Accordions were playing and the coffees were being poured like wine ... and the wines like coffees.
Of course there were a lot of locals who wore the colours of France for the occasion, because it's much easier to dress as a extra from Allo Allo than it is a Canadian.
Canadians don't wear berets or ride bicycles with strings of garlic hanging from the handlebars and they appear undecided over the musical merits of the accordion.
But they wear a maple leaf well.
I was delighted to hear that the Canadian team's hosts for the stay in the Bay had stocked up on a few home "staples" like maple syrup and chilled Moosehead beer.
Moosehead?
Fair enough, and far more appropriate for the Canadian landscape ... when you take into account that one of our leading brewers is named after a large cat which stalks the plains of Africa, not the Rangitaiki.
We also had a brew called Leopard once. What is it about big cats and New Zealand ale?
Where's the Kiwi Draught or the Kakapo Lager ... or Native Land Snail Stout? I have only consumed Moosehead beer once and that was in Australia of all places.
It's a fine drop.
I hope the maple leaf boys are also getting Neil Young and Gordon Lightfoot piped into their rooms ... although the younger lads will likely be getting the efforts of an electro-prog Canuck who goes by the name of deadmau5.
The French boys of course would have had Charlie Aznavour and Serge Gainsbourg ... and a spot of Daft Punk.
All part of the magic of the cup!
Okay, with the delightful Canadians in town I have the opportunity to clear some debris from my memory.
I needed a maple-clad excuse because at the heart of the debris is a Canadian guy called Matt who I struck up a mainly liquid friendship with at the Isle of Man in 1977.
I was staying in a youth hostel ... I think it was in Laxey ... and was on the island to watch the motorcycle races.
Matt, who shared the same bunked cell as me, was on the island for no good reason apart from drinking himself into a state of daily oblivion.
"There's damn motorcycles everywhere," he told me.
I explained it was an annual thing called the TT, but he didn't seem to know a lot about it.
"Motorcycles ... everywhere," he simply said before he suggested we go and have a drink.
Which we did. I told him about New Zealand and he told me about Alberta.
"If you drop a full glass of beer dead centre flat on a wooden floor it won't break," he told me after we'd consumed about four of them.
He was wrong. So we had to find another pub.
Matt was loud and didn't give a rat's privates about what people thought of him. He was tall and lean with hair halfway down his back.
And so it came to pass that at around 1.30am one morning Matt and I got back to the Laxey YHA, tanked and teetering. There were clear signs on the walls which declared that 11pm was the latest return time ... the doors would likely be locked tight at that time.
"We've gotta get in Rog'," he growled.
So, as nonchalant as a child picking a flower, he picked up a rock and broke the door pane and reached in to turn the handle.
Then he howled with laughter. "It wasn't even locked man!"
I think I just shook my head, then squinted as the lights came on and the hostel custodian appeared in the doorway.
"Nice dressing gown," was all Matt said.
The bloke was seething but held his tongue pretty well. He demanded we hand over our YHA cards, which we did, and he tore them up in front of us.
"Get your gear and get out," he said ... yet oddly didn't ask for compensation for the broken pane.
We staggered off into the night ... Matt one way and me the other ... never to meet up again.
His parting cry was "if you're ever in Alberta!"
What a remarkable bloke.
Mad as a moose, and I'll now accordingly sniff out an appropriate ale to toast his memory.
