The weather has been glorious this week on the west coast, warm and sunny with beautiful conditions for walking and bird watching. Since I knew we were travelling this year to Costa Rica, Texas, Europe and eastern Canada this year I decided to see if I could observe or hear 365 species of birds during the year. I’m off to a good start with 151 so far (104 of which we saw in Costa Rica) and the weather has brought about plumage changes in the gulls so it’s getting easier to pick out the Californias from the Glaucous-winged. Yesterday I added the year’s first Black Oystercatcher and Hutton’s vireo (heard but not seen).
This weekend the Men’s Six Nations has started and it is know as rugby’s greatest championship for good reason. France absolutely dismantled Ireland yesterday and I just watched Italy nick a famous victory at home over Scotland in a downpour. England hosts Wales now, and although I would love the Celts to recover some form, I doubt this will be a very close game. Still, rugby delivers fantastic surprises.
Thursday night I finally got to see Tanya Tagaq live at the Chan Centre at UBC, as part of the PuSh Arts Festival. She is one of the most powerful performers I’ve ever seen. She channels and works with power, rage, love, sensuality, joy and the raw, wet, glossy work of life. Her art has always had a @sit down and pay attention” quality to it. I can only listen to albums like “Retribution” maybe once a year, in a dedicated sitting. Her work this week – Split Tooth Saputjiji – contained elements of her “Inuit mythic realism” book Split Tooth and recent to-be-released album Saputjiji. Predictability there were a couple of walk outs but you don’t have to know much about Tagaq’s work to know that the throat singing is not offered as an ethnic curiosity but rather as the vehicle for her to draw the source power from life itself to put hair raising power behind “Fuck War.” She is amazing.
Kian Proctor scoring his last goal for TSS Rovers in a 7-1 rout over Burnaby FC last season. Last night he turned pro in a debut for the ages. Photo by Residual image for AFTN
The North American soccer season is slowly awakening from its winter slumber. This week the CONCACAF Champions Cup competition got underway with several Canadian teams in the mix for the continental championship. Last season the Vancouver Whitecaps made it to the final only to be pummelled by Mexican giants Cruz Azul 5-0 in Mexico, who won their seventh title. Last night, Vancouver FC debuted in the competition. They are the Canadian Premier League team who finished last in the league last year but qualified through the fact that they made it to the Canadian Championship Final against the sam Whitecaps. And the team they faced was Cruz Azul.
It was an underdog story of the highest order and there was almost no chance of VFC scoring goals, let alone winning this first leg, even at home, in front of a pretty full house, on a mild mid winter west coast night. Indeed Cruz Azul won 3-0, but the game held some special significance for our TSS Rovers FC owners and supporters, because two of our former players dressed for VFC.
Marcello Polisi marked his return to Canada with his first start for VFC. He played for our Rovers teams pre-pandemic from 2017-2019 appearing in 32 games as a stalwart defensive midfielder. He then moved to the Canadian Premier League first for Halifax Wanderers and then the late departed Valour of Winnipeg. After two years there, he moved to Detroit City FC in the USL where he played alongside a number of other Canadians in Danny Dichio’s side. This winter he signed for VFC, coming home to play and last night he started and he looked terrific. He will be a key piece of the VFC midfield going forward this year as they try to finally put together a decent season after three season of being the worst team in the league.
The other notable appearance last night was Kian Proctor, who subbed in at 64′ for VFC and made his professional debut last night. Kian is a tall, strong full back, who also plays as a forward and is a set piece threat. Kian played 40 games for us from 2023-2025 and is still only 20 years old. Because the CPL has under 21 roster rules, I reckon Kian has locked his spot. To appear for the first time against Cruz Azul is magnificent and he looked absolutely the part. Sometimes you see a footballer who rises to every challenge they face and you really don;t know what they are capable of. Marcello and Kian both represent those kinds of players and last night we witnessed the beginning of a next level for a talent who is still learning his game. This domestic season – which doesn’t start for another three months! – will be one to watch for Kian.
One of the cool things about living on the west coast is that most of the global football that I enjoy watching happens early in the morning, especially on weekends. I can squeeze in a match or two before getting on with my day. Likewise, the Toronto Maple Leafs, the only NHL hockey team I follow, usually play in the afternoon, while I am wrapping up work and preparing dinner.
This weekend I snuck a few games in. The Africa Cup of Nations has progressed into the Quarter Final stage, and I watch Nigeria v Algeria yesterday morning. Nigeria put on an absolute clinic and look to be favourites for the cup going forward. Having missed out on World Cup qualifying, this is their chance to acquire some national silverware this year, and they are taking it. They were brilliant. They kettled Algeria into their own end for most of the match, with their defenders playing an extremely high line and a persist press forcing turnovers. The midfield was a quagmire of peril for Algeria trying to break out, and times when they managed a counter attack, Nigerias defenders were too fast and too strong to allow anything to develop. It was a fantastic display of individual and collective intent and the west Africans won 2-0 but it could easily have been 4-0.
ALos yesterday morning, the classic FA Cup third round happened in England, which is the moment that the Premier League teams join the competition. This makes for fun match ups as there are still a few lower league teams in the mix and these matches provide historic events for the smaller clubs, sometimes even resulting in giant killings that will define a club’s identity for generations. The biggest mismatch of the round might have been Manchester City v Exeter City, which the Premier League team won 10-1, but other matchups in the round were alos interesting. Grimsby Town, a team I have some connection to, needed 86 minutes to beat Weston-Super-Mare 3-2, a semi-professional side playing in the sixth division of English football, the National League South. Despite the loss, Weston-Super-Mare will remember this day forever. Making it this far in the FA Cup is a huge accomplishment.
Tottenham lost to Aston Villa, in a match that seems consistent with our recent run of form. I wasn’t able to watch it as I didn’t have a feed to the game, but I’m not sad. The game was strange. Afterwards, a brawl broke out between the teams and that seems to rather capture the mood at the club at the moment. The wheels have come off and changes re going to be needed, or we will have to consign ourselves to a future of mid table football.
Tottenham were trying to commemorate the 125th anniversary of our first FA Cup win in 1901, still the only time a non-league has won the trophy, and they did so with a a kit that was all white. The badge and sponsor logos were white and the players had no names on the back. It looked strange and in retrospect after the match was over, one couldn’t help feeling that instead of a throw back it rather represented a deletion and erasure of everything. Our elimination from the competition at the first opportunity means we won’t see those kits again.
Later in the day The Leafs took on the Canucks at home, in a game that had family implications. Despite my best efforts both of my children have adopted other NHL teams as their favourites and Finn is a moderate Canucks fan. I can’t blame him as that is the team he has grown up with, and last year when we went to see the Leafs’ visit to Vancouver he walked away with a 2-1 win shining in his eyes. Last night was vengeance. The Leafs looked really good in an unstoppable 5-0 win. Vancouver is bad this year, but the Leafs seem to have overcome some of the troubling apathy that plagued the first half of the season, and despite some key injuries, they are clicking at the moment.
And finally this morning, waking early to catch Bayern Munich v Wolfsburg to watch two of my favourite ex-Tottenham players. Christian Erikson captains Wolfsburg and Harry Kane leads the line for Bayern. Kane is on 19 goals this season in the league and the season is only half over. He scored his 20th in one of the prettiest goals you might ever see, a curling shot that bounced of the crossbar and the post in the upper corner to find it’s way in. Bayern won 8-1. In the stadium they play the Can-Can Dance every time they score. It was getting a bit tiresome today.
Now it’s off to walk in the rain, as an atmospheric river has settled in over our part of the coast and it’s dark and warm and moist. Love it.
The view across the Salish Sea to Vancouver Island, on a calm and quiet New Year’s Day.
A beautiful, mild and glass-calm day to start the year. There was fog at the mouth of the Sound that lifted during the morning. We walked in a large loop around the Cape Roger Curtis lands, looping through the trails and the Conservancy lands, nature reserve, and the waterfront path. All told its about a 7 kilometre loop and it takes you through forest, down creeks, past waterfalls and along the cliff tops of Ni7cháy?ch Nex?wlélex?wm, the edge of the world, the edge of Squamish territory, the southern edge of Atl’ka’7tsem/Howe Sound. It’s my favourite place on Bowen, looking out over the wide open Strait of Georgia and the Salish Sea. From the bluffs one can see, on a clear day, the islands of Puget Sound to the south and the norther Gulf Islands of Texada and Lasquiti to the north. Across the Strait the Mountains of Vancouver Island rise, and nearly all of the northern Coast Salish territories are visible. It’s an amazing place.
Today we saw 23 species of birds, including a pair of marbled murrelets, several hooded mergansers, buffleheads, red necked grebes, and a few of the hundreds of surf scoters that spend the winter around our islands. This is going to be a big year of birdwatching, with planned trips to Costa Rica and France and several trips to eastern Canada on the docket for this year. I’m wondering if I can make it to 365 birds for the year so we’ll see.
Back at home, Spurs drew Brentford 0-0 in an insipid draw, but in the hockey world, my Maple Leafs came back twice from being two goals down to win an 11 goal thriller 6-5. Auston Matthews scored a hat trick. Hopefully this signals a change in form for one of my blue and white teams. The other one may need to do some business in the January transfer window to regain some dignity.
Yes the World Junior hockey tournament is coming up (and that is a big end of year tradition in many Canadian homes ) but the African Cup of Nations is also on and that is the best continental tournament for the neutral. It’s unpredictable, features many top world players and you find yourself pulling for countries like Botswana who are currently holding their own against the powerhouse of Senegal. If you love underdog football, this is for you.