BTW, my choir has a gig scheduled for Dec. 7th 9 am at the Word of Life Church on Atwater. More details to come!

If you were to name a sports team...

you would probably choose a name that would:

a) be somewhat humorous.
Examples of this can be found in school intramural sports. The McGill Engineering Flagball (that’s flag football for those of you not in the know) League had teams with names like “What the Flux”, “Screw and Bolt” and my own dear (and might I add two-time championship winning) team, “Mechanical Bulls”. Alright, so my team name wasn’t actually supposed to be funny. I just needed an excuse to bring up the championship-winning part…did I mention that we won it twice?

b) allude to the physical prowess of the team
Examples: uh, most of the professional sports teams out there

c) be strongly suggested by your corporate sponsor
Um, only the Disney-fied Anaheim Mighty Ducks comes to mind as an example here. I don’t care if their team logo looks like a caricaturized version of a stolen prop off the set of the “Jason” movies. Who in their right mind would decide to name their team Mighty Ducks, anyway?

And then there are professional sports teams whose names don’t fall into the above three categories, and only baffle the mind when you imagine a committee of people making a decision on those names. There are quite a few of these, but today, I’m specifically going to pick on the Ottawa Senators. Let’s take a look-see at what exactly is so threatening about a senator (taken straight from www.canadaonline.com):

“The main role Canadian Senators have is in providing "sober, second thought" on the work done by the House of Commons. All federal legislation must be passed by the Senate as well as the House of Commons. While the Canadian Senate rarely vetoes bills, although it does have the power to do so, Senators do review federal legislation clause by clause in Senate committees and may send a bill back to the House of Commons for amendments. Senate amendments are usually accepted by the House of Commons. The Canadian Senate can also delay the passage of a bill. This is especially effective towards the end of a session of parliament, when a bill can be delayed long enough to prevent it becoming law.”

Wow. I almost fell sleep just copying and pasting that onto the page.

So let’s do a quick match-up here. An avalanche can smother the life out of you. A “thrasher” can, um...give you a good thashing. Lightning can render you immobile and, quite possibly, dead. And a senator can, well, delay the passage of a bill. Oooh…I'm scared, people. I’m shakin’ in my boots!

I can even understand names like Maple Leafs, Canucks and Canadiens. Such monikers smack of Canadian distinctiveness and patriotism, and therefore make sense - even if a leaf doesn’t stand a chance against an avalanche. (Furthermore, the plural of “leaf” is actually “leaves”. Anyone who says “I need go outside to rake the leafs” would sound like a fool, yet “Toronto Maple Leaves” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. But…I digress.)

Perhaps the powers that be (in the NHL, anyway) decided that with Ottawa being the capital of Canada and all, a team name that resounds with political power would fit the bill. Suffice to say, they pretty much missed the mark with “Senators”. They might as well have gone with “Members of Parliament” or “Cabinet Ministers” or “House Speakers”. If they wanted actually wanted a name with a little more glamour attached to it, they should have named the team “Governor-Generals”. A name that would be associated with fear and terror, yet be completely unrepresentative of Canadian politics would be “Dictators”. Maybe they should have worked the judicial clout angle and gone with “Supreme Court Justices”.

Even the imagery doesn’t work. A greying-haired spectacle-wearing politician in a power suit waving a sheath of papers mightily in the air is simply not as threatening as a sabre-toothed tiger on the prowl.

So the question remains – what were they thinking? Was the name decided upon after a night of drunken revelry? (Probably.) Did the Canadian government pay off the NHL? (Unlikely). And does it really matter, because its just a name, and its not a reflection on their performance on the ice? (Maybe, but they’re not doing well so far this season).

To all you Ottawa Senators fans out there, this was all in jest, and no offence. (Except for Tim. This was a deliberate jab at you. Hee!)

cancelled!

bad news...i'm sad to report that the concert for this wednesday has been cancelled. i won't get into all the details here, but it appears that someone in the position to OK the concert decided at the last minute that he didn't like the fact that we would be singing music of a religious nature. Which is sort of ironic because it was a concert for the faculty of theology.

anyway, the good news is that it WILL be rescheduled for next semester, under someone who will be a bit more tolerant. so stay tuned.