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Still nursing post-finale Heated Rivalry withdrawals and lingering emotionally at that sun-drenched love cottage with hockey star Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and his Russian rival-slash-boyfriend Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie)? At the end of a historic debut TV season that rocketed the stars and creatives of this tender Canadian queer hockey romance to stardom overnight, author Rachel Reid was glowing, too, as she joined a sold-out audience to watch the finale again Friday night in her hometown.
“We’re all so blown away and appreciative of the way people received it – none of us were expecting this reception at the end,” Reid told fans in a pre-finale chat at the Stardust Bar in Halifax (home to Canada’s Drag Race season six Nova Scotian queen Mya Foxx!), where hostess Miranda Wrights teed up the crowd with a drag performance to Harrison’s cover of t.A.T.u.’s “All The Things She Said.” (Which segued, for the first time in history, into the extremely Canadian anthem “The Hockey Song” by Stompin’ Tom Connors… perfection.)
The fun of watching this Canadian-set, Canadian-made show with a Canadian audience is that, first of all, no one needed to explain the ubiquity of this country’s cottage obsession. (And they know that most cottages very much do not look like Shane’s stunning hardwood hideaway, with its custom-dug well and high-ceilinged architecture and mesmerizing firepit.) They cackle at the McGill University ding. They recognize the call of the loon, a bird that is etched onto their very dollars, and they know that, yes, it sounds just like a wolf bird that wants to murder you.
The beauty of watching it in a room of book fans, show fans, and the queer community was in the collective hush that fell over Ilya and Shane’s soft and honest admissions of love… in the cathartic sighs filling the room as Hollanov finally got time and space to be together… and in the laughter and healing the season finale brought to a series dissolving the deep-seated toxicity in this hypermasculine world of sports, one revelation/embrace/foot tap/parental hug at a time.
