The Dick Irvin View of Canada

THE HISTORY OF ART IN CANADA

To the surprise of few, the history of art in Canada does not begin with Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven or even Catharine Parr Traill. No, it begins with former Montreal Canadiens hockey broadcaster Dick Irvin, who was once a household name from coast to coast and one of the most well-known voices in Canada. Those who remember Dick Irvin's days on Hockey Night in Canada will remember a Canada that resembled a "Hockey Stick" graph.

In that Canada, Montreal's influence and importance was valued at approximately '1000'. "Toronto the Good's" importance was acknowledged an influence rating of roughly '37', just because, well, Frank Mahovlich did play there at one point in time, as did Dickie Duff. Other known or even unexplored geographic locations in the country received a generous importance rating of between 1 and 10, based on the number of NHL hockey players born there. I call this the Dick Irvin view of the country only because he was its glibbest and most unabashed spokeperson. No one could ever surpass the magnanimous "condescension mention" that the Great Dick mastered and would deign to award on those rare occasions when the non-Montrealer rose to relatively high achievement (although, it was understood, incapable of rising above the level of pawn, in Montreal terms).

Another thing about this hockey stick was that it scored for Montreal all throughout Canadian society. Right through the '60s, this Montreal-weighted view of the country was imposed by Dick Irvin equivalents in many or most fields of endeavour.

Expo '67 and the '76 Olympics are the most cited examples of this national behaviour.

Ironically, it was the actions of the most reactionary elements of anglophone Canadian and Montreal society (most famously the Sun Life co.) who, by retrenching themselves in Ontario to escape a few perceived language and operational inconveniences imposed by nationalist Quebec governments, pretty much permanently quashed Montreal's ambitions and potential as a world-class city.

The problem, of course, was that they knocked the stuffing out of Canada's one internationally prominent city without realizing that Toronto would never be able to live up to Montreal's promise.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT TO DICK

Stanley Cups kept pouring in to Montreal and Dick Irvin continued to blather on, blissfully unaware that anything had changed in the world at all, beyond perhaps the troublesome creation of that most irrelevant Canadian institution, "Hockey Night in Canada Control", curiously headquartered in Toronto. The world of innocence ended abruptly in 1981 when the upstart Edmonton Oilers led by Wayne Gretzky smacked down the great Montreal Canadiens including Guy Lafleur, Larry Robinson, Serge Savard, Bob Gainey and others, in three straight games in a five-game series.

Poor Mr. Irvin's world came tumbling down that night and nothing, since the long, excruciating flight back from Edmonton 25 years ago, has ever been the same...

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT TO THE HOCKEY STICK

Canada's hockey stick shaped view of itself, having been caringly crafted for more than a century, was able to survive. In fact, the entire Victoriaville shaft and left-shooting blade was transplanted directly to Toronto, along with the tens or hundreds of thousands of Eatons shoppers who deserted Montreal at the first sign of the rumour proving true that "the Pepsis" (as French Quebecers were fondly known among the English Montreal elite) were taking over.

Even though certain chicken poop outfits like the Royal Bank and Bank of Montreal continued to pretend that their head offices were still in Montreal well into the 1980s, in reality the power and the hockey stick were all well installed in Toronto.

Now, the entire country views Canadian civilization through the lens of the Montreal Hockey Stick transplanted to Toronto, which is why, until recently, the code name for Canadian culture has been: AT WOOD.

THE RISE OF CANADA

What happened in the U.S. first of all, only happened across most of Canada after World War II and, in Western Europe and elsewhere, even later. The peasants, the masses, the people who laboured and toiled and tilled the soil, began to think (really believe) that they could claim an impressive package of rights other than simply the right to earn food and shelter for a family.

Within 40 years, life in Alberta went from a time of 12-hour days in the fields, baked cookies a few times a year, one-room schools and fruit "in season" to kicking Guy Lafleur's ass out of Edmonton and motoring out on the world's thickest blackest newest asphalt roads to whoop it up at the world's biggest shopping centre, the West Edmonton Mall, after the game.

Now, another 20-25 years later, we adopt new technologies, fashions and ideas faster than we can even think.

THE ART OF THE MATTER

While the media and a good part of the population continues to view Canada through the Montreal-transplanted-to-Toronto hockey stick lens as far as culture is concerned, this fails to acknowledge the fact that the vast critical mass of this lens was forged and polished in Montreal and Toronto over the first half of the 20th Century, while 98% of Canadians west of Toronto came home hungry with dirty hands every day.

Basically, you have a situation where our national cultural institutions were formed at a time when there was little or no culture outside of Montreal and, to a much lesser extent, Toronto. Today, via the internet, anyone in Canada can access more information and visual material, at lightning speed, than any artist at all, possessing any amount of resources, could dream of even in the '80s, let alone, say, the '50s.

So, it is only common sense to conclude that the development of art outside central Canada is on the rapid increase and that the relative importance of the centralized media, Toronto and Montreal, and the national and established art institutions will decline steeply in the coming years.

Get used to it!