Everything about the hockey in latter weeks has expressed some urge for “participation”. As I ponder Weds nights events, beyond the mind-blowing matter of doing an event called Rereading the Riot Act during it, that explored another reading of the Riot Act in the city’s history in 1935 (hunger rather than privilege) — I return to this question of whether this hole, that clearly exists, into which people want to pour their participation does not point up the lack of funding by the Province into arts & culture.

Is this what you get when you do not fund the arts? Are people’s identities so bound up in this singularity of entitlement to “an event”, this event, this match, right now, our time, our turn.

In the last two weeks I could feel something brewing. Language changed, people sounded like we were in a war situation (us/them), all day Wednesday I had a terrible sense of foreboding that I could not place. It hit me in the community garden that morning early in the day when an incident took place on the road with a man who leapt out of a car. And since then I keep thinking about identity, the clutching at it and the hunger for participation. (in something).