Let's cross that street.
This is where your so-called city league hockey happened. You got ice late at night, and the spectators would stand on the drifted snow beside the benches, and freeze. And the players would freeze too. And they'd stop the game in the middle of the period so they could shovel the snow off. Sometimes, when it's really cold, the ice is no good.
Sound miserable? Wrong! This is Quebec, in the early 60s. This is more what Scott and Susan would have experienced when they were little. A few years on and things were a little different. Not that different though!
https://www.nfb.ca/film/rink
What a beautiful film this is. Milieu! Collective! The Remembrance of Things Past!
I remember leagues and organized teams. I remember that pretty soon your team would be renting ice at an arena, and they'd properly expect and require more of you, and it was a whole different kind of experience. I remember that as far as organized hockey went, I didn't go past grade eight.
But mostly, I remember free skating at the community rink. Two or three Saturdays a month. One or two days a week, having taken your stick and skates to school, you'd go over as soon as the bell rang. Or maybe, on a different one or two days, you'd run over after supper.
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| Rob Cameron once fell on his rear end, right here, really hard |
Hardly any one there? No problem! You'd skate back and forth and in circles, do some cross-overs, skate backwards a bit. Even sprint a time or too, always careful not to get carried away or anything. You'd definitely do some stickhandling. And you'd shoot, and shoot, and shoot. Pretending a goalie was in there, or deciding if that shot would have gone in if a goalie had been there. For some reason the coolest thing was when you hit the crossbar. You gotta watch out for someone who can hit the crossbar!
You might pretend you were someone or other. It was a combination of NHL Leafs and WHA Oilers for us in those days. I was Norm Ullman, believe it or not.
A few people there? Diplomacy, negotiation. Realpolitik. The evil that men do. Once I arrived at the rink with a brand new stick and a brand new puck. I was skating around, using them. I shot one against the boards. A big kid shot his puck against the boards too. I went and got my brand new puck. "That's mine," he said. When you're small-ish, and your means are limited, and you just bought a puck, you recognize it as if it was your own baby. "Nope," said the big kid. "Mine."
Off he went. And I never felt safe in my bed again.
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| The shack |
And what if there were lots of people on the ice? Shinny! Hours and hours, all day long, through the winter, all your life. Life is full of pleasures and blessings, enhancements and expansions, accomplishments and deep, deep satisfactions. But really, it was all downhill from here ...
