to approach a provincial judge and ask them to legally punish another individual, not because they have committed a crime against them, but, because they feel threatened by them, even though that person has not yet committed an offense. A judge may now prosecute an individual and force them to pay compensation to an alleged victim, as well as to the government, only on the basis of assumption, and if the person in question does not comply; they can be incarcerated for a crime they did not commit. It is a “hate crimes” bill: An act to amend the criminal code and Canadian human rights act and to make related amendments to another act (hate propaganda, hate crimes and hate speech).

This is scary shit! A movie came out in 2002 which had the most unbelievable premise: In the future, technology allows cops to catch criminals before the crime has been committed, however the technology they use is faulty and sometimes predicts an incorrect version of the future in which case innocent people are incarcerated for a crime they had no intention of committing. The film was called Minority report, based on the 1958 book of the same name. In 2021 Canada, this science fiction film is becoming a reality, although, the process involved to convict someone is not based on technology, it is based on pure human bias. I don’t like something you said on social media two years ago, I perceived it as a racist comment and I feel you will be a threat to me in the future, therefore I can now approach the provincial court and have you arrested for a future hate crime. Oh, and you will need to cough up compensation also, in the form of $20,000.00 for me and $50,000 for the government.

Imagine the implications of this happening and its all true. Read C-36, it’s all there in black and white, tabled now, because the government didn’t want you to see it while they were dressing C-10 up to look like it was justifiable censorship.

I feel, we are at a major crossroads in our nation. I don’t recognize my country anymore; especially since the events of 2020, when lockdowns, face masks and social distancing protocols began to appear. I feel issues which were not even prevalent a few years ago, have taken the center stage because the media has used them to divide us and, instead of celebrating our differences by allowing us to just be good humans, the main stream media has exposed and exploited every possible element in our society which makes us feel hatred and shame toward one another. And while we are at our most vulnerable, forces will move in which are disguised as solutions and because we are conditioned to do so, we will accept them as friendly interventions and then one day, in the not too distant future, our Canada is not free anymore. Walls will be erected, manufactured food shortages will cause widespread malnutrition, brother will pit against brother as we are heavily surveilled from the sky, through big tech and within our neighborhoods. Family’s will divide and our children will turn against us, we will own no property because taxes and inflation will force us to give up our homes. It has happened in the past and because this generation is so far removed from the realities of what our ancestors went through in order to fight off the threat of totalitarianism, it will happen again.

In my home, is Canada. It is the Canada that I was raised to believe in. In my home we are free to express our opinions; to work hard and earn fair wages, to worship God, to discuss politics, to sleep when we are tired, to eat healthy food purchased locally and I am raising my children the way I was raised; to understand and to be grateful for what we have and to pay our fortunes forward through charity and by sharing our time with others. Freedom is not rocket science; but, as we have discovered, it is a fragile gift which must be cared for and defended at all costs. I am a fighter by nature, and two things I will fight for with my life: One is my children and the other is my freedom. If either are threatened, I will go to extreme lengths to make sure they are both safe and I have been tested on this a number of times already. I do not question my vigilance to the survival of what is most dear to me; I do question, regularly, the intentions of those who are placed in positions to govern us, and what I have seen lately alarms me, but I will continue to give the benefit of the doubt.

After the series had ended on that victorious September day, the members of team Canada disbanded and returned to their respective NHL teams for the start of the 1972-1973 NHL hockey season. After a rocky start to the series, the team learned to unite, not as a group of talented individuals, but as a unified force with the heavy burden placed upon their shoulders. An entire nation was watching them and they knew, should they have lost that last and final game, they could have woken up the most hated people in Canada. Nobody saw them off at the airport when they left for the USSR, and they were booed by their own fans after their loss to Russia in their final game on Canadian turf, in Vancouver. All they had was each other. But, as it turned out, each other was enough. It was the chemistry they needed to dig deep down and pull out the courage to compete and they decided to focus on playing disciplined hockey, one period at a time and, through some of the worst and most biased officiating ever seen in International Hockey, they persevered through great odds and came out victorious.

We are a celebrated country in the eyes of the world, and we have persevered through great trials and huge odds to become the nation we are. We have made a lot of mistakes along the way, but we have also managed to overcome the massive obstacle of unifying a country which spans over 9000 km, much of which is vast and empty space. We have built our country on the backs of hard working men and woman, many of which have fled oppression in their home countries to come here so they can enjoy the opportunity to succeed and prosper. Everyone is welcome here, but the price of our survival as a free democracy is in our ability to fight for the individual rights of the collective people, which are laid out in our Charter of Rights and freedoms. We are not here to serve our Governments, they have been elected to serve us; so when our government begins to grow in size and their reach begins to intervene with every aspect of our livelihood, that is the time to dig deep down and pull out the courage to push back a little. And push back we will…

Happy Canada Day to all of my family and to ALL of the beautiful citizens of this great country!