On the eve of a tyrant threatening to totally eliminate one of our planet’s civilizations, the astronauts returning home from the far side of the moon shared this photo of an earthset.
These two events offer us a choice.
Five basic morning practices for your brain
- Wake Up at the Same Time Every Day
- Outside Light Within 60 Minutes
- Exercise in the Morning
- Wait 90 mins for Coffee
- Practice Brief Daily Meditation
It’s a bit AI-y, but the linked studies are interesting.
Forge FC 2 -0 Athletico Ottawa.
I grew up in Toronto. Everything west of Roncesvalles Road to me was the bleak untreed windy and cold suburbs. My mom grew up in Etobicoke where my grandparents lived their whole lives. We used to travel out along the 401 to Burnhamthorpe Road and down onto Shaver Drive to go visit them a few times a year. I enjoyed the times I spent with my grandparents, but, having grown up in the leafy streets of North Toronto, I never grew to like the big wide open skies, always coloured slate gray, and the cold rain and wind to feel like it was a different country altogether.
(I recently revisited this neighbourhood and of course 45 years on the landscape is very different. Trees are everything for me in urban areas.)
Tuning into the Canadian Premier league opener today and watching the wind whip around the stadium in Hamilton and the cold raindrops of an early April day in Ontario gave me shivers of nostalgia for those bleak places. Spring isn’t really a season in southern Ontario. It’s more of three week period of cold rain and chilly days followed by a quick eruption of flowering plants, leaves, and a couple of weeks of stinky dog poo which has been accumulating on top of the snow and slush for the past five months.
But in the midst of these industrial and car centred landscapes there lives communities of passion and support for local sport, not the least of which is the crew at Forge FC. Hamilton was the location of the Canadian Premier league 2026 opener today and, while rising more to the location and not the occasion, a newly revamped Athletico Ottawa paid a visit to Steel town. It was anybody’s guess how they would play this season given that their cup winning side has been thoroughly depleted by player movement in the off-season. But there are know for playing an exciting brand of football, as are Forge, and so I was looking forward to this match.
In the end, it was probably the story that Forge will be giving us all season. Ottawa started holding possession for the first five minutes, passing the ball east and west so often that people were lining up to build a railroad. Forge had very little to do but plug up the centre of the pitch. It somewhat resembled a a child teasing a cat. The cat will go along with it for a bit, but at some point, it will grow frustrated by the game and just jump on the child’s face.
That’s what Forge did. Over the course of the match, they simply smothered Ottawa and wouldn’t let them develop any promising plays. Athletico were free to incrementally move the ball down the pitch, but it seemed every player received a pass with his back to goal and a Forge player blocking his progress. It was another day at the office for Bobby Smyrliotis, who is the dean of Canadian coaches. It only seemed to take him 10 minutes to figure out how to win the game and then another 80 to execute the plan. Ottawa never had a shot.
New rules were in effect for this match, including the trial of the daylight offside rule and a new scheme called Football Video Support whereby each team’s manager has two challenges of a referees ruling. If they’re successful, they keep a challenge and if not, they lose it. Diego Mejia, from Ottawa, was an enthusiastic user of his FVS cards. I have to say, I already hate this new rule. The answer to no video review is not more video review. And the answer to the much-maligned video assistant referee role in world football is not also giving the coaches the ability to review plays.
I have yet to see how the new offside rule will impact play, but the FVS trial is gonna drive me batty.
At any rate, Forge won the match 2-0 and Bobby and his team can look forward to yet another Canadian Premier League season in which they’re likely to be challenging again for silverware, Athletico Ottawa is going to have to go back to the drawing board and the training ground. Meija should use his video review there.
You are making it work — your online profile is finally taking off. While others have been fumbling for the right brand, you have been quietly developing a presence. It’s not just an identity, it’s trust brought to life.
If you just read that paragraph and thought “ChatGPT wrote that” you’d be wrong but I praise your ear and eye. I wrote it based on the Chat GPT cliches that are obvious to anyone who writes Kelly Notaras goes into more detail. If you are letting your chat bot write for you, the rest of us can see what you’re doing.
This style of writing has made LinkedIn useless. I have skimmed over so much writing with these hallmarks over the years that it’s no longer worth my time to use that app to learn anything.
It’s so refreshing to read fiction or work that has been through the grind of editorial guidance.
The TSS Rovers season got off the ground last night. A 1-0 win from the women’s team that flattered the opposition and a 2-1 win from the men in a game that didn’t really get going until the 78th minute.
It was good to be back at the football behind our teams. We even hacked together a live stream over twitch, broadcast from within the supporters section, so our friends and co-owners from across the country could tune in.
It’s the opening day for our 2025 TSS Rovers season. Canada’s only supporter owned football club, playing in the newly rebranded BC Premier League take to the field tonight away to Burnaby FC. We are fielding a very new team of men’s players, moving on from the past four years where we were a destination for many players wanting to get in the shop window thanks to our record of participation in the Canadian Championship. We were pipped at the last minute for the league title last year when Langley scored the winner on a last kick penalty in the last game of the BCPL season to secure the championship. So we aren’t in that tournament this year. As a result we are a mix of seasoned hands like Ali Zohar, now in his fifth year with our team, and young talent that has a chance to step into the spotlight. A number of player’s from our club’s U21 side will make the jump to the first team this year, including Ronan Ward, a promising young striker that blew away the competition for Golden Boot in the Vancouver Metro Soccer League U21 division.
On the women’s side, our team of warriors who secured their first ever Metro Women’s Soccer League championship this season will start the season together and will be joined by a number of veterans returning from University play in Canada and the USA. We have always finished 4th in the past four years, but we’re all very optimistic that this group can better that. Not an easy task when they are playing against the Vancouver Rise academy, and Altitude FC, a team made up largely of the national champion UBC Thunderbirds. Chemistry counts, and a season of holding on to top spot right up to the final game in the MWSL gave them much needed experience of that pressure to win. Winning it was a vindication for our approach that emphasizes development and style of play. The points followed.
There is nothing like opening night of the season to get the blood pumping. It feel like Christmas Day.
When I look around at the other sports teams I am emotionally invested in, the scene is bleak. The Toronto Maple Leafs are well out of the playoff race despite a good win on Monday. Tottenham Hotspur are facing relegation and with seven games left in this season they have appointed Roberto de Zerbi to replace Ange Postacoglu, Thomas Frank, Igor Tudor. Spurs are on the verge of suffering the worst punishment a Premier League team can endure. My son pointed out to me last night that a little under a year ago, we were at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium watching them beat Southampton 3-1, relegating the Saints in the process. That was only four Premier-League-wins-at-home ago. Dreadful.
Meanwhile The Vancouver Goldeneyes fell victim to the Montreal Victoire who set a PWHL points streak record and secured a playoff spot with a 3-0 win over our local women. The talk of tanking has stopped, becasue the PWHL, in all their wisdom have implemented the solution to the problems of rewarding the worst team with the perverse incentive of selecting the best available player in the draft. I’m just new to the league, so it was only this week when I was told about the Gold Plan, which ranks teams eliminated from the playoffs by how many points they acquire at the end of the season. This is the answer to the bizarre feature of North American sports where the worst team gets the biggest prize in terms of new talents.
On the pitch the Vancouver Rise are getting ready to start their season with two former Rovers in the side. Kirstin Tynan is back at keeper and Mia Pante has come home on a loan spell from Italian giants AC Roma, where she wasn’t getting a lot of playing time. I’m looking forward to them making a serious run at repeating as playoff champions.
On the men’s side, the National team played its final two friendlies before the World Cup during this break, finishing with two draws. They played Iceland to a 2-2 result on Friday and on Tuesday drew Tunisia 0-0. Former Rover Joel Waterman started both games. Our centre back positions have some tough competition and Joel survived the test. But once Bambino and de Fougerolles are healthy, he’ll need everything in his talent locker to get a start in the World Cup.
Bosnia and Herzegovina awaits. (Mi dispiace per la vostra perdita, amici miei italiani)