SALT LAKE CITY -- Those Canadians who ignore Wayne Gretzky do so at their own peril.

He clearly speaks for the great hockey nation. And though occasionally, the message might get garbled by commercial concerns -- remember the embarrassing Tylenol/arthritis episode -- on matters of the game, he is considered as infallible as a pope.

The other night brought even more proof when, in a moment of crisis, Gretzky offered his now famous call to arms.

"I don't think we dislike those countries as much as they hate us," he said of Canada's opponents in the Olympic hockey tournament. "That's a fact. They don't like us. They want to see us fail. They love beating us. They may tell you guys something different, but believe me when you're on the ice with them, that's what they say. They don't like us. We've got to get that same feeling towards them."

And so we did. Facing the Finns in the quarter-final, our heroes summoned up enough animosity for a 2-1 victory, and could be heard uttering cruel taunts every time they went into the corners with elbows high.

"Hey Sibelius- boy! You know what you can do with your elegant little Alvar Aalto vase!"

Of course, this is really a case of a long, proud tradition being invoked, which goes back at least to Bobby Clarke's patriotic, ankle-breaking slash on Valeri Kharlamov. Though an otherwise peace-loving, middle-of-the-road country, Canada gets its dander up when the puck drops. We could hate the Russians because they were godless commies (who beat us a fair bit), we could hate the Swedes because they were somehow chicken (though they beat us some too), we could hate the Americans because they're the big guys next door (and they beat us in the World Cup), and we could hate the Czechs because it seems, according to Gretzky, that they're mighty dirty (and they did beat us in that shootout in 1998.)

Belarus, though, poses a new challenge.

One must assume that few Canadians had ever given the small, central European country a second thought. Yesterday, though, with a berth in the gold-medal game on the line, many were listening to the unofficial Belarussian national anthem, the Zorko-Venera song, trying to get a handle on the place, just as folks in Minsk were left puzzling over Stompin' Tom.

The short version is that Belarus is a former part of the Soviet Republic. It declared its independence just before the USSR became officially kaput in 1991. Bordered by Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania, it suffered through all of the unpleasantries associated with some of the nastier historic episodes of the 20th century. There was a brief cultural renaissance after the Russian Revolution, though that came to a grinding halt once Stalin came to power.

It is flat and marshy, with many, many lakes. And some parts of the country, bordering Ukraine, remain contaminated from the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

Sports is culturally significant, but hockey is only a small part of that. Think Olga Korbut. Or various female shot putters and discus throwers. In the Sydney Olympics, Belarus finished 15th in the medal count. "It's not bad," boasts a Belarussian Web site. "We are ahead of countries like Canada, Sweden, Spain, Czech, Poland."

Note that disparaging, anti-Canada reference. Blood boiling yet?

The country is run by President Aleksandr Lukashenko, who is regarded by the rest of the world as a neo-Stalinist despot, Europe's last remaining dictator, and who has taken an anti-Western, isolationist line, pining for the re-establishment of the old USSR. Elections held last September, which reconfirmed his rule, were widely reported to have been rigged.

There are many stories of secret police and death squads, and suppression of the press. When the head of Belarus's Olympic federation was ousted over some financial irregularities in 1999, Lukashenko (as is apparently his prerogative) gave himself the job.

And -- here's the key piece of information -- he's a big hockey fan who is known to don the pads, pick up a stick and play the game himself. A search through the far reaches of the Internet turns up a photo of the president, in full national team uniform, standing next to a smiling Pavel Bure.

Apparently, there were widespread celebrations in Belarus after the upset victory over Sweden in the quarter-finals (though as of yesterday, Lukashenko himself had yet to speak on the issue). Apparently, for a place suffering through some pretty bad times under a pretty bad guy, this was a welcome piece of good news.

Spare the people the necessary hockey hate, then. Save it for the big guy.

And consider this posting yesterday morning on a very, very quiet Belarus bulletin board, from one of those dastardly Swedes.

"I'd like to honestly congratulate the Belarus team that beat Sweden 4-3 in the Olympic ice hockey quarter-finals," Magnus writes. "Who would have thought . . ."

See where that kind of soft-hearted attitude gets you?

They're out, and we're still playing.
sbrunt@globeandmail.ca