All paths go through Notre Dame

Brussels, Belgium

Music: Audioslave, Getaway Car; Lynyrd Skynyrd, Free Bird
Books: Alexis de Tocqueville (“Democracy in America”), Thomas Friedman (“The World is Flat”)
Beers: Grimbergen Blonde, Maes

Today, we visit the European Union Parliament. And but for a strange and serendipitous turn of circumstance, it would have been just another visit—albeit an interesting one. A student at Notre Dame, Kristina, an undergrad, knows Professor Sherridan very well, and happens to like him very much. She is senior, and a member of the varsity tennis squad at Notre Dame. She also happens to be the daughter of an MEP—a Member of European Parliament—currently in office. In fact, this girl’s brother Yan also attended Notre Dame. He played hockey for the Irish for two seasons (20-20-40) before leaving after being drafted by the Boston Bruins in 2003. These connections are how we came to have the opportunity to not only visit the European Parliament, but also to meet an MEP personally.

Now, these Notre Dame connections would have been impressive by themselves, but it doesn’t stop there. It turns out this MEP was also a professional athlete before turning to politics. He is from Slovakia, one of the smaller countries that was recently admitted to the EU (May 2004). Slovakia is a country of 5.4 million people, and hence he has been able to parlay his well-deserved notoriety into a new career. He defected from Czechoslovakia in the late seventies, and began a Hall of Fame hockey career with the Quebec Nordiques.

I know this man very well—in point of fact, everyone in Quebec does. He is Peter Stastny, the man who formed the head of a trio of talented Czechoslovakian brothers (Anton and Marian were the other two) who came to play for the Nordiques in the early 80s.

I can’t hide that I was very excited when I found out we’d be meeting Peter Stastny . I thought of those Saturday evenings at home in Candiac when my father would scream “Est d’dans!” whenever the Nordiques would score against the Habs. He was introduced by Petra, a pretty Slovak intern at the EU Parliament, whose job it was to repare us by giving us a brief introduction to the EU’s Parliamentary structure.

He came in the room, and rather than launch into a prepared speech, he spoke softly, modestly, about the work that was being done and the part he was playing. He is now the head of Slovakia’s 14 members of Parliament, a task to which he seems to have added every possible other learning opportunity that he could manage to fit into a schedule that now requires him to live between his home country of Slovakia, Brussels for this EU duties, and St-Louis, where his family still lives. Above all else, he spoke of the profoundly human business that lies at the heart of all the EU’s efforts. After all, humans are, as it was once put, “walking piles of biases,” and the picture he painted was that of a collection of people who are trying to move beyond these biases, as well as prejudices and general ignorance, to create something new and lasting. The EU may be somewhat of a dream, but it’s not because of a lack of will. Sometimes, the legacies of millenia past can’t be erased at the pace we have come to expect.

I would have made it through the whole thing without openly mentioning hockey but for the fact that someone pointed it out towards the end. He recounted his favourite moment in what he deemed one of the most intense rivalries in professional sports: the goal he scored in the seventh game of the Stanley Cup playoffs—the eighteenth meeting between Montreal and Quebec that year—which won the series for the Nordiques.

I don’t remember the goal, but he, of course, does. So would Andre.