Interview: Chris McSorley, coach and part-owner, Geneva-Servette Hockey Club
“The mission of Geneva-Servette is not to be just a hockey team but a community”
Coach and co-owner of the Geneva Servette Hockey Club, Chris McSorley
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Chris McSorley says he is determined to sell the best steak and hamburgers in town at McSorley’s Pub, and to have a top-of-the-league hockey team playing just metres away. Both of these were looking like big challenges as December crept, cold and often damp, into Geneva, and politicians, enthusiastic about their local hockey team’s needs, back in June, coughed discreetly in winter over the same sums needed to improve the Vernets arena.
Getting the right kind of meat and a chef who understands North American tastes is not easy. More critically, the Geneva-Servette Hockey Club team that came within a hair of winning the Swiss title in March 2010 hasn’t yet found its legs this season. Thirty-two matches have given an uneven result of 17 losses and 15 wins. Zug and Davos matches on the 21st and 23rd of December remain, before the Christmas holiday break.
Then again, the last two matches have brought wins, despite a Geneva team suffering from injuries: the tide could be turning.
The coach, age 46, is a man who enjoys challenges, who is used to fighting for what he wants, starting from the days when he had to be quick to get his share of dinner at a table with eight children.
McSorley barks at the team, training hard, working up a sweat on the ice.
Two loves, both at Les Vernets
Food: the steak at McSorley’s Pub and Steakhouse at the Vernets arena is en route to being the best in town, the hamburger is very good, American-style hearty, and the chips/french fries are terrific. If you are feeling glum about Geneva’s winter fog, head to the rink’s restaurant for a cup of clam chowder or the excellent piping hot chili.
Hockey: McSorley has become a Geneva household name in his nearly 10 years in town, as coach and now part-owner of the Geneva-Servette Hockey Club, where he has built a strong hometown following.
His local fame is due only in part to the game. He’s worked tirelessly to open the sport up to a wider audience and to use hockey to lace together the local community, especially the English-speaking international community.
“Forty-five percent of the fan base is women,” he says with pride. He spoke at Chavannes-de-Bogis 17 November to a local group, Executives International, one more talk in a steady string of public speaking engagements. He likes to remind visitors to GSHC’s home, the Vernets ice rink, that the team works actively with non-profit groups, running a breast cancer fundraising Pink Night, for example, that literally turns the team pink for charity.
McSorley is Canadian, born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario, one of eight children in a devoutly Catholic family where hockey was nevertheless the first religion, he likes to joke.
He played professional hockey after finishing school. Younger brother Marty became a National Hockey League star, but Chris thought professional hockey was not on the books for him, after an accident, so he turned to studies. When Marty moved to the majors, big brother Chris, age 25, told himself, if he can do that, so can I!
Coaching, a dream come true
Lake Geneva area and Swiss weather: daily forecasts now on GenevaLunch
Geneva / Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – GenevaLunch is doing more to keep you happy, and among our latest additions aretwo that will please many readers. Starting today we are providing weather forecasts from the Swiss national weather service, MeteoSwiss. You’ll find icons for Geneva and Zurich at the top of the home page. Select either one and you’ll land on the weather forecast page, where we will also frequently post current weather photos from the Lake Geneva region.
If you have weather photos you’d like to contribute, we’re happy to consider them: editor@genevalunch.com.
Crossword fans are already busy working on our new feature, crosswords created specially for GenevaLunch by Shirley Curran, a regular contributor to our winter ski reports and the person behind our book blog, Book my place. The crosswords appear on the blog. Shirley is an accomplished creator of general knowledge and cryptic crosswords for several UK publications, going under the pseudonym of Chalicea. You might want to start with this one, but don’t peek at the answers, of course, provided this week.
Our blogs are changing: two of them have new names to reflect their new focus. Geneva Living is where Laila Rodriguez, who is also a news reporter for GenevaLunch, shares her tips on life in the city. Now that she has four years in Geneva under her belt she decided it was time to change her blog’s name, formerly called New to Geneva? Me too! And Jared Bloch is focusing more on one of his real passions, anything and everything that has to do with wheels, so Man oh man is now called, not surprisingly, Wheels enthusiast.
We have new people lined up to contribute guest blogs on a regular basis, so you’ll get to know their voices on a variety of topics, and we’ll be opening up some of the other blogs to regular contributors.
And if you enjoy photography, you may have noticed our four GenevaLunch group flickr photos, which change frequently thanks to a group of 70 regular contributors.
You’ll see other changes in coming weeks, but for now, don’t forget to check the weather (tip: set your umbrella by the door for morning).
Igor Sedykh, journalist
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Igor Sedykh, Geneva-based Russian journalist who in 2009 was awarded the Swiss-Russian Cooperation award for journalism at the World Association of Russian Press congress held in Lucerne, died Friday 12 March in Geneva, his widow, Barbara Sedykh, announced.
Sedykh began his career with the monthly Sa Rubeschom, worked in Geneva as a correspondent for the Russian news agency Ria Novosti, and most recently he was known for his reporting for Kommersant from Geneva on Russian affairs, war and arms-related topics. His articles were often picked up elsewhere in other languages.
Sedykh was a longtime member of the Swiss Foreign Press Association.
Links to other sites: Cooperation Council Switzerland-Russia, Kommersant, Medecins sans frontieres
The jobless: more time for indoor gardening - not what they want
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Unemployment in Switzerland increased to 3.9 percent of the working population in September, according to figures released by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs 7 October. Almost 58,500 more people were out of work at the end September than a year earlier.
Geneva’s unemployment rate remains the highest in the country, at seven percent. The French-speaking part of Switzerland is particularly affected, with every canton at or above the national average:
- Vaud 5.4 percent
- Neuchatel 6.4 percent
- Valais 3.8 percent
- Jura 5.7 percent.
Title: Earth festival
Location: Lausanne, Vaud
Link out: Click here
Description: Activities for children and adults, all celebrating planet earth.
Start Date: 12 Jun 2009
End Date: 28 Jun 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (Tribune de Geneve, Fre) – A fire broke out in a ground floor apartment in Grand-Lancy, Thursday 30 April. The flames in the stairwell trapped an adolescent on the second floor. A neighbour heard the cries and braved the smoke and heat to bring the young person to safety. Firefighters evacuated six people from the building. Three were admitted to the hospital for treatment of smoke inhalation.
Geneva's book fair, le Salon du livre 2009
Swiss women winemakers: Les artisanes de la vigne et du vin, a busy Arvinis stand
Lake Geneva region, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – People in the region turned out by the thousands for several events 25-26 April weekend, undoubtedly thanks in part to spring putting in an appearance. Lake Morat (Murtensee) hosted its annual Slowup, one of series in Switzerland throughout the year. The weather was fine, the scenergy splendid, and 55,000 people turned out for this mass non-motorized movers’ day. Arvinis closed with some 19,000 visitors registered a slight dip, 5 percent, in attendance but wine producers told Arvinis organizers (and GenevaLunch) that sales were up. The Salon du Livre in Geneva at Palexpo closed its doors with good news about readers: 105,000 came to the event, 22-26 April, a 7 percent increase in attendance.
Geneva, Switzerland (Tribune de Geneve, Fre) – The man who shot his boss, then killed himself in the ICC building near the airport, worked for a private security company, Sigma. Police are seeking a motive for the crime.
Maybe saving money
Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre)- A second family salary can too easily be consumed entirely by day care costs in Switzerland, according to a new report. Day care centre costs are generally linked to parents’ incomes, thus the sliding scale may not make it financially worthwhile for a second parent to work fulltime, as the two “example” charts below indicate.
This is the second of three articles that together make up the English version of a feature published 2 April 2009 by Swiss news weekly L’Hebdo magazine on expatriates in the Lake Geneva region. GenevaLunch, a partner of l’Hebdo brings you the English version.
French version © 2009 l’Hebdo
English version © 2009 GenevaLunch (may not be reproduced in part or whole without written permission.
[Part 2, continued] By Julie Zaugg and Mehdi Atmani In Geneva alone there are 65,000 expats, of whom 40,000 are international organization employees and their families. Philip Morris in Lausanne employs 180 of them, Japan Tobacco International, also in Lausanne 157, Procter & Gamble in Geneva 500 and Nestlé in Vevey 584.
Where do they come from?
Americans were still the majority of expats just a few years ago, but they’ve given way to Europeans, with the Schengen Area and the free movement of people as the impetus. Read more…
Swiss chocolate
Updated 13:00 Versoix, Switzerland (Genevalunch) - Versoix’s fifth annual chocolate festival holds some surprises this year, apart from the traditional artisan chocolate displays. Thirteen of the chocolate makers are presenting works with an astronomy theme for the international year of astronomy.
Read more…
Langendorf (SO), Switzerland (TSR, Fre)- A 15-year-old student attacked a classmate with a knife in a Langendorf school around 11:00 Wednesday 24 March. The victim suffered serious injuries to the neck and was transported by helicopter to a specialized hospital where he is listed in stable condition.
Max and her new beau, 1 March 2009 (photo © Heide Buergermeister)
Updated 3 March, 09:00 Fribourg, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Max has a new beau! But what will happen, asks the Museum of Natural History in Fribourg, when the father of her young for the past three seasons shows up at the nest?
Valais, Switzerland (GenevaLunch and TSR, Fre) – The strange wooden bells, tubas, trombones and off-key music that are part of Swiss Carneval could be heard starting Thursday 19 February in several corners of Valais.
This is one of Switzerland’s Catholic cantons that celebrates Carneval during the four to five days leading up to Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, and the start of Lent Wednesday 25 February.
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FOR UPDATED US ELECTION RESULTS: NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO
Change, hope, dialogue and a dream
Updated 20:50 Visit the GenevaLunch US 2008 election photo gallery: images from the American International Club, Democrats Abroad and Webster University parties.
Click on images here to view larger.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Euphoria for many, quietness for a few: the election of Barack Obama as the next US president was marked Wednesday morning in Geneva by four words, repeated at all the events where election-watchers gathered: change, hope, dialogue and a dream.
©Globe Cartoon, Chappatte
Another America?
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A reminder of where and when to go if you haven’t been invited to a private party but you want to be with a crowd of Americans on what promises to be a very special night in US history.
Geneva, Switzerland (Tribune de Geneve, Fre) – The Geneva medical doctors association, unhappy with the federal court ruling that struck down a Geneva no-smoking law, has decided to actively promote cafes and restaurants that remain smoke free.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – They may swoon for George, as in Clooney, but he’s going to try to sway them for Barack, as in Obama: a small number of US citizens will pay anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 Tuesday evening to rub elbows with the American actor, in town on a fundraising mission at the invitation of Geneva lawyer Charles Adams, a partner in the international law firm of Hogan & Hartson.
Clooney fans, even those willing to pay that much to see him, can attend the $1,000 reception and the $10,000 dinner for 75 people at the Adams home only if they hold valid US passports: as Cookie Parker of the National Finance Committee of the Democrats wrote when she announced the evening, it’s a fundraiser and "only American citizens with US passport numbers can contribute to the campaign."
Vevey, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Vevey citizens could well go to the polls in a referendum over parking spaces to settle how many and where, near the Place de la Marché. After years of discussion and debate the town council has presented its plan, with a reduction of 100 parking spaces, but also reducing the current 440 spaces that are aboveground to only 60. Another 280 spaces would go underground and the lakefront area would be developed.
Gland, Vaud, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A 78-year-old resident of Gland has died following a road accident on the route du Mont-Blanc shortly before noon. The man was driving towards the lake when he lost control of his car near the Mauverney roundabout, possibly after being taken ill. He hit a construction rubbish bin and then collided with a truck coming from the opposite direction. The truck driver managed to stop his vehicle before it was hit and he was not injured but the driver of the car died at the scene of the accident despite ambulance and Rega helicopter as well as other medical help.
The area was closed to traffic until 15:00.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Edipresse is investing in Le Régional, buying a majority of the capital in the local free paper that covers the Lausanne to Montreux area. The newspaper currently prints 98,000 copies and will extend the print run to 115,000 and extend distribution further east to cover the Chablais area. According to 24 Heures, the new ownership will allow Le Régional to add three new jobs, advertising and editorial.
Edipresse owns the major newspapers in the Lake Geneva area with the exception of Le Temps, where is shares equal ownership with Ringier, Switzerland’s largest publisher. In early 2008 it created a commercial English-language online site aimed at multinationals, Swisster.
Updated 19 August. Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Daily Mirror in the UK broke the news, People Magazine picked it up and now the celebrity news circuit is passing it around: the divorce after six years of marriage between musician Phil Collins and his wife Orianne Cevey Collins is costing him more than any British celebrity has, to date, had to pay out to an ex-spouse. The figure cited by the Daily Mirror is £25 million, a number the newspaper says came to light in accounts for Philip Collins Ltd, the former Genesis star’s "personal management company" in London. How the British tabloid obtained the accounts is not clear; Swiss divorce settlements are by law private. The couple live in separate homes near Nyon, Vaud. Orianne Collins created a jewelry company called The Right Label which has made a splash at the Baselworld art show and earlier this summer at the Cannes Film Festival.
Lausanne newspaper 24 Heures noted 19 August that the details of the divorce settlement could not be confirmed through either member of the ex-couple.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Cern’s LHC (Large Hadron Collider) will have its first synchronization run this weekend, 9-10 September, a key step in the process to get the world’s most powerful particle accelerator up and running. Cern (European Organization for Nuclear Research) announced late Thursday that the first attempt to circulate a beam in the LHC will be made 10 September. According to Cern, "The LHC producing beams seven times more energetic than any previous machine, and around 30 times more intense when it reaches design performance, probably by 2010. Housed in a 27-kilometre tunnel, it relies on technologies that would not have been possible 30 years ago. The LHC is, in a sense, its own prototype."
Starting up the machine is a long process that starts that starts with cooling down each of the machine’s eight sectors. This is followed by the electrical testing of the 1600 superconducting magnets and their individual powering to nominal operating current. These steps are followed by the powering together of all the circuits of each sector, and then of the eight independent sectors in unison in order to operate as a single machine.
By the end of July, all eight sectors were at their operating temperature of 1.9 degrees above absolute zero (-271°C). The synchronization phase scheduled for this weekend begins with synchronizing the LHC with the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator, which forms the last link in the LHC’s injector chain. Timing between the two machines has to be accurate to within a fraction of a nanosecond. This weekend’s work involves the clockwise-circulating LHC beam, with the second synchronization to follow in coming weeks. Cern notes that "Tests will continue into September to ensure that the entire machine is ready to accelerate and collide beams at an energy of 5 TeV per beam, the target energy for 2008. Force majeure notwithstanding, the LHC will see its first circulating beam on 10 September at the injection energy of 450 GeV (0.45 TeV)."
Television coverage of the start-up will be made available through Eurovision..
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Michel Bobillier, whose photos of the Fetes de Geneve fireworks were published in 2007 by GenevaLunch, has made a bright and fun 120-second montage of the light show, as a warmup to this year’s show Saturday 7 August. Remind yourself why these are some of the best fireworks around, not to be missed!
Photo courtesy of Athos99: Music this week has been memorable, including a popular concert by Michel Lalanne who played to an appreciative audience only four days after surgery.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland and Ghana have signed a treaty to avoid double taxation on income, capital gains and fortunes. The treaty must be ratified by both country’s parliaments before it goes into effect.
Lausanne, Switzerland (24 Heures, Fre) - Monday towards midnight a man was found hanging in the stairwell at the entrance to the Vennes station of the new metro system in Lausanne, the M2, scheduled to open in a month. The 45-year-old was French, a high level manager for Alsthom who had responsibility for the security system for the new lines. An investigation has been opened but for now, according to 24 Heures, his death appears to have been a suicide, a shock to fellow workers and his employer, who told the paper they saw no signs he planned to take his life.
Updated, 21:53
New York, NY, USA and Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Ping-pong again in the sailing world: the Supreme Court of the state of New York in the US ruled Tuesday, 3-2, in favour of the Société Nautique de Genève (SNG) in the ongoing battle over the next America’s Cup race. The SNG, home to Ernesto Bertarelli’s Alinghi, won the Cup in 2007 and immediately exercised its right as winner, under rules established in the 19th century in New York, to name the Challenger of Record and to declare the location of the next Cup race. It selected Valencia’s Club Náutico Español de Vela and declared that the next Cup challenge would be held in the Spanish city.
That decision wa quickly challenged in the courts by San Francisco’s Golden Gate Yacht Club (GGYC), which has insisted that the Valencia club is not a legitimate challenger and that the SNG is not preparing a fair race. For the past 12 months the two yacht clubs have fought out the future of the Cup in legal battles. Tuesday evening, Geneva time, the SNG declared that it was happy with the decision, while the GGYC in an official statement said it would be reviewing its options in light of the decision.
BBC story, Sailing Scuttlebutt reaction
Photo, © George Johns/Alinghi, reproduced with permission. Alinghi relaunch on Lake Geneva, May 2008.
Click on image to view larger.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – South African judge Navanethem Pillay has been approved as the new United Nation Human Rights Commissioner, filling the post that Canadian Louise Arbour left vacant in June. Pillay is a judge at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, a post she has held since 2003, and she previously spent eight years as a judge, four of them as president, at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
Pillay was the first woman to open a legal office in Natal province in South Africa, in 1967 and she became the first woman of colour (she is part of the South African Tamil community) to have a seat on the country’s high court. As a lawyer, she defended numerous opponents of apartheid. She played a crucial role in obtaining access to lawyers for prisoners at Robben Island, including Nelson Mandela who later became South Africa’s president. More recently, her Rwanda work was instrumental in the UN vote to declare rape a tactic and weapon of war, moving it into the category of war crimes.
The United States initially resisted her appointment, according to Reuters, based on concerns about her attitude towards abortion, but the US ambassador to the UN later said "We didn’t find substance in the allegations," according to the wire service.
Zurich woman named to UN Human Rights Committee
A second UN human rights group vacancy has been filled: Helen Keller, professor in international law at the University of Zurich, has been named one of the 18 independent experts who make up the United Nations Committee on Human Rights in Geneva. The committee examines complaints from individuals and provides critical reviews of country reports.
“My philosophy is simple: I like the world of music, and there I think global because you have to let yourself think big enough. But I drink “local,” Daniel Rossellat smiles, raising a glass of very good Chasselas from the vineyards near Paleo, the festival he founded more than 35 years ago. “I always taste the local wines. In 30 years I’ve been to pretty much every country that makes it.” He travels internationally year-round to listen to and find music groups.
Daniel Rossellat is still the boss at Paleo, which has grown from its first crowd of 1,800 to an annual sellout of 225,000 tickets for 120 concerts, and his stamp clearly marks it. But he says he is gradually making way for his successor. Or successors, for the team that is in charge has already shown their mettle, he believes, led by Jacques Monnier, who has co-responsibility for the festival’s programme. [Ed.note: see the 23 July Le Temps interview with Monnier on YouTube, about his favourite groups, at the end of this interview - in French]
Rossellat, who is known in local circles as a wine cognoscente, agreed to talk to GenevaLunch about his favourite bottles, at a hotel in Nyon where afterwards he would be glad-handing local business leaders in his role as would-be candidate for the town council in Nyon. While some people have expressed surprise at his shift from music festival man to politician, for Rossellat it’s a logical evolution. “We’re lucky to be a European model. We could be arrogant about our success but we believe we must continue to innovate. And we have to use our authority to encourage our employees and the public – and the region – to assume social responsibility.” Paleo won a Midem Green award in 2008, the latest in a string of awards for its environmental efforts.
Updated, 11:15
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Talking ATMs, or bank cash machines, designed primarily to help visually impaired people, have been installed in 209 locations in Switzerland by Credit Suisse. Standard, commercially-available headphones can be used for discretion and ATMs function in English, French, German and Italian. The bank, Switzerland’s second largest, worked closely with the Swiss Library for the Blind and Visually Impaired, the Swiss
Federation of the Blind and Visually Impaired, and the Swiss
Association of the Blind to develop the ATMs. Credit Suisse says it is the first bank in the country to offer talking ATMs.
