to riot over a hockey game

So as you may or may not know, the Montreal Canadians just played Pittsburgh in the playoffs for the Stanley Cup. And to everyone's amazement, they won which means they move ahead and play another team (Boston I think). Anyhoo that night overjoyed and mostly drunk Montrealers crowded the streets of downtown filling the night air with cheering and singing. Oley, Oley, Oley, Oley could be heard for miles around. So why then you might ask, did it end in rioting? That's right, rioting! Amongst the camaraderie, celebrating and good cheer, a handful of individuals decided the appropriate thing to do would be to start breaking store windows, stealing things and beating people up. Makes perfect sense to me....oh wait, NO IT DOESN'T! For the life of me I can't come up with one single explanation for why rioting is the way to react to your team getting closer to winning the Stanley Cup. I can maybe, sort of, kind of, understand if they had lost the game...stupid, angry drunk men get violent. It's definitely not OK but it does happen to the dismay of all decent people. But hello, THEY WON. I tried at one point to put myself in their shoes: I'm dancing out of the Bell Centre after watching the game on the big screen, my throat is wonderfully soar from shouting, my friends and I are hugging and laughing and singing with strangers. Now this is the part where I'm supposed to think "hey, you know what would be a really good idea...starting a riot". Nope, I just can't picture it. Know why? Cuz it doesn't make any sense at all!

So now when people ask me why I want to live in Montreal, I'm finding it harder to give a good reason. Sure it's a great tourist spot if you like being yelled at for not speaking "French" and the rationality of the Quebec laws are um well questionable at best but Montreal has culture, and beauty and heart and life and drunken idiots looting and beating people up.

So clearly any sane person will agree that rioting is not OK, EVER. But what pisses me off possibly even more is the media's reaction and coverage of the event. I made a point of watching the news on several different channels the next day and they all went something like this, "The Canadians won the game against Pittsburgh last night, yay! Tons of people flocked to downtown to see the game and there was much celebrating. Everyone was happy and cheering in the streets. Oh yeah, they started a riot and people got arrested. Isn't it wonderful how sports bring people together and isn't great that Montreal did better than we thought they would" It is absolutely not OK to play this down. Wow, a team full of players that come from everywhere in the world except Montreal wins a game in the name of a city and we are supposed to ignore that fact that people were breaking property, stealing and hitting each other??? If anything the news should be forcing us to recognise the sad, depressing side of this (isn't that what news does?).

I do hope the Canadians win the Cup because I do love this city and they are my team but for the love of everything that is decent, I'm begging my fellow city dwellers to behave like normal human beings because one of these days I may actually want to go downtown to watch a game and guess what, it's not OK for me to have to fear for my life when the game is over because there may be a riot breaking out.