Hockey Dreams

I would like to thank Mr. John Carleton, Mr. Jeffery Carleton, with a special thanks to Mr. Ron Cook.

I am also indebted to Scott Young’s
War on Ice
and David Cruise and Alison Griffiths’
Net Worth
.

I
WAS FIVE THOUSAND MILES
away from home, in the middle of the mountains of British Columbia, in the middle of winter. On a reading tour, in 1989, I was going from town to town while the snow fell, covering up the small roads along the mountain passes.

I was billeted at different houses, and would often find myself in a strange little village, at a stranger’s house at midnight. And since I’m a night person I found myself sitting in uncomfortable positions reading cookbooks at one o’clock in the morning.

One of the people who billeted me, I did become quite fond of. He was a man who had moved here with his wife from the United States a number of years before, during the “back to the land” movement. He was very kind to me, although I disagreed with him on the back to the land movement itself. And nothing he told me did anything but reinforce my bias.

But I gave him the greatest compliment I could. I told him he reminded me of my friend Stafford Foley — a boy I grew up with, way back in the Maritimes. Both of them were quite small men, with a great kind-heartedness.

I left his house on a Thursday morning to go to another village, some 40 miles away where I had a reading.

“If you ever need a place to stay again —” he said, “at any time — look me up.” He handed me his telephone number.

I told him I would.

It had been snowing for four days. The snowflakes were as big as sugar cookies.

By Thursday night I found myself in an untenable position. It was one of those nights when I wanted to be anywhere but where I was. I had been with my new host fifteen minutes, and already a tense discussion had taken place.

I was honour bred. I knew I could no longer stay in his house. But where would I go? It was after ten at night. The roads were all blocked.

I telephoned my little back-to-the-land friend some 40 miles away. “You have to come and get me,” I whispered.

“Now?” he said.

“If you don’t mind. You wouldn’t have a skidoo or something?”

“No, I have no skidoo — I’d have to take the car.”

“Car is fine — I like a car —”

“But it’s snowing —”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“It would be better if you just came and got me as quickly as possible —” I said.

“If I go over the mountain pass — I won’t be found until next spring —”

(long pause)

“I know, I know, but desperate circumstances call for desperate measures. That’s a chance I’m willing that you take.” I sighed.

I said my goodbye to the host, and stood outside the house with my suitcase. The man looked out the window at me now and again, as I waited for my friend, and closed the curtains when I glanced back at him.

Snowstorms were different in this part of Canada. But it was still Canada, dark and gloomy.

It had all started because of a thought I shared that evening. I had thought at supper, that from this part of the world — at this very time of year, in 1961 the Trail Smoke Eaters had left for their long and famous journey. This is what I had told my host. I had happened to mention that journey. The trip to Europe. The idea of hockey versus the dratted ice hockey.

He had come here from Britain in 1969. He had read my books. He thought we’d be kindred spirits, bred of the same bone. And he said, “My good God man — that sounds a bit nationalistic.”

It wasn’t so much Trail, it was the World Juniors. I was talking about their fight against the Russians at suppertime.

“Didya see when the lad from Big Cove smucked the Russian in the head — set him on his ass?” I asked.

He looked at me as if I might be rather subhuman.

Well, it wasn’t so much the World Juniors — it was Team Canada. It was the Summit Series of ’72. It was —

“Good God man. I thought you were a novelist,” he said.

“Novelist shmovelist —” I said.

So here I was outside waiting, as the snow poured down out of the gloom. But it was too late to turn back.

After an hour I saw the headlights of my friend’s compact car coming down the street.

My heart leaped with joy. And in I got.

We turned about and started back into the gloomy night, the windshield wipers on high and visibility almost zero. And besides that my ears popping off every time we went up and down a hill.

“What happened?” he said, finally. “Didn’t the reading go as planned?”

“No no — it went all right — for a stormy night. Some showed up — well three or four snowshoed in. I gave a pretty good reading — got to know them all on a first-name basis.”

(silence)

“Well — what was the problem?”

“An age old problem,” I said seriously.

“Oh yes,” he said, looking at me and not understanding, “an age old problem.” He smiled gently. “What age old problem is that, David?”

(I know when people finally address me as “David” I am about to make a fool of myself. That I have once again crossed the line from rational human being to something else. So I knew I had to answer him as impassioned and as sincerely as possible. So he would know he had not risked his life for nothing.)

“That son of a bitch doesn’t like hockey,” I said.

I began to think then that I would go back home, to my childhood home, and see the place again where we went sliding. Where we played hockey on the river. I would make the pilgrimage, for it had to be made.

I would smell the flat ice and the smoke over the dark, stunted trees again. I would visit the place where Michael grew up, and poor Tobias, and see the old lanes we all played road hockey on. Paul and Stafford and Darren and all of us.

But they would be ghosts to me now. Almost everyone was gone. The laughter against the frigid, blue skies would have all disappeared, evaporated like the slush under our boots in 1961

I found myself somewhere in Northern Ontario, later in the month. I forget the name of the town. It was one of those reading tours where somehow you no longer know where you are.

Again I was billeted. The woman kept a bed-and-breakfast of some kind. I was given a small room at the back of the house. There was a hockey game that night. I don’t remember who was playing — it may have been Montreal. It may have been Edmonton. It may have been anyone.

I could hear, far away, the shouts of the crowd, the sound of the announcer. And I left my room and began to look for the TV.

The woman met me in the kitchen.

“Are you hungry?”

“No — I can hear a game coming from somewhere — I just thought someone might be watching it.”

“Oh,” the woman said. “That’s Burl.”

“Burl?”

“My husband,” she said. “We don’t live together anymore — he lives downstairs and I live upstairs. He’s downstairs.”

“Oh,” I said. “Downstairs.”

“So if you want to go on downstairs and watch the game —”

“Well — I don’t want to intrude.”

“Burl? Intrude on Burl? Burl don’t mind.”

I went back into my room and sat on the edge of the bed fidgeting. There was a great roar. Perhaps Roy had made a fantabulous save. Maybe Burl wouldn’t mind.

The wind howled. I could see a streetlight far away from the small window next to my bed.

Things in hockey were changing every day. Canadians and Russians were now playing on the same lines, in arenas all across the United States. The two greatest Canada Cups had already taken place — and within six years it would be called “the World Cup.”(I didn’t know that then of course.)

Everything was changing. But not so much for
our
benefit — yet we pretended that it was. We still pretended that the
NHL was ours. It was always one way to get along. That’s what Canadians were like.

Suddenly I felt nostalgic. It would be good to catch the last few periods of a game. I left my room, opened the basement door and tiptoed down.

Then I caught myself. What would I do if I was sitting watching a hockey game and a stranger came tiptoeing around the corner?

I knocked on the side of the wall. No one answered. I hesitated and then walked into the room.

Sideways to me was a man, sitting on the leather couch in his underwear, with a pint of beer between his legs, staring at the television.

“G’day?”

I thought he looked over at me, and nodded.

So I sat down on the chair near the couch and began to watch the game.

It seemed as if Burl had been relegated to a kind of subterranean prison life. There were no windows in the basement, but he had curtains up. He had a huge bar, with two barstools, and a clock that told the time backwards. Above the bar was a picture of himself with a tiny bass, and under the picture his signature, and the words
bass master
. In the picture he was smiling as if he knew in his heart he wasn’t a real bass master.

I was beginning to get comfortable. It seemed as if Burl and I would get along.

Suddenly something happened in the game, and we both started yelling at the television. Then roared at the obvious cheap shot someone made.

Burl shook his head. I shook my head. Burl got up and went to the fridge and taking out a beer, opened it. He turned about and started back. I was watching the television and grinning. Suddenly, he stopped. He turned. He looked down. He stared at me as if he had never seen me before.

“Who the Christ are you?”

“David,” I said.

“David — David who? — what are you doing here?”

“You know — watching the game here — if you don’t mind?”

“Where in hell are you from?”

“The Maritimes —”

“The
Maritimes
— what in the living name of God gives you the right to travel up from the Maritimes?”

“I don’t know —”

I began to get a little flustered. He was standing in his underwear with a pint of Molson, and his little bass master photograph on the wall. He turned about, and there in his chair was a man from the Maritimes watching the game.