johnny canuck

The old vintage jerseys look great on TV. Lately, fans have been obsessed with the soothing blue and the crisp green of the 70s era Canucks uniforms [audihertz].

They were brought back a couple of years ago when the league was having flashbacks. You’d catch original six teams playing each other in their old colours or logos while our guys would don the ‘stick in rink’.

Lately, these have become our third jerseys – almost permanent fixtures and selling like hotcakes cause the fans just love ’em. With the recent 100% local ownership, the talk of bringing back the stick in rink made Vancouverites all giddy [globe & mail]. Even the newly re-launched Canucks.com is sporting white and blue.

I must admit, they are better than the orange and yellow V’s of the 80s, although the skate will always have a place in my heart.

When goalie Roberto Luongo goes ‘vintage’ he sports a mask with Johnny Canuck painted on the side. Now just who IS Johnny Canuck?

Johnny Canuck was created as a national personification of Canada. He first appeared in early political cartoons dating to 1869 where he was portrayed as a younger cousin of the United States’ Uncle Sam and Britain’s John Bull….

The character re-emerged during World War II in the February 1942 issue of Bell’s Dime Comics No.1. …Johnny Canuck’s cartoon exploits helped Canada fight against Nazism. Like Captain America, he met Adolf Hitler and almost single-handedly ended the war…[Wiki]

When I lived in the States people used to ask me if “Canuck” [wiki] was a derogatory term. They’d want to use it (or had heard it used) in such a manner. Looking at Dictionary.com, I can see why they might think that. Hmmf. I don’t take any offense to the term, even if my team was handed their biggest loss of the season by the Ducks [tsn] the other night *sigh*

There have been many superstitions about our team. I heard one that it was considered unlucky to have their arena located between two bridges. Hmm might explain why we haven’t made it to the cup final since the days of the Pacific Coliseum. There are other rumors that the vintage jersey is lucky, some think it’s unlucky. Some say that the vintage-style pads Luongo wore the other night were to blame for a loss.

We don’t know yet whether or not the owners decide to give the Orca the boot. Johnny Canuck probably won’t be making a return, and I think it doesn’t matter what we wear right now – we should just be looking to succeed this season.