Everyone Is A Rider Fan

After living a full life, Doug Berry, the (once) Winnipeg Blue Bomber coach died.

When he got to heaven, God was showing him around.

They came to a modest little house with a faded Blue Bomber flag in
The window.

"This house is yours for eternity," said God. "This is very special,
Not everyone gets a house up here."

Doug felt special, indeed, and walked up to his house.

On his way up the porch, he noticed another house just around the
Corner.
It was a gorgeous white and green three-story mansion with a 50-foot tall
Flagpole with an enormous Saskatchewan Roughrider flag, and in every
Window, he could see Saskatchewan fans.

Doug looked at God and said, "God, I'm not trying to be ungrateful,
But I have a question. I was a good coach, ran a clean program, took
The Bombers to the Grey Cup, and came close to winning a national championship."

God said, "So what do you want to know, Doug?"

Doug asked: "Well, why does Ken Miller, the Saskatchewan coach, get a

Better house than me?"

God chuckled and said, "Doug,Doug,... that's not Ken's house, that's mine."

Green Is The Color

Its Called Christmas - Hope this catches on

Remembrance Day And Honoring My Dad

It is Remembrance Day. The day we set aside, albeit far too briefly, to honor those who sacrificed so much not only in the two Great Wars but also in all the wars that have unfortunately dotted mankind's existence.
My Dad was part of "the greatest generation that ever lived". A generation that sacrificed so much to go through not one, but two great wars in far too short of time. Many of these young men and women were only 18, 19 and 20 years old when they lay down their lives to give us the freedoms we enjoy so much today.
I watched with interest and satisfaction on the National News last night that Remembrance Day is making a comeback of sorts.
More people seem interested in the observance of Remembrance Day than in past years. I imagine the war in Iraq and Afghanistan has something to do with it with so many of our young Canadian men laying down their lives over there.
It was also nice to note that Saskatoon has the largest Remembrance Day service in the country with Credit Union Center usually filled to honor and salute our fallen soldiers.
My Dad was one of the lucky ones, I suppose. He came back which I guess makes him really one of the lucky ones but he also suffered greatly in later years with stomach problems which he traced back to the German buzz bombs that were used in that day. These were bombs, I'm not a very technical person, but apparently equipped with some sort of motor. They were filled with enough fuel to reach their intended target. When the fuel ran out, the intention being at the point of the target, the theory was that they would fall from the sky and destroy the lives and facilities below. Dad remembers lying there listening to these things sputter, cough and die and then wondering where they would land or if they would land on the place where he was. Frightening and not something that most of us can relate to.
Dad was also lucky in another way. He was a gifted musician, a pianist. Early in his military career (do you call it a career when you are called to war), he was spotted playing the piano by a ranking officer. Dad loved the piano. If there was one around to be played he found it and he played it. The story goes that he was playing in a night club or hall of some description when he was spotted playing the piano by this officer. Very quickly there after he was removed from his unit and deployed to the Royal Canadian Military Band where he spent the rest of the war traveling, playing for troops and lifting their morale from the ugly realities of war. So who knows the gift of music that he was so richly blessed with may have saved his life. Which is fitting. Music was his life. Upon returning from the war he became a piano teacher teaching and touching many lives with his gift and carrying out a full time job as well.
I am sure if he had the opportunities that are available today he would have been a full time music instructor probably at
a high school or something but back then that option just wasn't open to him. So today as we honor our veterans, I also honor my Dad and am thankful to God that he came back and for the impact that he had on my life and hopefully today I am a better man because of him. My Dad - Alfred Curtis Hiatt.


In Flanders Fields
by John McCrae


In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Hockey's Hypocrisy

So now we have two victims in the Ontario Junior Hockey League's decision to suspend Michael Liambas for the remainder of the season and playoffs thus ending the twenty year olds junior hockey career. The other victim of course is 16 year old Ben Fanelli who lies in a Hamilton hospital with among other things a fractured skull.
After watching video of "the hit" over and over again I am left with several impressions. After spending some thirteen seasons as a play by play announcer with junior hockey teams I have seen plenty of hard hits resulting in injuries. On March 1st, 1987 I watched as Brad Hornung of the Regina Pats was hit from behind leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. I don't recall any life time suspensions from that hit. Perhaps there should have been but thats another story.
What's troubling to me in this latest incident is "what role does junior and professional hockey play in this? It's easy to suspend one player, to make him look like the bad guy and then just move on until the next incident occurs. That has been the history of hockey. One player died recently from a hockey fight. There was a great outcry for a fleeting moment. Then forgotten until the next incident.
Both junior and professional hockey need to take a hard look at themselves. Hitting is encouraged, well more than that hitting is expected. Hard noses coaches demand that the players play it tough. Fans themselves rise from their seats with excitement at a thunderous body check and then quieten down just a bit when a player happens to be injured. And in this incident Ben Fanelli was injured far more than anyone could have predicted. But should Liambas be the only one to take the bullet. In a hockey world where if the coach says hit you hit, and if you don't you are gone from the team and most likely your junior career is over.
Then there is the issue of the helmets. Junior players have these helmets on their head so loosely that they fall off on almost any contact. Why? Because the looser the helmets are, the more quickly the players can throw them off so they can engage in a hockey fight. There isn't a coach behind the bench in junior hockey that doesn't know that and there isn't a coach in junior
hockey that will do anything about stopping it. Making sure their players have the helmet properly fitted and strapped on
tightly. Could you imagine a football player having his helmet so loose it popped off on almost any contact just in case he
might get into a fight.
Looking at the replay of the Liambas hit on Fanelli again, you are left wondering how serious the injuries would have been
if the helmet had stayed on. Perhaps the league should be issuing a two minute minor penalty to any player who's helmet falls off during play. Not likely that will happen.
No the OHL will be satisfied to let Michael Liambas take the fall for this one. They'll point to his past history. Already television stations have dug up video of his hit on John Tavares as if to say, see he hits like that all the time. It was just a matter of time before someone got hurt.
I don't believe much in the old case of people being "a product of their environment" but in this case Michael Liambas was and is. A hockey environment that encourages hitting, fighting and all round violence even ahead of the sheer skill of the game.
Little wonder someone got hurt. Little doubt that it won't happen again.

How To Catch The Swine Flu In Five Easy Steps

Great article by Meghan Telper


1. Eat Candy and/or Booze It UpNow I am not talking about one or two candy bars or drinks the night of Halloween, maybe a treat the next day and then being done with it. If you want on the flu team, you should think about having a piece of candy/cake/alchy bevvy with or after every meal, tucked in to your lunch bag, a little sweet greeting when you arrive home, and maybe a night cap of a Kit Kat. You worked hard on Halloween to collect all that candy, so you better eat it and kick that immune system to the ground.
2. Stay Out Really Late and Lose SleepYou can’t make up sleep. Not really. You can sleep in, you can rest, but insufficient sleep has already begun to weaken immune function. When we have the flu, we feel our best in the morning, after we have “rested.
3. Take On More Than You Can HandleThis is my personal speciality. It seems that chronic stress impairs the immune system’s capacity to respond to glucocorticoid hormones that normally are responsible for terminating an inflammatory response following infection and/or injury. Psychological stress (which, lets face it, is largely self-induced) raises catecholamine (‘fight or flight’ hormones), which suppresses the immune system, thus raising the risk of viral infection.
4. Forgo All Hygiene Practices
Right so basically for this easy step to catching the flu, the idea is to touch as much stuff as you can- hand railings, door handles (especially the bathroom kind), handles on public transit vehicles- you get the idea. You also want to do your best to breathe deeply when in confined spaces with lots of people,and invade others’ personal space.
5. Line Up for Hours on End In The Rain with Other People Who Believe Themselves To Be High Risk of The Flu in Order to Receive a Vaccine for a Pandemic That Is Neither Pan Nor Demic But Has Simply Been Awesomely Hyped By The Media Using The Usual Flavour of The Month: Scare Tactics.