More than anything, Team Canada finally got us to pull together

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For me, the best part of the 4 Nations Face-Off finale wasn’t Connor McDavid’s overtime winner.

It was wandering back in my mind’s eye to a few hours before that. To Thursday’s daily briefing by White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.

Leavitt described how her boss had called the U.S.A. hockey team early in the day, how he planned on watching the big game and how he expected his team to win.

She could have left it there. Instead, with a look of maddening smugness, Leavitt closed with, “We look forward to beating our soon-to-be 51st state, Canada.”

Denying her the pleasure of repeating that line on Friday was worth as much as any trophy. More.

How did it feel when McDavid scored? How does it feel to watch Sidney Crosby, everybody’s No. 1 favourite Canadian right now, skate around with the trophy? How does it feel to show them, and you know who I mean? All those feelings are connected.

We need more of that. More on an industrial, nationwide, Marshall Plan-scale.

The lesson we should take from the 4 Nations Face-Off isn’t that we still own hockey, or were in danger of losing ownership of hockey. It’s that there are perishingly few things Canadians rally around together and that sports is the main one.

In fairness to him, Donald Trump is helping us do some prioritizing. What no government program could manage, he’s done in a month – convinced a majority of us that it is time to finally grow up.

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Over 150 or so years, our country hasn’t accomplished much strictly on its own. We were raised by absentee European parents. Then we moved out, but only got as far as America’s garage.

We’ve spent the years since the Second World War tucked in there, watching American shows, listening to their stories, and letting them have whatever they want for rent. America handled everything, so why leave?

Now America has turned mean, so it’s time for Canada to move out. Make our own stuff. Watch our own shows. Read our own books.

Unfortunately, that supply-demand graph is broken on both ends. We make the wrong stuff, and terrible shows, and publish books no one who doesn’t live in the four square blocks around Toronto’s Trinity-Bellwoods Park would consider buying (much less reading).

If the goal here is creating some healthy distance between our two countries, that has to end. We cannot get all of our news, entertainment and ideas from our bully.

Enough with Canadians who can name at least five U.S. Supreme Court justices and would have to guess at any of ours. It is a bizarre situation that you won’t find outside Soviet-style systems. Good for Trump for finally making us see that.

Invigorating (not reinvigorating) our culture sector is the work of decades. It requires far more consumers than producers. We have too few of the former, and too many of the latter. That’s the ratio that has to be attacked.

But while we’re figuring that out, we can target sports immediately. This is how we can prove to ourselves that we are able to do remarkable things, and then perhaps do them.

Our north star is Norway. Norway has fewer than six million people and has placed first on the medal table at the last three Winter Olympics.

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I’ve never set foot in Norway and probably never will. But when I hear the name, I know and respect the country from its can-do’ism. If a country that’s smaller than the Greater Toronto Area can rule the Olympics, what can’t it do?

If Norway can manage that, so can we.

In the past, I have written skeptically about Own the Podium. I take it back. Now we need to own all the podiums. Our goal over the next 20 years should be to become the greatest amateur athletic powerhouse in the world. It’s doable. Norway proved it.

Until recently, this would have been pure self-aggrandizement, which is not a great Canadian virtue. But current events have demonstrated how lethargic we have become, and how defined by the preoccupations of our neighbours.

When they get upset about something and hit the streets, tens of thousands of Canadians follow them out in sympathy. Even when the issues do not apply in this country.

Then they threaten to erase our country from the map, and we all turn to each other and say, ‘They aren’t serious, are they?’ Then no one says a word in anger.

Canada has a lot of problems and one of them is a Canada problem. Too few of us care enough.

Over the last two weeks, hockey helped with that. You don’t have to love the sport. You just have to know it’s something we take pride in being the best at. You could feel that in the streets of Montreal, even after Canada lost against the U.S. in the opening round. That somebody was taking the fight to them, on all of our behalves.

Expanding that sporting capacity requires that we funnel a great deal of money and – more important – thought and effort into maintaining that edge. Nobody likes to hear that we’re spending, but it’s either that or the next government gets back into app development.

The other side of that push is the fan. Everyone must commit to trying in that regard. You don’t need to be a fan of professional sports. The NHL doesn’t need your help. But we should undertake as a group to rally behind Canadian athletes and teams whenever and wherever they play in the national colours.

Canada already does a good job at that. It’s the only cultural thing we’re decent at. But it can always be better.

The immediate goal – Milan 2026. Two hockey golds, and a best-ever medal showing. That’s a minimum.

By 2030 in the French Alps, Canada could be lapping Russia. By 2034, America. Why not?

By then, the U.S. stance toward us may have changed and we may be friends again. But we will never again be the same sort of friends.

From now on, we have to be the sort of friends who like being in the international gang, but don’t need to be. We’re okay on our own, and aren’t bothered by what anybody says about us. Like a certain hockey team.