Riders End of Game Celebration: YouTube Video

 

I've been to a lot of big games, a lot of big late-game comebacks, but I've never seen it like this. Yeah, you would think we won the Grey Cup at home!

The Berlin Wall, 1990 and Remembrance

  November 9, 1989 the wall comes down, and the Riders were
   about to become Grey Cup champions. What a year!

 
  Eight months later, Potsdamer Platz, the day after the
  Wall concert was staged at the site of the Berlin Wall

Jan and I have different views of the 1970s rock album The Wall by Pink Floyd. She finds it depressing, I find it cathartic. Once it draws me in, there's no leaving until it's over. I think opposing hemispheres in our brains are dominant in each of us. Most people I know who like this album are artists, poets, writers, people who use creative expression as a means of healing past wounds.

In grade 7, I bought the double album based on the appeal of the rebellious anthem which was its hit single ("we don't need no education.") I bought it in Minot, North Dakota on a shopping trip. The album as a whole was pretty heavy stuff for a kid my age, but I had been listening to songs by the Beatles since I was two.

I knew the album to be a concept album, a record with one theme running throughout, it's songs blending together in one long journey through four sides of vinyl. Others call this a rock opera like the Who's Tommy because it has a narrative of sorts. But like any good album, it is what the listener makes it to be. I didn't think of it as someone else's story, I thought of it as my story. That said, it was far from my favourite album at the time. But it stayed with me, and grew with me over the years, all the way into adulthood.

By 1990, I was hitting my stride in university and was enjoying my adulthood and my freedom from family. In July of that year, I had accepted a job in Ottawa working for the Federal Government in a very corporate video capacity. I waited to see if I would get a shorter, but more interesting summer job working on a 35mm Soviet documentary on Canadian agriculture. I held out until the moment my plane was to leave for Ottawa, still without confirmation of the job at home. I decided that I would take a chance and stay here, pissing off a whole lot of people who had put their faith in me for the Ottawa job.

My profs, who were to hire me for the Soviet documentary, respected my commitment to the project and hired me on the spot when their funding finally came in. It was worth it. The experience was once in a lifetime and it took place at an interesting moment in history: the eve of the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union.

There was no Glasnost in the lives of the five person Soviet film crew. They were respected professionals at home yet they made the same salary as any other professional (like surgeons or lawyers.) I spent six weeks in intimate quarters with these people, learning that freedom was something I took for granted.

They didn't show any envy towards us or our society, they thought we were all spies, to tell you the truth, and they didn't trust us one bit. Their mistrust only aided to shed light on the condition of people who live their lives without freedom. The intricacies and nuance of our day to day interactions painted a remarkable picture of what life was like under Soviet Communist rule. Eventually, they came to like and trust us and friendships were born.

Although Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait while we were on the road filming that summer, Autumn brought amazing hope with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Right Here Right Now, may be a cheesy song, but it summarized the electricity and hope of that time that people my age felt.

The cold war started to thaw and I anticipated a remarkable change coming in the lives of my new Soviet friends. I witnessed the fall of the wall and the eventual fall of Communism in the Soviet Union, partially through the eyes of my oppressed Soviet friends because their perspective was still fresh in my mind.

I was busy working on student films and staying up all night in my university's film department when the Berlin Wall came down. Walking through the hallways, I remember seeing people convening and talking about it, some with tears in their eyes, especially at the bar where it was on TV. Life couldn't be better. The future seemed limitless. It was everything a college kid could hope for in 1989.

The Wall Comes Down

In November 1989, a wave of uprisings throughout Communist Europe led to the a a large group of people beginning to tear open an piece of the wall which stood in one form or other for thirty years. When it was erected, families were torn apart. Sons and daughters were cut off from their parents, workers from their jobs, and friends were separated. Hundreds died trying to cross the wall in the hopes of finding freedom or reunification with their loved ones. Even children were okay to fire upon according to rules given to the East German guards.

When thousands gathered on the Western side of the wall and began to dismantle it while East German guards watched passively, video was beamed all over the world whose scenes would be forever remembered. The jubilation in the crowd was unlike anything I had seen. It was hard not to share in their experience. It wasn't an angry mob, it was a determined and steady push to do what was right and what many of them had so long wanted to do for a generation.

The following is home video shot of that night and subsequent dawn that was posted on YouTube. I don't know if it's the best video, it's just something I stumbled upon. It has some of that YouTube magic: you sense a connection to its making because its so personal, raw and unprofessional. I can't imagine the feelings people in Berlin had waking up to find the wall opened up and people freely moving from side to side without restrictions.

A few months later, the world was very different, and authorities were officially starting to remove all remnants of what was left of the wall. Roger Waters was planning the biggest rock concert the world had ever seen on the very site of the Berlin Wall.

Potsdammer Platz was a no mans land between east and west, with the Berlin Wall surrounding it on four sides. It was an empty killing field were many were shot dead trying to get to the west. Waters asked for part of the wall to be left up for the July concert as a security fence. He also had to get the authorities to rid the field of bombs, munitions and other dangers. And they discovered a Nazi bunker. At the time of the concert, it was widely thought to be the bunker Hitler died in.

In pre-war Berlin, Potsdamer Platz was a large exquisite plaza surrounded my many city blocks of fine early 20th century architecture. Near to Nazi headquarters and the main government buildings of Nazi Germany, Potsdamer Platz was heavily bombed during the last months of the war. Most of it was rubble and in ruin when it became occupied by Russian soldiers after the war, and Berlin was divided amongst the allied victors. When the Berlin Wall was erected the land within Potzdamer Platz came into dispute as to in which sector it lay, even though it lay slightly inside East Berlin. It was agreed that no one would occupy this parcel of Berlin, and the Berlin Wall completely surrounded it, turning Potzdamer Platz into a no mans land. Anyone caught within the walls around the Platz was instantly shot on sight.

It was strange for me, a fan of The Wall, the album, to see pop stars of the day performing its songs. Much Music repeated the show frequently in the following years and I'd watch, skeptical at first, each time, but then it hooked me and I was unable to detach myself from the concert until its uplifting end. Like the album, the Berlin Concert, originally broadcast on live television to a half billion people, grew on me over time.

The fact that this concert took place where people were murdered for so many years in their quest for freedom, and the place where the wall first came down just several months previous, adds immeasurable weight to the magic that was recorded that night. Musicians, marching bands, choirs and orchestras from the East and the West joined together on one stage. Many from the east were still tentative about their right to even be there. Hell, when Waters went looking for a marching band he was told to hire the Soviet Army's band from outside of East Berlin. When he and his producer went to hire them, no one claimed to know where this enormous army base was. East Germans were still in the early stages of learning how to be free. That sort of mentality reminded me of my Soviet film friends.

 

The concert is a spectacle. It featured hundreds of performers on stage, a towering wall with projections, cranes and inflatables. The wall cut off the performers from the audience once erected during the show. I've always found it very moving when Van Morrison performs Comfortably Numb (this performance used for the soundtrack of The Departed) against the back of the wall that separated him from the audience of nearly a half million people. Images were constantly projected onto the wall, often of photographs of the actual western side of the wall and it's ever-changing graffiti. It must have made some people in the crowd a little uncomfortable.

The audience was from all over the world but most were from East and West Berlin. All you had to do was show your concert ticket and you could ride public transportation that day for free in all parts of Berlin. These people had been separated from each other for all their lives and now performers were barricaded from them by a giant white wall (later recycled for building insulation.) When it came crashing down at the end of the show, it was an especially emotional moment for the Berlin audience.

The DVD release of The Wall: Live in Berlin is surprisingly good. It's sound is spectacular for a TV concert. The sound quality and mix lives up to any modern concert film.  Mixed in Dolby Digital 5.1, a  properly set up home theatre will take you right into the front row. A high quality stereo PCM version is also available on the DVD sound options. The video is three-tube video at its 1990 best. A little archaic by today's standards but still very good. The bonus features include the compelling talking head documentary "Behind the Wall" which tells many a harrowing story of how the concert came together, including how it was salvaged after two brief power outages.

The proceeds from the concert and subsequent CD and video sales went to The Memorial Fund for Disaster Relief. A fund set up to have a certain amount of money set in trust for every person who died in war in the last century. The interest from the money would go to help people in need, in perpetuity. The memorial fund dedicated to lost lives would be used to save lives. That's my kind of charity.

Oddly, watching The Wall: Live in Berlin today in 2007, and remembering the feeling of excitement for the future I felt back in 1990, I feel a little pissed at where we've all ended up in the world. It seems to me there are more walls going up then coming down these days.

Riders - Windy Game Day

I hate the Weather Network when it comes to their dealings with wind. When wind is mentioned, it is always forecast lower than Environment Canada and gusts are not part of their current readings or predictions. If you go by them, today might not seem like a bad day (wind west at 35.) To them, they might be surprised that I was awakened at 5:45 AM by a howling wind from the West gusting to near 80 KM per hour. Where their cozy Weather Network offices are located in Greater Toronto, they issue warnings at that level of wind. It's a weekly occurrence here.

The more reliable wind forecast comes from Environment Canada, or the "weather office," as you farmers might call it. They are predicting a west wind at 50 gusting to 80 KM/h this afternoon. It will shift to south, 20 KM/hr overnight. Not in the evening, as is usually the case. In fact, we're supposed to be windy here right through Wednesday.

What does this mean for the Riders? It means they have to win the coin toss and take the wind in the first quarter. Letting Calgary do so could take our fans out of the game (and by the second quarter, many of them without ski goggles my have their eye lids blown off.)

The second half will be played after sunset. This brings hope that the wind will taper off somewhat (20 k from the south overnight.) I predict a cross wind for the second half, somewhat less gusty in the fourth quarter. It may even shift to the south by late in the game. In the olden days, Ron Lancaster had a direct phone line to the weather office in his dressing room.

It's going to be windy and unpleasantly cold. Maybe unbearably cold. Maybe the worst weather in years for a Rider game. It's good the Riders' bench is on the west side, it should be somewhat sheltered.

But will Eric Tillman be criticized by the end of this game for bringing in a lukewarm Corey Holmes because "he's a good guy" and "a friend"? Or will Corey have a breakout game and become a Saskatchewan hero on a whole new plane?

More importantly, how many Riders have rattlely windows like mine and might be awake predawn wondering what the day has in store?

It's going to be windy in Winnipeg, 40 gusting to 60, but this 80 KM/hr business we're going to have here is insane.

Dress warm. Consider goggles and:

Go Riders!