Riot Mother

The phone rang when I was at the other end of the house. I could hear Sonja saying things like, "No way! "The fucking asshole!" and "Good for you!" before she called me. "The phone's for you. It's your mother."

My mom had a story for me. Turned out she was in the Canuck riot with a few of her friends. "We were on our way to Wicked when we met up with the crowd. Some of them were pretty fucking loaded but not as loaded as us. None of us can afford to buy more than one drink at the Queen E any more so we'd had a few before we caught the train into town.

"One of the drunk motherfuckers sort of lunged at me so I let him have it with my purse. Good thing you'd warned me there might be a riot Beer - we all had put bricks in our purses. Knocked him out cold. His buddies dragged him away right quick and we never had any more trouble after that."

I had completely forgotten the warning I had given my mom. Forgotten she was going to be downtown at all that night.

"During intermission at the show the staff there made everybody stand back from the windows. The riot was in full swing by then. Looked like a Hindoo wedding except just about everybody was white. Reminded me of Bill Haley's show at the Kerrisdale Arena when I was teenager.

"We had to wait until the staff could tell us the safest way home before they would unlock the doors and let us out. Took them a good hour to figure that out. Wouldn't even open the bar for us. Good thing we all had a little flask in our purses to keep our bricks company. Aren't Canuck fans the worst fans in the world Beer?"

Pretty much, I told her. They could give Westham United's fans a run for their money.