“He’s on and he ain’t coming off until they win it all.”
A couple local fired up female hockey fans are showing their Stanley Cup spirit with a shiny roof ornament that looks a lot like hockey’s iconic Holy Grail.
Suffice it to say the girls are getting lots of honks and hoots since unveiling it last Sunday.
“Oh yeah, it’s nuts out there … it’s great,” chuckled Tonie Voeller-Page. Tonie and her BFF of 16 years, Lee-Anne Salter, built the model, and in keeping with the spirit of the playoffs, enjoying the moment.
“Oh yeah. We call him Stanley … it’s all about Stanley,” she laughed. “He’s outstanding.”
“We’ve been planning this for a long time, but we wanted to wait until they were in the final because we didn’t want to jinx them or anything,” said the mother of four and one of the most boisterous of the seven to nine that congregate at their place for the Canucks’ games.
“We all wear the same clothes every game, sit in the same spots … it’s a lot of fun,” she says of the scene, a bit of the Canadiana being played out in living rooms, rumpus rooms, and pretty much every other kind of room in B.C. right now, as the Canucks are within striking distance of claiming their club’s first ever Stanley Cup championship and sending their fans over the top.
“Can you imagine,” she with what sounded suspiciously like a giggle, “it’s going to be so awesome.”
The two worked on Stanley together over the course of three or four days — all told Tonie says it took them about six hours.
“The cool thing is that two chicks made that,” she points out. “Lee-Anne and I did it all by ourselves without the help of any man. We studied Stanley, we went on line and got pictures of Stanley, we even made sure we had the right number of (tiers) for Stanley. We did all the drilling, the screwing, the building … we bought the washers and the nuts to make sure Stanley was secure … he even has drainage holes,” she said proudly.
It cost about 30 bucks to make and that’s including an extra large roll and-a-half of tinfoil.
As for the structure, no wire or fancy framing here, “we used a storage container bucket for the base with a dollar store bowl on top, then margarine containers on that, then foam and duct tape at the base … it’s about three feet high and it’s really light, maybe six pounds.”
Between the two of them they have six kids — Tonie’s two sons, Zack, 10 and Brent, 17, both play minor hockey. She was born and raised here the family just moved back after four-and-half years in Ponoka, Alberta (in between Red Deer and Edmonton) — husband Scott, he has been helping coach his son’s teams since they started.
Like the rest of the clan, sister Haylie, 14, is a huge Canucks fan too.
“She has ‘Mrs. Bieksa’ stencilled on the butt of her jogging pants.”
Haylie and Brent were in the back of the van getting during Stanley’s debut last Sunday. Brent’s room is done up entirely in ‘Nuck colors; youngest Gracie, 7, is big fan too.
Stanley’s debut atop of Toni’s Pontiac Montana last Sunday “was hilarious.”
“It was so fun,” she said, “we were looking in the mirror, going slow, we toured for two hours — went through Timmy’s twice — and the people were going nuts.”
In the meantime, “he is now strapped to the van and he’s not coming off until they win the cup, until the Canucks win Stanley,” she says, drawing the line in the sand.
Stanley stays on the van even at night but he has his own tarp.
One of the things that prompted the two to make Stanley she added “is that Parksville doesn’t have anything happening. Everybody’s got their car flags and stuff but we just wanted to bring the Canucks to Parksville.”
sports@pqbnews.com
