Floridian: Canada rules

Canada rules

(But just try to get a Canadian to admit it.)

By BILL DURYEA

(But just try to get a Canadian to admit it.)

ST. PETERSBURG -- The morning after an emotional late-night awards ceremony during which Canada's figure skating pair accepted the gold medals the world believed they had been cheated out of, Canadian residents of the Mobel Americana park said -- after repeated prodding by a reporter -- they were . . . pleased.

Very pleased?

"Just pleased," says Lillian Harris, who lives in New Brunswick when she isn't playing shuffleboard in Florida. "And that's about it."

But didn't the Canadians, the long-suffering and forgotten neighbors to the north, want to crow a little that their nation's righteous fury had shamed the corrupt figure skating officials into rectifying a travesty of justice?

"It wasn't just Canadians," said Cleveland Ballentine, 76, as he sat in the bleachers of the shuffleboard courts, massaging his temples with his palms. "The reaction has been universal. It doesn't matter whether you're Canadian or American."

Still, if ever there was a chance to stand up and say, "Canada rules, Russia drools," you know, get a little crazy, honk some horns, wave some flags, the whole figure skating mess had to be it, right?

"I don't think Canadians are, by and large, like that," said Lenore Helson, who this year will celebrate 60 years of marriage to Vernon, as she read the left-to-right drift on Court No. 1.

"Are we, Chick?" Helson said, turning to Chick Kagayama, 74, a native of Guelph, Ontario, who was wearing a blue and white ball cap that said "Mobel Americana Shufflers" on the front.

"I figured they were jobbed," Kagayama said.

Okay, now we're getting somewhere, a little hot-blooded competitiveness. Not surprising, coming from a man who is reputedly one of the park's best players.

"No, no," Kagayama demurred, "I only teach."

"Chick and I are both on the downswing," Helson said, trying to out-humble him even as she recorded a thumping 32 points in one turn. "I've been at it 20 years."

Surely, then, such a seasoned veteran can appreciate the sweet taste of victory?

"As my son from Sault Ste. Marie said the other night, the trouble with sports is it's all about winning," said Helson, petite and ever-smiling in a neat white windbreaker. "We're even seeing it in the Friendship League."

You mean sports aren't about winning?

"We all want to win," Helson said, "Don't get me wrong." To prove her point on her next turn, she tried to knock Kagayama's disk "into the kitchen." It would have cost him 10 points if she'd succeeded.

So what's going on in the Friendship League?

"There's a team, I won't name names," Helson said, "but they put their worst player up against our best player because they knew they were going to lose that match anyway."

How'd the league get such a name with gamesmanship so rampant?

"Right now, that's a good question," Helson said. "It's not very friendly."

Being a good sport is a pretty big deal?

"They were very modest," Lillian Harris said of the skating pair Jamie Sale and David Pelletier. "If they had said too much, it wouldn't have been good for them or for the country."

"I'll tell you," she said, leaning in as if to whisper something naughty, "the way they handled it," her voice getting even softer now, "I was proud to be a Canadian."

So there's something to this generalization that Canadians are modest, decent folk.

"I don't know where you're getting that," Cleveland Ballentine said. "We're rebels."