ADAM McQUAID STANLEY CUP FESTIVAL ON PEI THIS WEEKEND!

The last time the Stanley Cup came to Prince Edward Island I missed seeing it by just a few hours. The year was 2004. The Tampa Bay Lightning won the Cup that Spring and PEI native Brad Richards brought the trophy home to Murray Harbour, where he shared it with the gathered masses for a precious afternoon. Alas, we arrived home on the Island just around the time it was being crated up to be shipped on to the next player on the Lightning roster who would have his turn showing it and sharing it.

This year I’m once again missing the chance to see it on PEI—but this time by 8 days as we returned last Saturday from our annual pilgrimage to the Island. This year’s Islander with his name etched in immortality is Adam McQuaid, who will be hosting and hoisting the Cup this coming Sunday in his hometown of Cornwall. From what I’ve heard, the celebration will be first-class all the way: a meandering parade will allow the expected crowd of 15,000 at least a glimpse of the Holy Grail and a well-organized lottery will give at least 54 families the opportunity to get up close and personal with McQuaid and the Cup. (McQuaid’s uniform number with the Boston Bruins is 54.) And a number of non-profit organizations will get a piece of the action through the sale of souvenir t-shirts, a raffle of memorabilia, and food and water concessions. The organizers of the Stanley Cup Festival have also scheduled live music and entertainment to keep the crowd happy throughout the afternoon.

Well, even though I’ll miss seeing the Stanley Cup on PEI, I didn’t miss seeing Adam McQuaid, who established himself during his rookie year as a vital member of the Bruins shut-down defensive corps. His +- rating of +30 was tops for rookies across the league and he proved himself repeatedly as what tv analyst Pierre Maguire referred to as a “tough hombre”: his willingness to the throw down the gloves and “oblige” opponents interested in fisticuffs quickly established him as a fan favorite in Boston. (Here’s a link to one of his bouts: his beat-down of a Dallas Stars player that added the exclamation point to a remarkable start to a game in February—3 fights in the first 4 seconds!) But by all accounts, McQuaid is a gentle and approachable guy off the ice, and I took that part of his reputation as my invitation to “approach” him last week as each of us prepared for the start of the annual Gold Cup and Saucer Parade in Charlottetown.

I wrote a little bit about the Parade last summer. This year, I chose to wear my Bruins colors as my “uniform” in the Charlottetown Community Clash. Believe me, I took my share of abuse from self-avowed Montreal fans (in particular) along the parade route: I ran the gauntlet for my beloved Bs! (For more on my love of the Bruins, click here.) I expect that as Parade Marshall, sharing that honor and a spot on a float with members of PEI’s bronze medal-winning Special Olympics softball team, Adam McQuaid got a somewhat warmer reception.

Anyway . . . just before the Parade got underway I had a chance to chat with McQuaid for a few minutes—to congratulate him and to thank him for his role in bringing the Cup “home to Boston.” And home to PEI. I was surprised that he is not bigger: he’s tall, obviously, but he’s not big-boned or even intimidatingly muscular. In person he looks pretty ordinary—and even his mullet fits in on PEI! (He has retained that classic hockey cut from a charitable event in Boston during the winter.) All he needs is a “Canadian tuxedo” (a denim jeans/jean jacket combo—I still wear mine sometimes!) and you might never guess that he has his name on the Stanley Cup!

TIM HORTON'S DONUTS + BORDER CROSSINGS

So . . . last week at my daughter’s graduation from a small college deep in the heart of Iowa, I met a fellow Canadian Maritimer—originally from Pictou County, Nova Scotia but now a transplant to the Quad Cities area of Iowa/Illinois. His daughter was also graduating. After all the usual “small world” connections were made—he had gone to medical school with about a half-dozen louts who had made my life miserable in high school—we got down to talking about certain matters of importance to Canadians: hockey . . . and donuts. (It was a bit early in the day to talk about beer, which would have completed the conversational hat trick for Canucks.) The hockey part was obvious: the NHL playoffs are in full swing, so we naturally exchanged some thoughts on how they were shaping up. . . . I guess the donut part was prompted by our admiring the two largest boxes (pallets might be the more precise word) of the largest donuts we had ever seen—some unknown saint had brought them to the graduation brunch we found ourselves at. . . .

Anyway, we got talking about donuts and I was inevitably reminded of a little episode I was involved in at a Tim Horton’s donut shop in Salisbury, New Brunswick a few years ago. We stopped there for lunch on our way back to Boston from our annual summer vacation on PEI (which, by the way, must have the highest number of Tim Horton’s donut shops per capita in the world: I think there are at least 9 in my hometown of Charlottetown alone). Standing in the long lunchtime line wondering seriously to myself if we had enough Canadian cash left to pay for our soup and sandwich combos, I wondered aloud (I love to see my wife and our three daughters cringe in public) whether Tim Horton’s would be willing to barter. I then dug into my pocket to see what I might have. First I pulled out a golf tee. Then I pulled out a guitar pick (red). Then I pulled out a ball marker from the Glen Eagle golf course I had played (miserably) a couple of days earlier. I said to my wife and daughters: “All of these should be worth something.” They were not particularly amused, but the woman in the line in front of us seemed to be (unless, of course, her smile was a pitying one, directed toward my traveling companions). . . . As it turns out, Tim Horton’s gave an exchange rate on American dollars, so we were okay. As we sat eating lunch, I commented (tongue only lightly in cheek): “Isn’t this just the perfect meal—a ham and cheese sandwich, a cup of coffee and a donut?” A trucker at the next table overheard me and leaned over to say, “I have this meal every day—breakfast, lunch, and dinner . . .” And then, to complete the lunchtime trifecta, a woman a couple of tables over asked me what I had said after my daughters all gave me high fives for my response to my middle daughter’s questioning whether my sister “was cool in high school.” I replied that I didn’t know my sister when she was in high school (she was two grades behind me). Then my daughter asked whether I was cool in high school. I replied, “I was always cool”—then added “except when you were in middle school” . . . Ah well. Maybe you had to be there. . . .

Anyway . . . about two hours later my wife was driving when we crossed the border from Canada back to the U.S. Noticing that the last name on her passport was different from the rest of ours, the border guard asked, “How do you all know each other?” My wife replied: “We met at a Tim Horton’s in Salisbury.”

Actually she didn’t say that—but she should have! (I would have . . .)

But that reminds me of another time we crossed that same border from Canada to the U.S. and encountered that same guard. (In the interests of national security, I will resist identifying him too specifically—but just let me say that his surname is a slight variation on the name of the Welsh soldier in Shakespeare’s Henry V. I’ll also resist mentioning his wife’s family’s name, but I will say that I’ve crossed through his checkpoint and chatted with him enough times to learn that she is from New Dominion, PEI . . . and that our families have spent summer vacations less than a mile apart on the same south shore beach. But I digress . . .) So . . . we were crossing one time in a Dodge Caravan with darkly tinted windows. I was driving. Peering through the driver’s window, the guard nodded toward the back of the van and asked: “What have you got there?” I replied: “Three daughters and a dog.” He then asked: “Any weapons?” I replied: “No.” Then it was his turn again: “You should have,” he said, smiling grimly and waving us on.