Ovechkin and Putin. Gretzky, Tkachuk & Hellebuyck and Trump. 🏒🇨🇦 Not everybody shares your worldview—and they shouldn’t have to. When hockey collides with political purity tests and guilt by association. My thoughts 👇

If you’re Canadian and under 40, there’s a good chance you’ve heard The Band without really knowing The Band. And you might not know that four of the five members were Canadian. Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson were all Canadian. The fifth member, Levon Helm, was from Arkansas. Yet together they became one of the most important groups in the history of American music. They blended rock, country, folk, blues and gospel in a way that helped shape what we now call Americana. They played with Bob Dylan, influenced countless musicians, and became enormously important to the evolution of rock music. Then, in 1976, they decided to call it a night. Their farewell concert took place at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom on Thanksgiving Day. Martin Scorsese filmed it, and it eventually became The Last Waltz — one of the great concert films ever made. The guest list was ridiculous: Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton and more. But one of the moments I keep coming back to is Levon Helm singing “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” The song tells the story of a poor Southerner watching the Confederacy collapse at the end of the Civil War — his brother is killed, his home and livelihood are destroyed, and the world he knew disappears. The song was written by Robbie Robertson, a Toronto-born Canadian. And there’s something almost heartbreaking about those final minutes. Helm’s voice seems to carry the weight of the entire song — the loss, the exhaustion, the sense of a world disappearing. You can see the emotion on his face as he sings it, and by the end, it feels less like a performance than a farewell. There’s something almost perfect about the fact that the one actual Southerner in The Band was the man singing this particular song. Four Canadians and one Arkansan, making some of the most enduring music associated with America. This was Levon Helm. And this is Robbie Robertson’s song. Two remarkable musicians, and an incredible piece of Canadian musical history. 🎵 “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” — The Band, The Last Waltz, 1976 🇨🇦🇨🇦🇺🇸🇨🇦🇨🇦 #Canadiana #TheBand #RobbieRobertson #LevonHelm #TheLastWaltz

Message in a bottle experiment on X 🌊 If you see this, I’d love it if you replied with your town/city, province/state, and country (or however much you feel comfortable sharing). I’m hoping to get a general idea where my followers are and i’d love to connect with more people from every part of the world. Testing how far one tweet can travel. RTs are very much appreciated, even if you prefer not to reply. #SocialExperiment