On Monday night the Toronto Maple Leafs had a 4 to 1 lead over the Boston Bruins in the 7th<\/sup> and deciding game of their Stanley Cup playoff match-up.\u00a0 There were just 10 minutes left to go in the game. It was at this point that the Leafs, who hadn\u2019t been in the play-offs in almost a decade, began to think, playing carefully, as if the puck had become a delicate and expensive jewel. The Bruins came at them in blustery, masculine waves, and it was at this point that a sense of the inevitable settled. The Leafs would lose, and so they did, falling 5 to 4. It was like watching an opera where all of the Leafs drank poison at the end.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n After this, as a means of contrast, Rachelle and I watched Commander Hadfield\u2019s return to Earth. For those of you who are not Canadian, Commander Chris Hadfield is a Canadian Astronaut who has spent the last 5 months on the International Space Station. It was here, through his use of Twitter– where he accumulated nearly one million followers\u2014that he became something of a folk hero.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Avuncular, proportional and competent, Hadfield seems like a really, really nice guy. A Canadian guy. His moustache is friendly, like the sexually non-threatening moustache of a well-liked high school teacher, and his manner is sincere, thoughtful and fun, but still, you know this guy is operating at a very high level. You want him as your next-door neighbour. He would know what to do when the power went out and you thought you heard something funny in the basement.<\/p>\n Attached to a parachute, the Soyuz space capsule drifted down from space into a field in Kazakhstan like a child\u2019s toy. A bunch of unofficial looking Russians then went over, as if farmers inspecting something that had fallen from the past rather than the future, and pulled the astronauts from the capsule. This was done without the least trace of urgency, like something they were practicing for in their street clothes rather than the main event.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The first out was the Russian and he looked hale, hearty and ready to start tossing a Kettlebell around. The next to follow, the American and Hadfield, looked small, pale and a little worse for the wear, like space travel extracted a physical toll.<\/p>\n