March 16, 1997

Victory bid on track

By EARL McRAE
Ottawa Sun RIDING THE RAILS -- Before the Fightin' Nuggets boarded their troop train last night for the eastward swing on the final lap to confront the mighty army awaiting them in the nation's capital, I rolled with them by charter bus into Vancouver from Bellingham, Wash. after two weeks pushing our way to the front by foot, snowshoe, dogsled, bicycle, and snowmobile across the hostile empty Yukon and by ferryboat down the bleak western coast from Alaska, and looking out the bus window at an alien phenomenon called "civilization," Doc Parsons said:
"Look at this, will ya? I'd be living in a wall tent in the Yukon before I'd ever live here. Look at the traffic. People spinning their wheels going nowhere. You couldn't pay me enough."
Added fiddler Willie Gordon from the back seat: "What are they doing? Why are they all running around? Where are they going?"
It was scary, alright.
My eyes were bugging out of my head as I saw these multi-colored things scooting to and fro and made out of what looked like some kind of fibre glass substance with glass windows on top and four, black round things on the bottom which seemed to propel them.
There were also these very tall type structures on the sides of the street, not irregularly shaped like mountains, but sort of rectangular with what also appeared to be windows in a straight line, one above the other.
I noticed, as well, objects, hundreds of objects, that looked to have human shape, but I'm not sure if they were humans because instead of big work boots, thick denim pants, toques, sealskin mitts, fur-lined parkas, hair covering most of their faces, and moving in galumphing, heavy-footed fashion, they were in different variations of some kind of foreign, light material; the male of the species in the same dull color both top and bottom with thin, cloth-type things hanging down the middle from their neck areas; the female of the species in the same dull color both top and bottom, but for the lower material which, mysteriously, ended around the knees.
Their feet seemed to be encased in a strange, thin, shiny matter -- the females having sticks beneath theirs -- and the faces of all of them were of a porridge complexion and reflecting what I can only describe as great consternation.
They were moving extremely fast in all directions for reasons that were indiscernible to me, and I noticed they had a habit of stiffening and holding upright the middle finger of a hand whenever one of the multi-colored devices atop the black, round things made a sudden and unexpected barking sound, which they seemed to regard as a form of personal insult.
I attempted, from my window, to detect whether they possessed what human beings possess -- teeth -- but I don't know; their mouths were constantly shut tight and turned down at the corners.
And, yet, I had a curious sense of deja vu; as though I had experienced these irrationalities at some time in the past; and I stroked my new salt-and-pepper mustache and beard in deep meditation, searching my psyche.
Finding no satisfaction, I dismissed it and got on with the mission at hand, chronicling the Dawson City Nuggets in their re-enactment of the most truly inspiring story in all of hockey's history when, in 1905 and against all odds of environment and competition, their Nuggets forebears -- short on equipment, high on rainbows -- set out from the Yukon for Ottawa on foot, dogsled, ferryboat, and train to challenge the defending champion Silver Seven to the Stanley Cup.
The momentum of this latest quest is building daily and heatedly to the climax on the ice at the Corel Centre the afternoon of Sunday, March 23, and evidence abounds that this is a saga far beyond a hockey game; it is of life and faith and courage and innocence; it reaches out and encompasses and restores all that is beautiful, but diminished, in the human spirit.
All of the Yukon is caught up in it. Dozens of fans have booked flights to Ottawa to cheer their team. Jim Nicol, the media co-ordinator for DCB Productions in Winnipeg, displays articles in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Canadian papers large and small. Nuggets players have given phone interviews to the BBC, CNN (SI), TSN, CBC, and the CBC is also preparing a documentary.
The Nuggets have been met by American newspaper and TV reporters, along with civic officials and townsfolk with barbecues, buffets, and victory cheers in the small Alaskan communities they advanced through such as Skagway, Sitka, Petersburg, and Ketchikan. "Wow," said Billy Fredericks, a Sitka lumber yard foreman at the ferry dock to greet the Nuggets when they pulled in for a stopover. "If this was an American team, Disney would make a movie."
Billy Fredericks left with a Nuggets cap a player gave him, one of several items of Nuggets merchandise -- proceeds to Yukon minor hockey and various charities -- that will be on sale game day at the Corel Centre, including golf shirts, the stunningly-beautiful commemorative game posters by Yukon artist Chris Caldwell, and replicas of the Nuggets' striking blue, gold, and red team jerseys with the silver chest logo of a prospector.
Friday afternoon, the Nuggets -- led by tuxedoed Willie Gordon playing the fiddle, and in a combination of team jerseys, bowler hats, turn-of-the-century dress suits, prospector duds, axes and pans -- marched to googly-eyed stares through the streets of downtown Vancouver from their hotel to the prestigious law firm of Davis and Company which threw a buffet reception for them simply because, said partner Stu Morrow, "what they're doing is a such a beautiful deal."
How much of a beautiful deal?
"We just got word that Bally's in Las Vegas has put out a line; the Senators by two and a half goals," announced Pat Hogan to the legal suits.
He grinned.
"They don't know what they're talking about."