Habs Win! Ensuing Victory Riot Will Follow The Usual Route

There are abiding truths we Canuckistanians cling to, mythologies that burrow their way into our souls until they become part of the very fabric of our national identity. One of these is that the city of Montreal is the very embodiment of suave sophistication, the last bastion of Euro chic, where the prevailing mood is urbane and daring (for contrast, another of these is that Toronto is...um...well, Toronto). Never afraid to try new things, or risk ridicule from the rest of the nation, Montreal remains the symbol of brash self-confidence with a dash of snooty debonair.

So, we shouldn't be at all surprised over what happened last night following the Habs' win over Boston. After all, this is the town that took Edmonton's small foray into civil disobedience following its '84 Cup (a few smashed windows on Jasper Avenue...oh the horror!) and two years later showed those western hayseeds (amateurs!) how to do it up right! The '86 Cup "celebration" was an absolute bacchanal of destructive mayhem, an explosion of orgasmic smashing the likes of which had never been seen before. "Hah!", they seem to say to the rest of us. "Ve are Mont-ray-ale! Ve are betteur zan yu stodgy Heenglish!" Just to prove the point, they did it all over again seven years later, only bigger and better (incorporating the now de-rigeur drunken frat boy hanging from the power lines was a nice touch).

But then the rest of the world caught on. Now there were riots everywhere, for every major Championship! Cup wins, Cup losses (Hi Vancouver!), Super Bowls, World Series, NBA Finals (or as basketball fans prefer to call it: just another Saturday night). It had become so pedestrian, so predictably every-man, so...gauche.

But now...everything has changed. Again. We need no longer wait for an actual Title, but are free to set the world on fire following every playoff series win! My God! Who knew? (In loving tribute, Ottawa, I fully expect our first pre-season win next year to be met with wanton jaywalking and several strongly worded letters in the Op-Ed pages.)

So thank you Montreal! While some may frown upon your exuberance and youthful enthusiasm, don't ever change. We love you. We love you for once again reestablishing yourself, with the able assistance of a few inebriated pioneers, as the very essence of trend setting urban behaviour. While the rest of the world contents itself with the mundane, waiting as it does for actual "championships" before it unleashes it joyous destruction, the wondrous metropolis of Montreal, that beautiful, wretched, panting, heavily mascaraed, fantastic whore of a city, has shown us up for the unsophisticated, provincial sod pounders we really are, and we stand in awe of her.