Canada is 50% 'I'm Sorry' (#belieber) and 50% brutal body check into a thin piece of plastic on ice, to the sounds of rabid fans politely losing their shit, screaming for blood.

It is hockey season in Canada and I'm in the 6th row. There are few things I love more than free seats, cold beer and hot dudes in uniforms that I can Instagram without feeling weird.

A week ago I am at this same arena, in the nosebleeds, watching the Toronto Raptors for my man's birthday. That game reinforced my love of this city: every age, race, gender and creed rallied in streetwise black and white apparel chanting We The North to watch the Raptors rapture the San Antonio Spurs. The Syrian refugee crisis is in full force and Justin Trudeau has just been named Prime Minister, fully embracing Canada's multiculturalism and promising to be as open to immigration as his father Pierre Trudeau was. The Leafs game is decidedly more... vanilla. It is the whiteness of Canada that people think of when you say Canada, and not Toronto. Arriving I look out onto a sea of dark Bay Street suits, the Wall Street equivalent of bros, incorporated.

But these hockey men on ice are graceful, like speed skaters with spare testosterone. They have two looks: shoulder length manes begging to be collected into a tight man bun or clean shaven on the sides, long on top-- the haircut of the guy who will fuck your girlfriend, as the meme goes. I gasp, and clap, and the game ties and goes in to overtime. The Leafs lose but I have eaten a $20 roast beef sandwich doused in horseradish and mustard on an onion bun and I feel like a winner.

Stephen Marche has an essay about hockey and its Canadian roots that ran in the Walrus, the magazine that most closely resembles the lefty intellectual Harpers. My husband summarizes Marche: hockey is the summation of the Canadian spirit. Its roots are a tangled lineage of European fur traders skating on ice, and First Nations' Mic-Mac lacrosse or shinny, games of wood and nets and a playful approach to violence. Two Canadians get thrown in the penalty box and there's a thrill to the air with only 3 Leafs on the ice, but no fights break out at our game against Tampa. I am more ashamed we have lost to a bunch of Floridians.