My memories are more about the sounds than the sights of
that rink. I can hear, even now and decades later, the scraping noise of skate
blades on ice, the sound of the laughter of my sisters, my father’s voice as he
set me down on the ice in my new skates, as trembly and unsteady as a newborn
colt. I remember holding his hands, covered in black leather gloves, and I
remember after the skate was over him flooding the ice, the sound of water
spraying over the ice to make it fresh for the next day or the next skater to
come along.
It was the very essence of rural Canadiana; the kind of
memory that stays with you for years and that seeps into you every time you see
an outdoor rink or hear the sounds of laughter ringing off the rinkboards. It
was the memory that came to me this weekend when hockey came to my hometown.
I am a long way away from those days now. My father has been
gone for many years – almost a decade, I am often stunned to realize – and it
has been far longer than that since he put me on the ice of an outdoor rink. I
call another city home, one a bit further north and both a bit larger than the
small town where I once lived and a bit smaller than the city where I grew up.
But this weekend, when Hometown Hockey made a stop in Fort McMurray, I was
taken back a very long way, into memories of an outdoor rink and Saturday
nights spent with my dad in front of an enormous box of a television where we
would watch hockey. He may have always driven green Deere tractors and blue
Ford cars, but this farmer father of mine bled blue and white when it came to
hockey, an ardent fan of the Maple Leafs for his entire life and a preference
he passed on to his youngest daughter.
I would not call myself a huge hockey fan, although of any
sport it is perhaps the one about which I know the most. For me though it is
not about the sport itself but the passion of the people involved, like the little
players no older than I was the first time my father put me on the ice on an
outdoor rink in a tiny little town in rural Saskatchewan. It is why I found
myself smiling last week when I discovered myself face to face with the Stanley
Cup, the Holy Grail of hockey. How fitting it seemed to me that I encountered
it in a tiny dressing room just off the Terry Conroy Mini-Ice at the Suncor
Community Leisure Centre, as my journey of the last few years took me down a
path where I learned a great deal about Terry and how he was one of the
founders of ice sports in our community, including the backyard rink he created
every year where local children could play out their own hockey dreams. As I
stood and gazed at the silver cup, etched not only with names but with decades
and decades of history, I could not help but think how it was truly part of
Terry’s legacy to find this cup so close to the ice surface that now carries his
name, and how he might have felt to know that a group of very young hockey
players were about to see that cup just before stepping out onto the ice that
honours his memory.
It is why when I wandered around the Hometown Hockey site –
dotted with dozens of activities and events of every kind – I found myself
grinning widely, listening as the sounds of children’s laughter echoed through
the parking lot of the recreation centre where I am now so very fortunate to
work. I went from tent to tent, observing quietly as the residents of my
community – my hometown – celebrated hockey, our favourite national sport. I
watched as Canadian icon Ron MacLean inspired young hockey players with his
banter about the sport, and I grinned even wider when a friend texted to tell
me that even though he and his son had been down the day before they were
coming back as his son had so loved Hometown Hockey that he had asked to come
back.
I didn’t meet Ron MacLean or Lanny McDonald. I didn’t take a
selfie with the Stanley Cup, and I didn’t lace up my skates. I was too lost in reverie for those things, my mind racing with memories
long forgotten and tucked away, of a cold winter night when I could see my breath
on the air and my skates touched ice for the very first time while I held my
father’s hands. I found myself back on an outdoor rink in a tiny town called
Reward, the crisp sound of skates scraping on the ice ringing in my mind.
Hometown Hockey came to my hometown, but it took me back to another hometown
from a long time ago and very far away, a place and time I hadn’t thought of
for a very, very long time. I may not be a hockey player, and perhaps not even
a huge hockey fan – but I think like every other Canadian there is a ribbon
that runs through my heart that is tied to a memory of ice and winter and
skates, and, yes, hockey, a sport that I may have never played but that has
clearly touched my life and reminds me of days – and people – long gone.
This morning I stopped to put gas in my car, the most
mundane of tasks and one I do not relish in the early morning when the
temperatures are cold. A truck drove in across from me, and from it emerged a
man wearing a toque proudly emblazoned with the Hometown Hockey logo. I
finished pumping my gas, stepped back into my car and held my frozen fingers in
front of the heater to warm them – and I smiled, lost in memories once more of
a time with my father long gone but as fresh in my mind as if it happened
yesterday, and then I drove away, headed for another day in my hometown.
No comments:
Post a Comment