Hundreds of people were littering in Prince George this past weekend, and nobody reprimanded them.
They did it in plain sight, in public buildings, and were applauded for their littering.
Many of you have probably figured out the public buildings were Rolling Mix Concrete Arena on Friday and the CN Centre on Saturday, and the littering was for a good cause.
I didn’t get to either Drop the Gloves and Sock It to ‘Em at the Spruce Kings game or the Teddy Bear and Toque Toss at the Cougars game, but I have been to a number of similar events in the past, usually covering them for the Prince George Free Press or Kamloops This Week.
It was the kind of assignment where you knew what the photo was going to be of, but you had no idea when it was going to be happening. It could be very early in the game, as it was Saturday when Ilijah Colina got the Cougars on the board less than a minute and a half into the game, or it could be late, like the game I remember where the home team scored with about two minutes left in the third period.
I can’t remember for sure who was playing in the game with the late goal, but I remember there weren’t the usual number of teddy bears on the ice. That was because some of the fans, apparently having no faith in the home team, had thrown their bears a few minutes earlier when a fight broke out.
I also suspect that in Saturday’s game for the Cougars, a fair number of the fans probably weren’t even at their seats yet, Prince George being a last-minute town.
I do have a couple of other memories, one from Prince George and one from Kamloops. The Kamloops one involved the Blazers scoring the Teddy Bear goal and the sky being filled with hundreds of flying bears. I took a look at the opposing goalie, and knew right away he was a veteran.
When the puck went in, he backed into the net for a few seconds to avoid the first onslaught of bears, then skated to the bench to wait out the cleanup.
A few years ago at CN Centre, I was covering the game, then going to Operation Red Nose. I had told the Red Nose folks I didn’t know for sure what time I would be there, since I had to wait for the goal.
I was actually at Red Nose earlier than normal, and a few people asked if I had someone else getting the picture at the Teddy Bear Toss. I told them the Cougars obviously knew I had somewhere else to be, because I think it was less than five minutes into the game when they scored.