The city was alive on Saturday. You could feel a certain something in the warm early-summer air; an energy. But it wasn’t that nervous, self-conscious energy that I’ve come to expect in this city. There was a certain assuredness, a confidence – dare I say it, a swagger – about how people were holding their heads.
People were smiling.
And they were all wearing hockey jerseys. There was a game tonight.
Our hockey team, forty years in the league and nary a championship to show for it, was playing in the finals and they were looking pretty good to win it all.
This is a young city, a city without a story. No doubt the city has stories, but it doesn’t really have A story. Vancouver is a city of people from other places. Everyone comes here from somewhere else and there isn’t really a whole lot that we’ve got in common with each other. There’s no story that’s told, no mythology to bind and connect the past with the present, the newcomers with the old, all the individual stories with a single, larger narrative. There really isn’t a whole lot that ties the city together psychically.
But that Saturday, there seemed to be something breaking through.
The game was close, and as we – yes WE – scored just seconds into overtime, the neighbourhood exploded in celebration. From windows and doors came the cheering, the chanting, the banging pots and pans, the hoots, the hollers. The victory communicated across the numerous divides of race, gender, and wealth; all the differences slipped away and all of a sudden, we were all participating in the same thing, in the same emotions; we were all part of the same story.
Much is made of the diversity in the city, the peaceable mixing of cultures. But the reality often doesn't live up to the hype. But on the street that night, after the game, all the differences disappeared, all the boundaries and barriers were dropped and we were all from Vancouver, all from the same place, and we knew it. There was a sense of community, of belonging that I had never really felt before. It was a communal moment, cathartic and inclusive.
There was a party on the street that night. A lot of streets in fact.
It was just one game and one evening. But it represented so much more. The city is maturing. It’s learning to be comfortable in its own skin; it’s beginning to develop a soul. Its slowly beginning to feel like a real city.
