The Happiness Rankings

 Not Happy
  Folks up here were really unhappy recently when Canada lost both the Olympic Men's and Women's Hockey matches against the U.S. teams and then lost again to the U.S. in the Paralympic gold medal match. The boasting about the "Gold Medal Hat Trick" could be heard far beyond the border. 
   Searching for something about which we could gloat, I remembered that the World Happiness Report has just been released. Surely the citizens south of here have to be sadder than we are. Thinking that we must beat the Yanks at something, I went looking for the rankings.

We Lost Again
   The Americans are higher in the rankings than we are.


   I thought that maybe they are happier because they are warmer. That does not appear to be the reason since Finland, Iceland and Denmark are 1-2 and 3. 

     I hoped that maybe the rankings are American and rigged. But, the World Happiness Report is published by the University of Oxford, in the country where our King lives.

   It helps a little that we used to outrank the Americans and were happier. 

  Now, even the Israelis are much happier than we are. At least we beat Botswana and Zimbabwe, so the American President cannot call us a "shithole country."

   Two of the six names appearing in the Executive Summary are even Canadian, John F. Helliwell at UBC and Lara B. Aknin at Simon Fraser. Perhaps they did not fight hard enough for our team, since they are out in B.C., and may be sadder than the rest of us since they are worried about their property rights.

For a look at the report and rankings see: World Happiness Report. 

Hockey News

 There's Not Much
  I figure that the title will attract thousands since there has been no hockey news since the final game of the Stanley Cup was played a few days ago. A few days from now, the quest for the Cup will begin again. Until then, here is some Canadian hockey news to get you through the lean times. It will also allow me to push the post about Stalin down the page.
  Our Prime Minister played hockey and, if you are not impressed, I will add that he played for Harvard University. He did not play much, but was a dedicated and hard-working team member who was still able to graduate magna cum laude in 1987.
   I know all of this because of an article in The Athletic, which is the company that the New York Times bought to cover sports, which, let's face it, aren't as good as they once were. Still, the subject is valued by some and a subscription to the NYT necessary if you want to access the content provided by the sweat-stained wretches at The Athletic, who are probably located in another borough. The bits below about Carney and hockey at Harvard are from the following piece and they have been edited extensively so I won't be accused of stealing the prose for which you are unwilling to pay.
   I will say that the article is better than the title: "Cheap Beer and a Suspect Blocker: Before Mark Carney Was Canada's Prime Minister, He Was Harvard's No. 3 Goalie," [I suppose that some in the U.S would say that it was a demotion], Fluto Shinzawa, New York Times, April 30. 2025.

 Mark Benning knew his job. The Harvard defenseman’s priority was to retrieve pucks and deliver them quickly and accurately to Scott Fusco, Lane MacDonald and Tim Barakett, the Crimson’s talented forwards.
   To get to pucks first, Benning required timely on-ice arrivals. It was up to Harvard’s No. 3 goalie to open the bench door at just the right moment to let his puck-moving defenseman pounce onto the ice at full speed. Mark Carney took the job seriously. He did it well. 
   It was one of many things the future politician mastered during his time at Harvard. Hockey wasn’t his professional destiny, but the Canadian prime minister has deep connections to it, from his college playing days to his Oilers fandom to a close friendship with longtime NHL executive Peter Chiarelli....
   In the fall of 1983, Chiarelli moved into Straus Hall, his freshman dorm at Harvard. He met Greg Dayton, his new roommate.
  Two doors down, Chris Sweeney, Dayton’s best friend and fellow Belmont Hill grad, was settling in with an 18-year-old from Edmonton. Dayton went to visit Sweeney. Chiarelli tagged along and was introduced to Carney. The teenager that Chiarelli met in his first hour at Harvard would become his best man.

   “We would have connected even if we weren’t living that close together with each other,” says Chiarelli, who is from Nepean, Ontario. “Because we would be at the hockey rink.”
   Chiarelli was a forward. In 1983-84, the freshman played in 27 games. It was 27 more than Carney.
   That season, Carney was behind two goalies: Grant Blair, a sixth-round pick of the Calgary Flames, and Dickie McEvoy. Blair and McEvoy were very good NCAA goalies.
   Carney, meanwhile, was listed at 5-foot-9 and 160 pounds, undersized for the position. Regardless of his competitiveness and puck-handling touch, he had weaknesses his teammates could exploit.
   “I was going high blocker,” recalls Fusco when asked where he liked to shoot on Carney.
   “Low stick,” counters ex-teammate Randy Taylor.
   Carney’s situation did not change in seasons to come. John Devin entered the rotation, pushing Carney to practice part-time with the Harvard JV. 
   But on March 9, 1985, Carney got his chance. In Game 2 of the Eastern College Athletic Conference quarterfinals, Harvard was beating up on Colgate. Crimson coach Bill Cleary pulled Blair and replaced him with Devin. 
   Then in the third period, Devin got hurt. Carney came in. The sophomore stopped all five shots he saw. Harvard won 10-2.
   It was Carney’s first and final NCAA appearance.“His goals-against average is zero and his save percentage is 1.000,” Taylor says. “Let’s focus on that and not how many games he got in. For the chance that he got, he couldn’t have done any better.”
  In retrospect, Chiarelli, former general manager of the Boston Bruins and the Oilers and current vice president of hockey operations for the St. Louis Blues, believes Carney would have been good enough to be a No. 2 goalie elsewhere in the ECAC. 
  “He was realistic,” Chiarelli says. “He was good at the sport and he loved it, but he wasn’t going to change schools.”
Carney did not go to Harvard to be a hockey player.....
   After freshman year, Chiarelli, Carney and Dayton moved out of Straus. They lived together in Winthrop House. Their room became a second home for Benning. 
   The defenseman had started his college career at Notre Dame. Benning transferred to Harvard after the Fighting Irish shifted to club status in 1983. In 1984-85, his first year at Harvard, Benning lived off campus in Inman Square, a residential and commercial neighborhood in Cambridge. Instead of walking back to his apartment after practice, Benning became what he termed Carney’s adopted roommate. 
   On Saturday nights, after home games at the Bright Center, Carney and his teammates were regulars at the Piccadilly Filly. Funds were tight. Beverage quality was not the priority.
   “All of us were pretty cheap,” says Benning, now the founder of a venture capital firm called Excelsior. “The cheapest beer we could find.”
   Fusco, the founder of Edge Sports Center in Bedford, Mass., is Harvard’s all-time leading scorer with 240 points. He won the Hobey Baker Award as college hockey’s top player in 1986. He had help getting there.
   Fusco, 62, remembers wind-lashed walks from the Harvard quad across the Anderson Memorial Bridge to practice at the Bright Center like they happened yesterday. He liked getting to the rink early to work on his shot. 
   As Fusco crossed the Charles River, Carney was usually at his side. The goalie with no shot at playing was happy to stand in net while Fusco ripped off pucks for 45 minutes before practice.
Carney was there to serve."

   If you are interested in Carney and college hockey and politics see: "Mark Carney: College Hockey's First Prime Minister," Adam Wodon, College Hockey News, March 12, 2025. 

The Bonus: 
  His wife, Diana Fox Carney, also played hockey and lived on a pig farm, among other, much higher endeavours. 
   If you are more interested in music than sports, note that our Prime Minister likes heavy metal: "HEADBANGER TO HEAD BANKER: Heavy Metal Fan to Run the Bank of England," Steve Hawkes, The Sun, Nov. 27, 2012.
"5 OF MARK'S FAVE TUNEs
1 Back in the Black - AC/DC
2 For Those About to Bail Out Northern Rock, We Salute You - AC/DC
3 Rates of Spades - Motorhead
4 Number of the Beast - Iron Maiden
5 Cash-mir - Led Zeppelin.