What does it mean to be Canadian? Like any immigrant household, this question resonates through many generations in my family. If the Takeuchis were to answer this in a Mentimeter Word Cloud à la poli-sci lecture, the words “Vancouver” and “Canucks” would dominate the whiteboard.
Our collective love affair with the Canucks is more than an obsession. It’s an unrequited feeling of belonging. It’s about loss and pain, a grandiose and ineffable passion for an orca-faced billion-dollar corporation that specializes in selling you hopes and dreams based on putting — or not putting — a rubber biscuit into a net.
I truly believe Canucks fans know sporting despair like no other creature on Earth. We are heartbreak heritage. But don’t get your lines crossed — this is nothing but a love story.
The Canucks played their inaugural season in 1970. My father would have been two years old, and my grandfather, Akio Takeuchi, would have been in his early forties. Aki, Vancouver’s first-ever sushi restaurant, was on the uptick in Chinatown, and with a new house on the hills of North Vancouver, my family lived a seemingly typical suburban life.
But the Japanese-Canadian community was still healing from their unique trauma from World War II. My grandpa and his older siblings had previously fled British Columbia to avoid being thrown into internment camps, the prospect of a war-torn and starving nation preferable to the uncertainty of staying behind. Most of my extended family were “placed” in the horse stables of Hastings Park. Their crime? Being legal Canadian citizens who happened to have Japanese heritage. The Canucks’ first arena, the Pacific Coliseum, opened within the grounds of Hastings Park in 1968.
The intergenerational effects of such dehumanization goes without saying. Japanese-Canadian and Asian families faced discrimination on the street, in restaurants, in schools, and on ice rinks. It would not be until the Canucks’ 18th birthday in 1988 that the government would make a formal apology for its actions during and after World War II.
This was the Vancouver and the Canada my grandfather had fled and returned to. But for him, the Canucks brought something new to the city. While I can’t speak on behalf of my late grandfather, I believe his purchase of season tickets in 1970 and throughout the following decades speaks for itself. Sometimes, I wonder which stars, what plays, and what games made him come back with his kids to the Pacific Coliseum for all those years.
When my dad moved to Japan as an adult, the generational love affair my family had with the Nucks was seemingly put on hold. Growing up in Tokyo, ice hockey was unbelievably foreign to me. I knew my dad played in the local beer league, but their late-night starts meant that watching his games was out of the question.
At that time, all that mattered to me was the Japanese national soccer team. I spent my playground lunchtimes playing a 5-on-5 game, clamouring around soccer magazines, or obsessing over Leo Messi, Shinji Kagawa, and Homare Sawa’s new cleats. But the Canucks were always bubbling underneath my skin: it was a family tradition.
Like many hockey fans my age, my first hockey memory is Sidney Crosby’s Golden Goal at the 2010 Winter Olympics. I was visiting my grandparents in Vancouver, and we all huddled around the TV screen as Canada won gold on home soil.
That Canadian Olympic Team invigorated a slumbering Northern patriotism. The Hockey gods were pulling strings here too. I was soon to move to Sydney — and here he was, Sidney scoring the winning goal in my own hometown. When my dad showed me clips of the Sedins, Pavel Bure, Roberto Luongo, and Markus Näslund, it was love at first sight.
Nothing of note occurred in 2011. Please excuse the selective heartbreak amnesia. If you’re a hockey fan, you’ll know why.
In 2012, my world turned upside down. My family immigrated to Sydney, Australia, where footy, rugby, and cricket dominated the playground. The plastic cricket bat scraping along the pavement was as close to a slap-shot as I would get. Yet, strangely, the further I was from Canada, the more Canadian I felt: I realized I had a Canadian accent, and that I said ‘sorry’ a lot.
I also took pride in loving a team and sport no one knew about — a sporting emo phase. Once, I saw a rogue Maple Leafs bumper sticker in Sydney’s Central Business District, and I remember how my eyes begrudgingly lit up. It was like I was in on the most wonderful secret in the world, the team logos forming a cryptic sign language for some secret society.
Moving to Vancouver at 15 felt like a grand homecoming. For the first time in my life, hockey was on cable. Classmates knew depth players like Tyler Motte and Kyle Burroughs. It was heaven.
Jump ahead a few years, and I’m now at U of T, supposedly an adult. I’m deep in enemy territory, but in my dorm room hangs an assortment of Canucks cards, a giant Canucks flag, my Canucks jersey collection, and polaroids of friends. Pieces of home on my wall.
I love Vancouver because of the sound of the rain on the window during after-school naps, the fog that settles on the hiking trails, and the ocean views as I go cliff-jumping in the summers. I also love Vancouver because we set fire to cars over our cosmically insignificant sport, and because our celebrity fan, Michael Bublé, trips out on psychedelics at the All-Star Game — a true BC boy. I know fans who refuse to eat at Subway because Mark Messier did an ad with them. Although I’m somewhat ashamed of it, I have an orca tattoo on the back of my leg — sorry, Mom.
After 54 years in the NHL, we have yet to win the Stanley Cup. We’ve lost all three of our playoff final appearances and rioted twice. Years upon years of mediocrity and misery, with many more to come.
But, like that one name on your blocked list, I just can’t tear myself away. To love the Canucks is to be Canadian. A Vancouverite. A British Columbian. And a Takeuchi. We are ready to get heartbroken over and over again.
It’s a good thing we’re winning the Cup this year.
