Keith McNenly
Special to Niagara Now/The Lake Report

After an exhausting World Series and incredible Game 7, we wake up to a new day, giving up Daylight Saving Time, as we brace for another gruelling winter.

With the clocks turned back just hours after the epic game, our lives literally got darker.

This baseball playoff season became a metaphor for Canadians’ current experience with the United States, a David vs. Goliath match, with Goliath coming out the winner, as most often happens in real life.

The Dodgers won the pennant while Canadians sat in stunned silence.
Even Canadians who have shown only passing interest in sports became entranced by the spectacle of the post-season Blue Jays.

The Jays as the underdog struggling against their American opponent, mirroring our Canadian struggle against the current American government, an adversary working to crash our economy and leave us fighting to survive, all the while threatening to absorb our sovereignty.

What I find most interesting, aside from the very fact that we ubiquitously got on the metaphorical bandwagon of cheering on “Canada’s team”, is that the loss wasn’t a gut punch to us, a big disappointment, sure, but still psychologically manageable.

Just like Americans gave themselves the moniker “Greatest Country in the World”, we call ourselves the “True North Strong and Free.” And that’s just exactly what Canada is.

We don’t pout and lament over disappointments because we know life isn’t about birth and death, but about what transpires in between.

The beginning and the end are irrelevant; we can’t control either one. It’s all about the middle.

That’s what the Jays demonstrated over the past few weeks to Canadians.
Watching it being played out was arguably the best televised drama I can remember seeing, filled with injury, skill, the coming together of young and mature players, leadership, underpinned by honest and empathetic struggle, with not ever a moment of giving up or giving in.

The Blue Jays’ managers, coaches and players “got it” early on that they had been drafted into a metaphorical Canadian struggle of survival and nationhood, and to their credit, no matter their own individual country
of origin, even American players, they came to the plate as a team to support us.

They bought into our Canadian vision, struggling on a relentless journey to a common goal, not for personal aggrandizement, but to keep everyone afloat, just as our country faces a flood of unearned external aggression.

That’s why Canadians are still cheering the Jays, why we see the loss of the title World Series Champions as less relevant than the record of their inspiring journey.

Players will come and go, but the Jays have left their imprint on our Canadian soil at a time when we needed a fulcrum to lever Canadians into a stronger team for the struggle ahead, in a world once again drifting toward economic warfare and authoritarianism, with Canada on the front lines.

Babe Ruth, among his many quoted phrases, said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
That amazing team of Blue Jays players has proven what we already knew: it’s never over, we’re just occasionally between innings.

Life isn’t about the start or the end, it’s about the in between, the struggle for a bite of food, clean water and air, someone to care for, a place to work and a place to rest, a team of nation builders and nation keepers so we can spread the burden of life over many hands sharing the good fortune and the bad.

On reflection, perhaps there’s an irony after our weeks of white knuckling the sofa arms, coming down to the final seconds in the 11th inning in the witching hour, what we really needed was not a win after all, it was the lesson that from sea to sea to sea we can come together as one when our Canadian ideals are under threat.

Niagara-on-the-Lake resident Keith McNenly was the chief administrator of the Town of Mono for 41 years.