The crowd outside the stadium in TO is wild! Can you hear the cheering?

I could not hear it, but I could hear the occasional whoop coming through the open window as people made their way up or down the street.

Sitting in the dark, listening, it felt like a blackout had washed the city free. Everyone was experiencing the same thing. Everyone was happily displaced, vibrant.

In the wake of the victory some of the broadcasters have been anointing the Raptors Canada’s team, but I’m not sure that’s the case. The Raptors are Toronto’s team, reflecting a sensibility in league, sport and composition that is unique to the city. The players in the NBA, much more partners than faceless subordinates, are a revolution unto themselves. And in Toronto where the culture wars seems to burn so much brighter and hotter that the ROC, the Raptors embodied not just the demographic of the city they worked in, but the aspirations of the people who lived there, too.

For awhile now, particularly amongst people younger than me, the Raptors have served as connective tissue, the casual language spoken at parties and bars. This is not your father’s corporate sports team. This is something else. It’s youth, it’s velocity, it’s progress. The Leafs and Jays were institutional legacies passed on from bygone eras, but the Raptors were not, they were the living present of the city.

And last night there was such joy and hope. People were experiencing things they would never experience again. Their lives were being written, histories formed. They were young and beautiful and united, and the world was changing not just before them, but from within them, and everything was cresting, limitless and glowing.

A college-aged woman is making her way through the crowds. She’s wearing a big sweater over which she’s pulled a down vest. Her smile is warm as she cuts through the crowd, a long skateboard tucked beneath her arm. She looks so healthy, so confident, so effortlessly beautiful. It is impossible not to imagine her life, to see her her boldly meeting each new challenge she faces in this fresh world. She must skateboard through the city each day, her foot slapping the pavement as she goes faster and faster. Popping over streetcar tracks and swerving around trucks, she is the glowing velocity of youth. And then she materializes in the hospital like an answered prayer, and for a moment all our boring suffering falls aways, and there is nothing but the hope of spring.

I was 13 years-old, hopelessly white and just starting high school. I wanted to be cool but didn’t have the foggiest notion how to go about it. Cool was an undiscovered, mythic country that existed off at some unknowable distance, and I was lost, so very, very lost.

Eventually, I learned that the best passage to this land was through music. At the time, while punk and new wave were exploding around me, Billy Joel was my God, and this was not cool.

I found out that the music I had been listening to was wretched kid’s stuff, as were the lame, middle of the road radio stations I pledged allegiance to. If I wanted to be cool, I had to listen to college radio, CKCU specifically.

Listening to this radio station felt subversive, like receiving secret transmissions from a dangerous and lawless place. Unlike the chipper and inauthentic DJ’s I had previously been listening to, the ones who used sound effects and clearly knew nothing about music, the college DJ’s seemed singularly interested in what they were playing, as if it was their holy mission to bring “good music” to you. It was, I think, my first exposure to what might be thought of as the alternative scene.

It was here where I first heard the voice of Nadine Gelineau. She was a DJ at CKCU, and for whatever reason she struck a chord with me. I loved her. I mean, I was in love with her.

Her voice, so knowledgable, confident and fun, suggested worlds I had never imagined. It was a voice that for a 13 year-old boy in Ottawa, was a path, a path to a world of music and cool and all that lay beyond, a path out of the childhood I had always inhabited and on toward something much grander. Her voice conjured the possibility of thousands of different lives.

She was a legend. Hosting radio shows, spinning discs at the counter-culture clubs, championing music and just generally being Ottawa’s single-combat hero of cool, she was the way we collectively wanted to be seen. She gave us all hope and pride, I think, and now she is gravely ill. I hope that she’s able to get through it and return to herself and the legions of people whom she loves and love her.

The thought of her passing is a kind of cataclysm. Ridiculously, it seems impossible, but time, it just slips away, quietly sliding away into a larger and larger pool now forming beneath and behind us. Who knew that pool would get so big and we would get so old? Who knew the present would so mercilessly raze our beloved past?

I was recently reminded that the last song she played at all the club sets she performed was Enjoy Yourself by The Specials.

At the time it struck me as a drunken party song, but now when I listen to it, there’s a sadness and inevitability to it. It was an appropriate song for Nadine to have played, I think. It’s a funny time, that last song of the night, bittersweet. I never wanted it to end, I wanted it to stretch out infinitely, with more and more people joining in, each one a light in the greater constellation of who we were, each one shining so brightly.

So, thank you Nadine, thank you.

( Photo courtesy of Julie Beun)

I recently won a kitten and have brought it into my household. It is my wish that it will bring hope into our lives. How should I treat it so that it does not run off to live with some of our other competitors in life?

With respect,

Sergei

Sergei:

It is good that you have written me with this question for my love of kittens is of global renown. My love for them is like a thunder that rolls across the steppes. My passion for kittens is the same as the passion a Cossack feels for battle! Truly, my ardor is without boundaries.

Personally, I have six surviving kittens and I am proud to say that they are all a part of the powerful Putin clan. My strongest connection is with Polkan. He is such a character! Sometimes he walks over my keyboard when I am busy writing a new law against the homosexuals! I tell you, if some bureaucrat were to do that, my response would be swift and without ambiguity, but I have no rage toward the cute, little face of my Polkan!

To make sure your kitten does not stray to a more appealing environment, you must pick it up, kiss it’s neck repeatedly then set it in your lap so it has a feeling of security, as you would a woman. You must be positive that it understands that you are not a predator! If the animal wishes to break free from you, you should let it, for you do not want it to feel trapped and fearful that it is to be executed for a crime! However, you must swiftly return to it, employing the same strategy (also, add treat) that you first initiated. You must repeat until your subject has been subdued.

Pet Corner:

I have been thinking about getting a Siberian Husky as I am looking for a loyal guard dog. Thoughts?

Gratefully,

Pavel

Pavel:

Ah, the Siberian Husky! It is as if their piercing eyes can penetrate deep into your soul and see your most secret desires and ambitions. I understand why you would feel such a burning attraction to them.

Evgeni had eyes like a Siberian Husky—as blue and vivid as lake Baikal. It was like he and I were carved from the same block of heterosexual man, and sometimes it was hard to know where where Evgeni ended and Vlad began. Our glorious days training together at secret KGB locations, were so curious and tense and beautiful, that sometimes we lost ourselves to our fitness regimes, and glistening with sweat, we would spar with one another– rough and tender– again and again, deep into the caressing night.

However, just like Evgeni, the Siberian Husky, is not a one-man dog. The breed is not fearful of strangers but will go to them, even seek them out in the dark corners of the city, and then one day you may happen upon your beautiful dog with another man, and you will feel nothing but rage, shame and horror, and then your KGB training will kick in and you will eliminate the problem before you. There will be more blood than you ever thought possible, but you will clean it up, and from that point forward you will bury deep, deep inside, all the hurt, pain and confusion, and you will become a new, different man, a man who hates even the disgusting thought of tenderly practicing martial arts with another man! And so I caution you, the Siberian Husky presents as many risks as it does rewards.