Ah yes birthdays. They happen every year on the same day, and some years we want to celebrate them, while other times we don’t. This year I wanted to celebrate, especially because my beloved Montreal Canadiens were playing the dreaded Toronto Maple Leafs ON MY BIRTHDAY. Oh yes, I thought this was a perfect thing to celebrate. To make matters even more fun, the game was in la Belle Province (that’s Quebec for y’all non-Canadians), and as I hadn’t been to Montreal in over 8 years, I thought this was the perfect opportunity.

To start the celebrations off, I went to the Irish Embassy Pub in Toronto on Friday night for some drinks with some colleagues. Here’s me & Shannon at the beginning of the evening:

(That’s me on the right.)

 Next there’s Clint, Paul & Matt mugging for the camera:

I tried to be good and not drink too much that night, as the next morning I was off on the train to Montreal, but of course we all know that didn’t happen. Although I was good and drank vodka-based drinks, as I know they cause less of a hangover (and let me tell you that less is most definitely a relative term here), I still wasn’t feeling as fresh as I could have on Saturday morning. BUT, I made it to the train on time to meet up with the girls, and off we went.

Strangely enough, only Melanie was in full form, as I was battling the hangover, Jana was getting over a nasty cold and Christine was having some sympathy nausea for me, but we all managed to rest a little on the train, and we in decent form by the time we got to the hotel. Where we were greeted by this view from our 16th floor hotel room:

 

This is the view from the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth hotel, one of the grand dames of Montreal.

The best part of this room and hotel is that the Queen Elizabeth is directly over top the train station. All we had to do is take an elevator, and we were in the hotel (or train station, depending on your perspective.) This was an important fact to us, since we were taking the 09:40 train Sunday morning, and we wanted to maximize our sleep time.

So now to the main attraction: the game. We walked over to the Bell Centre and purchased some scalpers tickets for the Molson Zone. We found these are at one end of the arena, and each section is assigned a player. If your player scores a goal, then one row is chosen to win free beers. Not bad at all.

Here are Jana & me at the game. 

You’ll note that Jana is still smiling even though she’s wearing a Toronto Maple Leafs shirt…this was before the Leafs got trounced 4 – 1 by my Habs! YESSSSSSSS! She still had fun though, enjoying all the raucous fans and all.

Next we have some photographic proof of Christine’s fraud: she’s really a Senators fan, however in the spirit of the day, she wanted to wear one of my Habs jerseys. I told her she could wear her Sens jersey, and in fact her husband was going to lend her his, however she declined, much to Jana’s chagrin.

In the pre-game festivities, the Bell Centre people did a historical retrospective on the Canadiens teams of the past, flashing up some interesting pictures and stats  on the ice as they did.

So the game got underway, we had a few beers and pizza slices, and the chanting began “Let’s Go Habs! Let’s Go Habs!” Followed by the equally fun “Leafs Sucks, Leafs Sucks” (you have to remember we were in Montreal, and those francophones sometimes add extra s’s to words. ) There was an undercurrent of “Let’s Go Leafs” occasionally, but then we’d drown them out. See, Christine was right into it…

See the blonde in the referees shirt? She was handing out free beer tickets to fans who were wild & crazy, and Christine was wild & crazy enough to win!

By the third period, the score was:

The crowd started to get really rowdy, including a group of nasty Habs fans a few rows ahead of us. They were taunting a group of Leafs fans with some nasty, personal comments, which really wasn’t necessary. Security came up sometime in the 2nd period, but you knew something was brewing. These were the type of guys who go to bars looking for fights. Sure enough, at this point in the game, somebody stumbled while walking up the stairs to his chair, beer was spilled, words were exchanged, and then Hab Moron #1 lunged at Drunk Leafs Fan #1. DLF #1 threw his beer on HM#1, which pissed him off, and they started grappling as all of us ran for cover. Security was up there in no time and had separated everybody and diffused the situation.

But THEN, DLF#1′s friend (DLF#2), tried to climb over us girls to help his buddy. We were all concerned that he was going to dump his beer on us, so I pinned his right leg, Jana pinned his left, Melanie grabbed him by the waistband, and Christine, who was on the aisle, started yelling at him. She got right in his face and let him have it. While I appreciate his willingness to help his buddy, there was no point since Security was there and was going to toss everyone out anyways.

Finally the situation calmed down, all the DLFs left with their banished brothers, (and one sister), and then we watched the rest of the game. Jana left in disgust with a few minutes left in third, as she had to go buy some Habs paraphernailia for her father, who is a Habs fan (good man!), and she missed the lone Leafs goal! That was funny.

We next headed out to the Sir Winston Churchill pub up on Crescent street for a few drinks after the game. We met up with some funny guys who worked at Molson’s. Melanie was having quite a fun time with them. And then suddenly, it was past midnight, and my birthday was officially over for this year. It was time to get back on the train and head back to Toronto.

If you want to see more of my photos from the trip, go check out  my Flickr page. Melanie’s going to put her photos shortly, so I’ll be linking over to those too, so stay tuned for those too (Melanie’s much more of a shutterbug than I am.)