Kanata Bound
Eric Huckleberry
It’s 5:30 PM in Ottawa on March 18th, 2023, a blustery, snowy March evening. I’m dashing onto the horseshoe-shaped bus platform at Tunney’s Pasture station, hoping to make it to the far-flung Canadian Tire Centre in Kanata for the 7:30 hockey game. As I race towards the bus stop, a half-empty 403 bus flies by me, leaving me standing angrily at the side of the transitway, stamping my feet, out of breath, and temporarily stranded. I duck into a nearby bus shelter, and realize I am the only person in a Senators sweater inside. Surrounded by a sea of blue and white, I have entered the seventh layer of Hell, hurtling by the other six to land among a legion of crazed Leafs fans to begin my journey to Kanata.
At 5:00 PM I had bid my wife and son farewell like a soldier going to war. Before beginning my march to Tunney’s, I equipped myself with all of my survival gear - my red and black Ottawa Senators sweater with no number or name, headphones, wallet (transit pass firmly tucked inside), keys, collapsible water bottle, and in a detail that dates this story, my favourite face mask. Nobody else on the bus to the arena will be wearing one except myself and my father. Getting going with at least an hour to spare before an event at the Canadian Tire Centre is necessary for any experienced Ottawan. With many driving to the game on the 417, the highway will be horribly clogged as they all struggle to make it to Kanata for the first puck drop. Others roll the dice and clamber aboard articulated OC Transpo buses, public transit theoretically being an efficient way to get gaggles of fans to the far-flung arena. These special service buses are known to be a gamble as they don’t seem to run on a particularly predictable schedule, and they fill up quickly. I’m not usually a risk taker, but I have chosen the bus as my conveyance. I’m not rewarded for my brave choice.
By 5:45 I have been texting my father back and forth following my failure to catch the 403 bus we had coordinated to travel to the game together on. There’s few things worse than describing to your parent where you are and where you want to meet over text, and we’re both a little irritated by the whole debacle. Soon I am bored to tears in the shelter, tired of listening to my music and annoyed at OC Transpo, not for the last time tonight. Suddenly I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn to find a father and son duo in Maple Leafs sweaters asking me about the buses. I’m finally in my element, and I strike up a conversation with the two. While I disdain the Leafs as a matter of honour, their fans are just regular human beings, deluded perhaps, but just ordinary folks underneath their blue and white rags. The two, who I will call Wendell and Mitch, were pleasant companions. Wendell had gotten the tickets for his son Mitch for his 10th birthday, and they had driven up a few nights ago to explore Ottawa’s museums and landmarks. Mitch had never attended an NHL game – the tickets were just too prohibitively expensive in Toronto, and Wendell didn’t want to drive across the border to Buffalo to see the Sabres play. We talked about our teams’ woes and potential trades we wanted them to make, but also about the challenging journey to the arena we were about to undertake.
It’s January 1st, 2001. Ottawa has just become a big-league city, amalgamating 11 municipalities into one. Geographically it is not just big, but huge, larger than Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto, Edmonton, and Calgary COMBINED. It sprawls from west to east across a vast swathe of land bordered by the Ottawa river to the north, so even when you’re in Constance Bay, or Carp, or Navan, or Metcalfe – a full 40 plus minutes outside of the “core” urban area of Ottawa - you’re within the city limits. And we are about to head to Kanata, one of these formerly independent little satellite towns that sit roughly in Ottawa’s orbit, and feel just about as far away as the moon when you’re on the bus.
No bus had arrived by 5:55, and Wendell was telling me how he had puzzled through the bus routes, and debated driving, but a concierge at their hotel downtown had dissuaded them from trying, bless them, and directed them to the special gameday 400 series bus stop. I told Wendell I hoped his phone was well-charged, as Mitch was going to need some distraction on the ride we were about to take, but honestly the kid was almost too excited to stand still. It made me realize we Sens fans were quite lucky. Our tickets were affordable, and our lack of corporate ticket culture meant there were a lot more plebians in the stands with real fandom, and not just suits taking clients out for schmoozing.
At 5:57 another father-son duo joined our conversation. Eddie and his son William had initially come to Ottawa for the Colorado Avalanche-Ottawa Senators game that had taken place on Thursday, two days prior, and had stuck around to take in the Leafs, their second favourite team. The two were from Stellarton, Nova Scotia, where Eddie worked still, and had come to watch the captain of the Avalanche, Nathan MacKinnon, a fellow Bluenoser, play. I had never realized what a magnet the Senators were for hockey-starved fans in parts of the country without a nearby franchise. Eddie and William were certainly excited, and hadn’t let the opportunity go to waste. They were a little buzzed and more than a little zany, and I knew I had found some entertaining bus buddies for at least the portion of the trip before we retrieved my father.
At 6:00 the 404 bus finally arrived, and all the fans attending the game leapt onto the curb with something approaching anticipation. It trundled to a halt, and surprisingly, everybody basically kept their cool. Occasionally you see the social order break down in these moments, a panic that the next bus may never come, and everybody squeezes aboard like the three stooges, getting stuck and occasionally triggering a very tense and barely polite “sorry, you go ahead”. Sometimes when you board the bus with your platform buddies, like Eddie and William and Wendell and Mitch, they disappear into the ether like your beloved summer camp clique you formed for two weeks the summer before grade 8. Your bond was deep and beautiful and unbreakable, and you swore to be friends forever – until you didn’t see each other for a day and forgot all of your bonding moments, the secrets you shared, and eventually even each other’s names. Luckily, Eddie and William didn’t forsake me, as we managed to secure seats at the back of the articulated bus where we settled into amiable conversation about hockey, travel, home, and Ottawa. They were flabbergasted that Ottawa’s arena was a forty-minute bus ride away, but luckily the two had lubricated themselves thoroughly with Dominion City Two Flags IPA and were feeling no pain.
At 6:08 we are on the soon-to-be-renamed Sir John A. MacDonald River Parkway, and I can’t help but look out the window and admire the beauty of the scenery as twilight gives way to night. I can tell that Eddie and William are quite taken with the view of the river and the Gatineau hills barely visible behind. Sadly, the illusion is somewhat marred in short order by the huge construction project that occupies essentially the full length of the Parkway, phase II of the Light Rail Transit system. It forces the bus into slow zones and chicanes back and forth, making the ride a little less smooth than it has been in years past, when it was a sedate and calm stretch of any trip headed west. Before we know it we are disgorged into the desolate remains of Lincoln Fields Station, and soon after on to the Queensway. When we eventually reached Pinecrest station and my father boarded our almost full bus, I introduced him to William and Eddie, and with the latter he fell into amiable conversation quickly like a long-lost pal. Watching older hockey fans talk to each other on these bus rides is fascinating, as they’ll start reminiscing about the Tallahassee Speeders’ 1977 all-star left-winger Buzz Gribbets who scored 50 goals in 25 games, or the time the Toronto St. Augustine’s captain Polecat Timmins chokeslammed old Orville Fudbutt of the Baltimore Gentlemen in game 9 of the Sub-Soviet series. It’s a history lesson, but also mythology, and they almost never tire of swapping tales before you reach the CTC.
It’s now 6:20. Killing time on this ride to the arena is difficult. The long stretch of boring suburban nothingness is exacerbated by the loud monotonous thrum of the bus engine, and one can only mindlessly scroll Instagram and Reddit in public for so long. In such circumstances, sometimes it’s best to situate yourself near a group of strangers and to eavesdrop on their discussions, hoping you’ve chosen wisely and won’t be horrified by their choice of topics. But a friendly stranger with whom to converse is best. William and I had probably covered all the obvious subjects of Leafs-Sens talk, and at this point we had lapsed into comfortable silence in the sprawl beyond Bayshore, and begun our long journey into Kanata. As we wove our way into Terry Fox Station in Kanata Centrum, I could see doubt spreading across William’s face. “We’re stopping here?” he asked, confused. “Oh, buddy… we’re stopping everywhere” I replied gravely.
It’s December 6th, 1990. The National Hockey League has awarded a franchise to the city of Ottawa at a cost of $50,000,000 in those sweet nineties dollars. However, the team didn’t even have an NHL-sized arena in place yet. Instead of placing the arena downtown, the Senators’ ownership and management instead were banking on the spread of the suburbs and of the growth of the high-tech industry to transform the sleepy, idyllic and semi-rural Kanata into a larger and thriving community surrounding the new arena. Highway 417 would become the conduit for fans to reach the arena from the city’s central core. Now, that did sort of happen, but not as grandly or as quickly as the architects of the Ottawa Senators had hoped. When the arena was completed for the 1995-1996 season, the Canadian Tire Centre in the town of Kanata became the home of the Ottawa Senators – a team that didn’t even technically play in the city they were named for.
At 6:30 we screech to a halt again, Terry Fox Station barely in our rear-view mirror. The most aggravating part about this bus ride are the many stops, picking up one or two people at each as you get closer to your goal. My friend calls it “The Kanata Milk Run”. Despite the fact that the 400 series buses are promoted as the gameday express, there are dozens of anonymous and seemingly random stops after Pinecrest station, and the distance between them feels interminable. Depending on your luck, you may blow by these stops joyfully with nary a would-be rider in sight. On the other hand, you may find yourself halting at all of them in turn, a grinding process that wears down even the most patient passenger’s resolve. Every time you feel like your bus is finally building some momentum, and you’ve had a couple of traffic lights go your way, suddenly you hear the air brakes squeal as you spot a group of Sens fans standing glumly at the side of the road at a lonely bus stop. You can’t help but have sympathy for somebody wearing a Sens jersey willingly going to this game to have the pride slapped out of them by drunken Leafs fans celebrating another upcoming first round exit, but still - you just want to be at the arena, and these chumps are slowing you down like drowning sailors clinging to the side of an overfilled life raft.
At 6:45 we begin the most tiresome stretch of the trip, very close to the end. There’s traffic building on the highway, and as we reach our exit and swing onto Palladium Drive, the bus has to cover a huge loop that enables it to pass over the highway to reach our final goal, the vaguely Roman Coliseum-shaped Canadian Tire Centre. A cheer will often go up from the weary travelers, not realizing they have entered a scientific wonder, a curiosity beyond human comprehension – a time warp. Now all the vehicles on the three-lane highway have to merge into a single lane, and traffic comes to a near-halt. A distance that can be covered on foot in less than ten minutes can take 20 or more to traverse on the road. Sometimes you can see Uber riders leap out of their rideshare and commencing trudging along the side of the road, betting on their feet over the snarled traffic. Children on the bus begin to whine loudly, and laughter becomes more manic and forced. Many comradely travelers who imbibed a bit too much before boarding are now doing the full-bladder shuffle, and there’s now less excitement in the air and more frustration. It’s a tense time, and it feels like everybody is holding their breath. Some of the Leafs fans are not all sunshine. A few are openly antagonistic and start to behave like bachelor parties in Collingwood on a crowded golf course, shouting obscenities and flailing around. Some of their hidden beer stashes are running low, and occasionally a cigarette or a joint is sparked impatiently as the bus inches forward. Sometimes now chirps will fly, or chants start for a moment, but mostly everyone is restless to arrive. As you crest the bridge, hope returns. Now it’s all downhill, in a good way.
At 7:10 the bus finally gets to its stop, and disgorges its passengers in a rush, bursting from the doors like inmates staging a jailbreak. Many male travelers sprint to the nearby bushes to relieve themselves, including Eddie and William, a torrent of Two Flags finally set free just in time for more to take its place. Now they are lost to this story, though I would like to think they took a limousine back to their hotel. The majority of the caravan makes a beeline across the road to line up to enter the 18,500 seat arena that looms ahead, passing through the metal detectors and security to our 300-level seats. You can’t help but become giddy as a hockey fan climbing the stairs to the concourse. The crowd is abuzz as you step into the arena proper, seeing the massive scale of the place. The jumbotron overhead shows thrilling highlights from the team, and down at centre ice is the huge retro-nineties Senators logo, a stoic centurion-like figure with dynamic wings trailing behind it. I finally look up and scan the arena bowl, full of pride for my team and the underdog culture we inhabit, and sure enough, I can’t see another Senators fan. It’s all Leafs, baby.
It's May 2nd, 1967, the last time the Leafs won the Stanley Cup. In the half-century since then, their fans have remained amazingly loyal despite their disgraceful championship drought. They notoriously plague the NHL arenas of every Canadian city as well as several American cities close to the border and in Florida. In Ottawa, home to a young NHL team, it’s common for other long-established teams’ fanbases to turn up in larger-than-expected numbers in the Canadian Tire Centre stands. Leafs fans are always the most numerous and boisterous, routinely outnumbering the home fans at any games the Leafs play in Ottawa, chanting “This is our house!” and drowning out Ottawa fans’ cheers with boos. In fact, it’s cheaper for a Leafs fan living in Toronto to drive to Ottawa, rent a hotel room for a couple of nights, eat a few meals out on the town, buy tickets to the Sens game, and drive home for less than the cost of a single ticket to see the Maple Leafs play at their own arena, the Air Canada Centre in Toronto. For some fans, this is like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, akin to a Vegas trip, rumspringa, and bachelor party all rolled into one, with all the positive and negative connotations you can imagine.
It's 7:15. A perfunctory land acknowledgement has played, the anthem has been sung, and the puck has dropped, and the game is on! My dad and I find ourselves seated next to YET ANOTHER father-son duo of Maple Leafs fans and I realize that hockey may have an inclusivity problem, but that’s an article for another time. These sweet fellas from Perth remind me that Leafs fans are usually hockey fans first and foremost, and the two, who I shall dub Johnny and Auston, strike up a rapport with us instantly. And we’re grateful for it, too. Our section up here in the 300s are the cheap nosebleed seats, and they are crowded and tight, so literally rubbing elbows with somebody who isn’t immediately hostile to you is a small win. The game starts, and the Leafs take an early lead. We Sens fans aren’t worried though. A pattern familiar to all hockey fans plays out in front of us, as the Leafs let their fans down by allowing the weaker Ottawa team to storm back to tie the game.
By 9:30 the game is nearing the end of regulation time. With more than 5 minutes to go in a tie game, with either a last-minute victory or sudden-death overtime on the horizon, a time-honoured Canadian Tire Centre tradition begins. Fans begin to get up from their seats, gather their jackets and souvenir popcorn buckets and make their way to the exits. These fans are voluntarily leaving early to try to get a jump on the traffic, which is just awfully sad. These poor lost souls trade away the possibility of witnessing an epic comeback or a thrilling finish in exchange for trying to keep their sanity in the parking lots. If you drove, you are about to spend about 30 minutes minimum trying to leave the sprawling parking lots that surround the CTC like kudzu, while doing an intricate freeform dance around minivans and trucks struggling to turn a tight angle. There’s a lot of exits, but they’re all jammed by the mad rush of drivers trying to be the first out. it’s common to see vehicles with the ability to do so driving over medians or smashing traffic cones out of their way in their attempts to circumvent the jam, but more often than not they simply end up halted by another obstruction or red light or police officer who drew the short straw directing traffic. While it’s not exclusive to the Kanata arena, it’s almost an essential element of the Senators experience for anybody who drove their car, a deal with the devil coming back to haunt them. While they didn’t have to endure the crushing boredom of the bus or measure their time against an unpredictable schedule or smell the mysterious odours that pervade OC Transpo or cope with unruly behaviour of strangers or ration their liquor for the ride, they now have to forsake the game they love so much and get carpal tunnel from laying on their car horns in a vain attempt to communicate with somebody else just as pissed off as themselves.
It's 10:00 by the time the game ends, a shootout win for the Maple Leafs. My dad and I don’t mind that much, as we had a good time and know we have the easier path home now than the drivers trapped in the asphalt labyrinth behind us. I have some grudging admiration for OC Transpo’s plan for the buses after the game, I must admit. For 15 minutes after the game ends, a plentiful supply of each 400 series buses stands by, ready to take passengers back to Ottawa proper. My dad and I stumble back onto the bus, now a little bleary-eyed and tired. There’s been a lot of cheering, highs, lows, salty snacks, and perhaps an ale or two. Besides, he’s not so young anymore, and I have a toddler, so we’re up past our bedtime. The ride home is usually more subdued than the ride there, unless there’s a particularly raucous group of Leafs fans, which was the case this night - resulting in drunken cheering, some swearing, and many off-colour remarks that elicit rolled eyes and awkward silences. They’re still crushing beers, somehow, and a mickey is passed around for nips. But most of the passengers on the bus are drained and would rather be in bed, snuggled under the covers than having to endure another forty-five minute ride back to the major stations. We had to drop off one or two people at every stop on the Kanata Milk Run, leaving the bus still quite crowded. Most people are glued to their phones, a bright distraction into a more exciting world, while some murmur quietly to their seatmates about the game. A few stare blankly out into the window into the dark, eyes unfocused as black night drapes itself over nondescript fields outside. Finally, after a weird buttonhook turn off the highway, I bid my dad farewell as he disembarks and makes a ten-minute walk home. Time goes faster once we are back on the highway, and the ride on the parkway is too dark to have much impact. The raucous crowd spills out of the bus with me when we arrive at Tunney’s Pasture, where we will catch the light rail train, if it’s working. There’s a man having a severe drug-induced crisis on the platform, and I see Wendell and Mitch again. We try to chitchat about the game, but we’re too tired to say much of anything. After a short train ride and walk, I find myself at my front door again, unsure if I can readjust to civilian life after my life-changing battle with the transit system.
It’s 11:30 by the time I get into bed. I’ve been gone for six and a half hours, close to half of that spent in transit. However, I cannot sleep. The curse of the neon lights of the bus and train and constant feeling of acceleration and deceleration transmits a type of insomnia, and the adrenalin of the game still lingers in the blood, so it’s back to the phone to watch highlights, jeer anonymously on the internet, and fret that nothing in the apartment is ready for the day to come.
It’s 12:00 midnight, and I find myself musing over the big questions in life, like will I miss the long commute to Kanata when the new owner finally manages to make a deal with the city, the NCC, the Algonquins of Kitigan Zibi, the Federal Government, and whatever other mysterious stakeholders appear, and can break ground for a new downtown arena? No, probably not, to be honest. It’s just too big of a hassle, too time consuming and annoying. But I will miss the things that come with it – the communal spirit and stretching my social muscles to make friends with strangers, drinking on the bus with your pals, or talking about the latest gaffe the team has made. The low cost of Sens tickets will surely evaporate as more Golden Triangle types, Hintonburghers, Glebeites, and Sandy Hillians can easily amble over to Lebreton Flats or wherever the new owners end up putting the arena. More expensive condominiums and restaurants will pop up nearby to cater to attendees. The convenience factor will be incredible, but will Wendell and Mitch or Eddie and William or Johnny or Auston be able to easily attend an NHL game as before? Will my dad and I be able to afford our modest nosebleed tickets when we’re in competition with folks who dine at JOEY Lansdowne on Tuesday nights? The arena in Kanata is a relic from a different time in Ottawa’s history, and history waits for no-one. If a new arena is built, maybe the CTC will be bought up by a real-estate developer, or Loblaws, or a casino group. Less likely, maybe it will remain home to the Sens for decades to come. Or, worse yet, maybe it will crumble away to ruin, a decayed monument to bureaucratic mismanagement, poor city planning, and disastrous predictions about Kanata’s viability as an entertainment district. Decades will pass, the roof will cave in. The field will reclaim the stone and steel, and perhaps trees will poke up through the cracked asphalt of the endless parking lots. Once-proud Banners of the team’s achievements will hang tattered and blown by the wind. The Tanger Mall Outlet stores will look on in grief and dismay, lingering in this grey, mortal world of wind and dust as they mourn their neighbour. It will be 2067, and the Leafs still won’t have won the Cup.
thumbnail image: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/dyksw9nx/images?id=rrqb8zwd
