<i>Last week we kicked off a three part series looking at the issue of <a href="http://www.canadiansoccernews.com/content.php?2517-Canada-v-Cascadia-Where-Do-Whitecaps-Fan-Loyalties-Lie" target="_blank"><b>"Canada v Cascadia"</b></a> and asking where the loyalties of Whitecaps fans lie and where Vancouver fits in to both sets of rivalries.
Over the next two parts, we will talk to a couple of fans who feel passionately about what games and what rivalries are most important to them.
Today it is the turn of a proud Canadian, Drew Shaw.
Drew is a long time Whitecaps fan, who first chanted "WHITE - CAPS" as an 8-year old at Empire Stadium in 1978. He has cheered for them ever since (except during 1989 and 1990 when the Victoria Vistas were in the CSL). A regular poster on the <a href="http://www.southsiders.ca" target="_blank">Southsiders</a> forum, Drew is also currently a season ticket holder at Victoria Highlanders FC.
We wanted to know what Canada meant to him compared to Cascadia, how important strong Canadian rivalries are to growing the game here, the importance of the Voyageurs Cup and what feelings TFC, Montreal, Seattle and Portland each bring out in him....</i>
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Nationality means something different to everyone. Many people have multiple allegiances (like nation, region, city, family, religion, etc), all of which they celebrate or express in differing ways and degrees. Having been born in Canada and having lived my entire life here, I am not a hyphenated Canadian - this is my one and only nationality. I love (and participate in) the music, history, food, and historical legacy of my Scottish and Welsh ancestry much more than most people do; but I have one nationality, and one national allegiance.
Canada is my home; the place that I was born in and the place where my parents and my children have all been born and live. Canada is my extended family.
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I have a common culture with the other people who live here, and a common history with them which stretches back centuries before my ancestors came here. I choose to live in what I consider the most beautiful province of the country, British Columbia, but my allegiance to my country is more important to me than the province I live in. I would live in any other province in Canada before living in another country. I take pride in the accomplishments of other Canadians, and feel the hurt and pains of other Canadians a little bit more than I share in the emotions of people from other countries. My country is better than most and the equal of any; but through its successes and failures I love it not because it's "better", but because it's mine.
In terms of sport, I am a fairly consistent patriot and "homer". I support and follow professional hockey, football, and soccer. My football league is the CFL: I do not follow the NFL. My favourite professional teams are the Canucks, Lions, and Whitecaps. I support local sport within a national context, and national sport within a global context; again, not because it's "better", but because it's mine.
Cascadia means nothing to me beyond MLS soccer, and I only use the term as it is used in an MLS context - to describe the Whitecaps, Sounders, and Timbers collectively. It originated recently as a conceptual term, by a small number of people in Washington and Oregon who don't want to be lumped in with California as "the west coast" when viewed by their countrymen in internal discussions within the United States.
I understand why Washington and Oregon would feel a regional identity within their country, but their regional identity stops at the international border. Just like the Cascadia mountain range covers much of Washington and Oregon, but almost none of British Columbia, so too the concept of Cascadia is largely unknown among British Columbians, because it's not ours, it belongs to people in another country.
There is virtually no interest in establishing Cascadia as a separate political entity or country, because countries and nationalities are emotional as well as historical and physical constructs. Emotional ties to "Cascadia" are virtually non-existent, compared to the emotional and historical attachment people on both sides of the border have to their nations (Canada and the USA) and their respective provinces and states. People in Washington and Oregon are our neighbours, and we share some things with them - but they are not our family. You live next door to neighbours, but they're not your family.
When it comes to soccer, I wouldn't say that I prefer the Canadian rivalries to the Cascadian ones; I enjoy them both for different reasons.
The Toronto and Montreal rivalries are for national bragging rights, which is the emotional component of those rivalries. There is also the Voyageurs Cup and entry to the CONCACAF Champions League that goes with it, which is the practical component. The practical element alone makes the stakes higher than any other games, even without the emotional component.
With only 3 MLS teams, the rivalries within Canadian soccer are obviously not as numerous as those in the NHL or the CFL, nor are they yet on par with them; but they will be able to be considered in the same category after 2011 by a much larger audience, in a way they were not while these cities only had Tier II soccer teams.
In British Columbia, we have a natural rivalry with Toronto and Ontario for the sports "leadership" in English-speaking Canada, in which we are numerically smaller, but smug about living in what we consider to be the best part of our country, and having just won the Grey Cup, having a better hockey team, and having recently hosted the Winter Olympics.
Our rivalry with Montreal is across a linguistic divide, as well as one which has a fairly intense recent soccer-specific context.
Edmonton, and any future Tier II Canadian rivals, will take on the flavour of Giant-vs-Minnow that soccer cup competitions around the world have always had. We will dismiss them as small-town upstarts who don't really belong in our league, mixed in with whatever regional rivalry we already enjoy with the province or city they come from.
The Cascadia games against Seattle and Portland are border battles - the continuation of the rivalry that exists in all sports when we take on our neighbours and biggest sporting rivals.
In virtually every sport, the national team we enjoy beating the most is the USA, and that can spill over into professional sport as well.
The Cascadia games take on that flavour more than most NHL games do, and more than MLS games against distant eastern US teams like Columbus ever will. Seattle and Portland are OUR local enemy to be repulsed, just like Buffalo or Detroit are for Toronto, and Boston is for Montreal. The Cascadia games are our sporting opportunity to successfully repel the Americans like our ancestors did in 1775-6 and 1812-14, and MLS is the only professional context in which we get to do so.
There is the flavour of a border raid to away games, and the spirit of defending your borders in the home games. We're either burning Washington or defending Fort York when the Whitecaps play the Sounders or Timbers. You don't get the same "border" intensity against American teams that are further away, and do not have a large travelling "army".
Both sets of League rivalries invoke different emotions, but then we have the Voyageurs Cup to add into the mix, and this is important for two reasons.
It represents the national championship. Now that it is contested by 3 Canadian MLS teams, it is much more than it was at Tier II level, because it has a larger audience, and has reached what I think might be the minimum threshold needed for a professional sport championship to be meaningful to the country as a whole. It's important to win for bragging rights, much like local derbys are.
In addition to its emotional component, it is the entrance requirement to continental competition. I am looking forward to competition against Mexican teams, in Vancouver, as much or more than I looked forward to most visiting American MLS teams for the first time.
The Voyageurs Cup has less "prestige" to me than an MLS Cup or Supporters Shield would have; but it is more important to "win" than the Supporters Shield due to what it represents, and what it leads to.
Building Canadian rivalries is vital to growing professional mens soccer in Canada, and this means not just rivalries between MLS teams, but with and between Tier II teams like FC Edmonton.
We now have the only 3 Canadian MLS teams that we will ever have. The next step is to build Tier II soccer in Canada. Edmonton, Calgary, Hamilton, and Ottawa (and possibly Winnipeg and Quebec) are all capable of supporting successful and profitable Tier II soccer clubs within a North American context, but Canadian fans and owners need to accept that those cities will never get MLS teams. There are too many US cities, that are larger than they are, ahead of them in the queue.
An entirely Canadian Tier II pro league is unlikely to be established because the three largest Canadian cities are already in MLS. Future Canadian growth will be one team at a time, as it has been in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal.
Given the regular failure of Tier II soccer teams in North America, what will ensure success?
Better facilities, stable ownership, and stable leagues are the three ingredients necessary for success; but the Voyageurs Cup matches with MLS teams are one of the best ways to increase interest in, and paying customers for, Canadian Tier II professional soccer teams. The MLS teams don't need the Voyageurs Cup nearly as much as FC Edmonton currently does, and as much as future Tier II soccer in Calgary, Hamilton, and Ottawa does.
So how do I feel about Toronto FC and the Montreal impact?
I wish them both off-field success, as I wish all Canadian NHL and CFL teams off-field success. I wish them success on the field when they represent Canada in the CONCACAF Champions League, and will watch them on television in such competitions, because any success they have will be good for soccer in this country.
However, I will never love them, because I will be cheering against them in every MLS and Voyageurs Cup game that we ever play against them, and because I have a lifetime's worth of rivalry and competition in multiple sporting competition against the cities they come from.
With Toronto FC, it's cliche to call them plastic, but it's true. They ignored both the Blizzard and the Metros (76 NASL Champions) heritage when creating their team, which I find short-sighted and unfortunate. They don't wear their civic colour - blue - like the Maple Leafs, Argonauts, University of Toronto, and the (lacrosse) Rock do. Their logo is unimaginative and devoid of any visual image. There are many things that visually represent Toronto and/or Ontario, beyond the Maple Leaf, which could have been used by Toronto FC (though perhaps in fairness they might have thought at the time that there would never be other Canadian MLS teams). Everything about TFC is either wrong or artificial, from their mis-coloured jersey, to their bland insignia, to their stadium without overhead cover. The only good thing about them is the Red Patch Boys, and that's a supporters group, not the club. I watched them from 2007-10, tried to like them, but found it hard to love them. In contrast, I rather like the Argonauts, and consider the Maple Leafs to be hopeless losers worthy only of scorn and pity.
Then we have Montreal Impact. I dislike the Impact for their recent battles with the Whitecaps and their "personality": from spitting on Whitecaps fans to what we feel was basically throwing a game, they are genuinely unlikable. They are the sporting villain to our White(caps) Knights (even without Wes). In contrast, I am generally neutral towards the Alouettes, and have a childhood love of the Canadiens, which ranks them second for me after the Canucks.
When it comes to Seattle Sounders and Portland Timbers: I wish them nothing but misery and failure on the field, more so than any other American teams in MLS.
I respect Seattle and Portland for the size of their crowds and the organisation of their supporters groups, but I certainly don't feel any affinity for them compared to other American MLS teams just because they happen to be the nearest US teams to me.
I don't wish them the same sort of off-field failure that I would like to see for American NHL teams, because I don't see them as taking away from Canadian soccer in the way that American NHL teams have taken away from Canadian hockey since 1922.
Though I would have preferred to have seen the CSL of 1987-92 survive and grow, I accept that Canadian professional soccer couldn't survive then, and couldn't exist now in Tier I form without MLS.
No matter who and where we play though, it will always be the Maple Leaf forever for me.
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<i>Thanks to Drew for taking the time to speak to AFTN and explaining what supporting a Canadian team in a North American League means to him. Makes me wish that First Kick was just days away and not months.
It’s interesting that even as a proud Canadian, who loves the national rivalries, the cross border games still gets his blood pumping and animosity building. Proximity will always play an important part in football passions.
Canadian rivalries can’t be forced, but we really do need them to continue to build in intensity to aid the growth of the game in this country.
When I read <i>Tuscan's</i> comments in the first part of this feature, where he talked about what possible teams/cities could be in a strong Canadian D2 league, just the very thought excited me.
It’s certainly a long way off, and without firm foundations would just be on a road to failure from the start.
The Voyageurs Cup certainly seems to be the thing that ignites a lot of the current excitement and passion in the Canadian games. We need to carry that forward into regular MLS games. Then we’re moving in the right direction.
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Next time, we bring you the thoughts of a fan who tells us how the Cascadian rivalries embody more than just three teams playing football and what Cascadia means to him.</i>
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