Friday morning, Vancouver Island’s Clifton Murray was still coming down from Thursday night. So was fellow British Columbian Fraser Walters.
“We’re elevated and levitating,” said Murray as the pair drove through Toronto, hours after they and Victor Micallef, the other member of The Tenors, lit up social media with their rendition of the national anthem at the Raptors game.
U.S. television viewers went gaga. (“Them 3 white boys sang the shit out of Oh Canada,” tweeted Arsenio Hall, adding an H to the O, as Americans are wont to do).
It was the home reaction that stirred Murray and Walters, though. They have sung at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebration, at her 90th birthday, on Oprah, at the NHL final in Los Angeles and at the all-star games of major league hockey, basketball and baseball, but nothing came close to the rush of performing O Canada at Scotiabank Arena on Thursday — the first time our anthem has been heard at an NBA championship series game.
“This was the best, by far,” said Port McNeill-raised and UVic-educated Murray.
“The place was electric. You could feel the nation singing with us.” It was as though they were merely the conduit channelling the voice of Canada, he said.
To the surprise of some, Raptors fever really has taken hold from coast to coast to coast, even in Victoria, 3,400 kilometres from Toronto.
The Centre of the Universe isn’t usually beloved in the City of Gardens. When the world junior hockey tournament was held here this winter, Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre erupted in howls of outrage any time the scoreboard screen showed a fan wearing a Maple Leafs logo. (This puzzled the Slovaks and Swedes, who couldn’t understand why people were booing.)
The reception is better for the Toronto Blue Jays and Raptors. As Canada’s lone representatives in their respective leagues, they are our favourites by default. Still, Steve Nash aside, Victoria is not hard-core NBA territory. We get married in hockey sweaters, not basketball jerseys.
Yet, right now, this is a basketball town. The St. Louis Blues might have 20 Canadians, including former Victoria junior Tyler Bozak, in the Stanley Cup final, but it’s the Raptors — led by players from the U.S., Spain and Africa — who are drawing the bigger crowds and creating the bigger buzz at the Shark Club sports bar. Likewise, Raptors T-shirts are going fast at shops selling sports memorabilia. “Anything with ‘We The North’ printed on it,” said Josh Meeres at the Out of Bounds store in Bay Centre. “Those are the first things people are going for.”
What’s more remarkable is the response beyond the predictable venues. Thursday evening, Selkirk Water strollers heard a chorus of cheers erupt from open windows throughout the Railyards, where it seemed every screen in every home was tuned to the win over the Golden State Warriors. In the lounge at Royal Colwood, older golfers of both sexes — not the Raptors’ core demographic — were glued to the game. Likewise, it was a group of women who broke away from a dinner-dance at the University Club of Victoria to watch Saturday’s outcome. Forget the orca show outside, B.C. Ferries says passengers on the Tsawwassen-Swartz Bay run have been asking to switch the on-board televisions to the Raptors. A big-screen viewing party at the Tillicum mall SilverCity was sold out on Thursday (actually, it was free of charge).
History says this is a blip. Note that on Friday, 15 wonky-kneed veterans of the Vancouver Whitecaps were honoured in a ceremony marking the 40th anniversary of their 1979 championship. Anyone who was in Vancouver then, when 100,000 roaring fans packed downtown in a scene reminiscent of, well, Toronto today, would have been convinced that Canada had finally embraced big-league soccer. They were wrong.
But that’s OK, because the current Raptors mania isn’t really about basketball, it’s about Canada, about singing with one voice, for once.
“Pure magic” is how Murray described the experience.
Enjoy the ride. Too often we dwell on what sets us apart. Not often enough do we find something to draw us together.
