[ninty]

I have a feeling


Friday, May 21, 2004

By ALLAN MAKI
From Friday's Globe and Mail


Calgary — As soon as she picked up the telephone yesterday morning and heard the voice on the other end, Mary Louise Barlass chuckled and said, ''I had a feeling you were going to call me.''

A feeling? Ms. Barlass has the kind of feelings that make people sit up and take notice. She has feelings that come to her on command or out of the blue, premonitions on tomorrow's news today, which is how she felt obliged to predict that a black hockey player, a superstar, would lead the Calgary Flames to the Stanley Cup.

That may not seem like much of a prediction now, given everything Jarome Iginla has done for the Western Conference champion Flames. But here's the kicker: Ms. Barlass made her call before the Dallas Stars traded Mr. Iginla to Calgary. She made it when he was still in junior, playing for Kamloops of the Western Hockey League.

She made it on Sept. 10, 1995, the day I met her to talk about her first sporting prophecy: The Calgary Stampeders' star quarterback, Doug Flutie, was going to suffer an injury and would be lost for much of that Canadian Football League season.

She knew because she'd had a feeling. She'd even called McMahon Stadium to pass along her concerns that Mr. Flutie, who had been stunningly healthy throughout his college and professional career, was about to go down.

And guess what? It happened. Mr. Flutie suffered an elbow injury within weeks of Ms. Barlass's call, underwent surgery and was replaced with backup quarterback Jeff Garcia.

When Ron Rooke, the Stampeders's media relations director at the time, told me about "the strangest thing happening," I tracked down Ms. Barlass, who allowed that she wasn't much of a sports fan and didn't know the names of teams operating outside the province.

Asked whether she had anything to say about the Flames, who had just opened training camp, Ms. Barlass said, "I see a black player leading Calgary to the cup."

"Are you're talking about hockey or football?" I asked.

"Not football," she replied. "I see a black player scoring goals and leading the Flames to the Stanley Cup."

That player, Mr. Iginla, is now the toast of the town, bigger even than Lanny McDonald was when he helped the Flames win their first Stanley Cup in 1989.

Yesterday, car horns were still honking and the city was still buzzing after Wednesday night's elimination of the San Jose Sharks, which began with Mr. Iginla scoring his playoff-leading ninth goal.

The victory earned the Flames the Clarence S. Campbell Bowl, a nice-looking trophy named after the former NHL president, and gave the players a well-deserved day off.

All of them stayed away from the Pengrowth Saddledome as ordered. Many vowed to sleep for as long as they could before taking in last night's Eastern Conference clash between the Philadelphia Flyers and Tampa Bay Lightning.

Tracked down once again, Ms. Barlass said yesterday that she was right and also wrong about her feelings.

"I thought the Flames would win the cup in 1996, but that was the year Mr. Iginla first played for the Flames [he appeared in two playoff games against the Chicago Blackhawks, scoring a goal and an assist]," Ms. Barlass said. "Later, when I saw him, I understood he'd be an all-time star and would take them to the cup."

All right, so who is Ms. Barlass and why does she have a better handle on sports predictions than a Las Vegas bookie, the Amazing Kreskin or that silly, wheel-of-fortune-spinning monkey on TSN?

Ms. Barlass was born in Edmonton and raised in Calgary. Her father was a doctor who practised in Alberta and Saskatchewan. As a youngster, she said, she was "always different, never part of a group."

She played a few sports in school and was good at them. Whenever she was a captain and had to choose a team in physical education class, she always made a point of taking "the loser of the school with my first pick. We always won, and it was good for them."

Ms. Barlass said she can't remember a time when she didn't have the feelings that made her different. They would just come to her, and later, as she got older, she would do psychic readings for friends and clients. She has since stopped doing readings and has taken to writing in the hope it will lead to a career.

"I would like to be known as a humanitarian," insisted Ms. Barlass, who has adopted a foster child in Tanzania. "I have a tremendous amount of compassion. So when I see something that bothers me, I respond. That's why I called the football team."

Responding to sports-related feelings is not a regular thing for Ms. Barlass, although she gave it her best yesterday when asked what we should expect in the days and weeks ahead.

"I like Don Cherry," she said. "I'm going to miss him."

Does that mean he won't be back on Hockey Night in Canada next season?

"Unless they meet his pay demands, he's gone," she said.

What about the Stanley Cup?

"[The Flames] won't be playing Philadelphia. They'll be playing that other team [the Lightning]. I see a really big fight in the third game. There's a tall player [for Tampa] and he's angry. He has his stick in the air and he's holding it like a sword."

As for which team will win the cup, the woman who predicted nine years ago how an all-time star would lead the way said the answer to that is poignantly clear.

"I see the Flames taking it hands down," she said. "I see them going down in history as one of the better teams, I really do."


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I'm a skeptic, but I will be looking out for someone on TB to be holding their stick like a sword. I'm thinking Roy. This article was from just after CAlgary beat SJ. I think its more relevant now because I can see a big fight breaking out in game 3. Anyway, I hope she's right that Calgary will win the cup. Kinda spooky.