It's iconic.  4 bars of music that define an important cultural part of Canadian life -- the opening notes of the Hockey Night in Canada theme song.

As the NHL season ended this week it was revealed by a Toronto licensing company that the CBC is about to drop the four decade old, time-honoured HNIC theme song. 

Written in 1968 by Dolores Claman for an ad agency, the familiar song has become Canada’s unofficial second national anthem.  From ring tones to weddings, funerals to bar mitzvahs the song is ingrained in the deepest subconscious of each of us. 

According to Copyright Music and Visuals, the CBC’s present licensing agreement expired as the hockey season ended and the CBC will not renew the licensing agreement for the song.To be fair, this has publicity ploy written all over it – after all, the rights owner and the CBC have been engaged in an acrimonious lawsuit over the song since 2004 – it’s still unthinkable.

The HNIC theme song is nostalgia of the highest order – evoking memories in all of us.

From the tastes, smells and sounds of Canadian life on a Saturday night, this song is a ritual for millions of people of all generations across the country. 

It was the song you sung playing shinny, deking out the goalie and backhanding in a tennis ball.It was the song you hummed as you skated, imagining yourself basking in camera flashes as you hoisted the Stanley Cup overhead at the Forum or Madison Square Gardens after you’d scored the winning goal.

It was the song that you heard every winter Saturday night, curled up on the couch with Mom, as Dad sat in the recliner and the snow swirled outside. 

It is as real today as if life stands still on Saturdays when HNIC takes to the television.  Gone are Hodge and Meeker, Dick Irvin and all the faces that you thought would never leave.  But the song stayed the same. 

Even though the loved ones you watched hockey with have passed on and our lives have changed, the Hockey Night in Canada theme song brings us back -- to memories of hockey, a simpler time and the way life used to be.

Our HNIC theme song must stay. 

Don't let the CBC do something that, in usual Mothercorp fashion, it will not understand until it's too late.  Write your MP, write the CBC.  And - check out our Facebook link on the radio station website.