Hockey Dreams

by David Adams Richards

  Copyright © 1996 David Adams Richards

  Anchor Canada edition 2001

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher — or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency — is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Anchor Canada and colophon are trademarks.

  National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Richards, David Adams, 1950–

  Hockey dreams : memories of a man who couldn’t play

  eISBN: 978-0-307-36381-7

  1. Hockey – Canada. 2. Richards, David Adams, 1950– I. Title.

  GV848.4.C3R53 2001 796.962′0971 C2001-930658-X

  Visit Random House of Canada Limited’s website:

  www.randomhouse.ca

  v3.1

  To the memory of Kevin Casey,

  who always knew why the

  puck was dropped.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  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.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Part One Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Part Two Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Part Three Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part Four Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Part One

  ONE

  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, an
d 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.

  However, he could understand one thing. He could understand why I wanted to watch it. It was only a shock initially because I was watching it in his house.

  Once I explained why that had to be, he was satisfied. Although, he did not offer me a beer.

  Later, I even got to talk about my feelings on the game. How there are two theirs in the game, and how our game doesn’t seem to count anymore. How one their is the product of business interests in the States — how we think it is their game; and how the second their is one that is strangely joined to the first their. The second their is the European their. How European ice hockey is supposedly more moral and refined then our game is. How we need European ice hockey to teach us a lesson. And that both of these theirs are linked in trying to defeat the our in hockey.

  How probably this has already been done. How the huge arenas in the States and the lack of hockey in Hamilton attest to this, more than any of the false promises, or our pretence of still controlling our game does.

  Maybe he didn’t understand what I said. But he probably did. He probably already knew all of what I was saying before I said it. He understood Henderson’s goal and what it meant. He understood when I spoke about my childhood friends, Michael and Tobias, and Stafford, and the game we played on the river in 1961. Because he himself had played those games too.

  And of course I always spoke of Stafford Foley when I spoke of hockey. I thought of him on September 28, 1972. I thought of him twenty years later to the day.

  September 28, 1992, I was at home in Saint John watching the news when they announced the anniversary of Henderson’s goal. It put the hosts at a loss. They did not know how to approach it — as a human interest story or a noteworthy date in history. Finally it seemed that the best way to acknowledge to their audience that it was an anniversary of perhaps the most famous goal ever scored by a Canadian was to be whimsical and remote about its significance.

  They laughed as if they didn’t want to be known as the ones to credit this as serious historical information. What relevance would Canadians attach to it “now”? one of the announcers asked. And then added that her sport was baseball. You see, she was only pretending to be indifferent. But no one is indifferent to hockey in our country, and so it was a self congratulatory indifference — one that looked out at her audience and said, “I have risen above the game you wish me to celebrate as mine.”

  Without a doubt in my mind, the franchises in the United States need this reaction from us to exist. If they did not have it — if it was for one moment decided that the game was ours — there would be no lights on in St. Louis before there were lights on at Copps Colosseum. Winnipeg would not be going the way of Quebec.

  It was 1984 and I was writer-in-residence at a university in New Brunswick. The Canada Cup was on. The night before, Team Canada had beaten the Russians in overtime to advance to the finals.

  In the former Soviet Union, the game against the Russians was on tape delay. All night, all day long, the phone was ringing at the Canadian Embassy in Moscow to ask what the final score was, who won the game. I knew who had won the game. I had watched it live. I wanted to celebrate. I wanted to talk about how exciting it was. I knew no one in Fredericton, however, except for certain English professors. And, as admirable as English professors tend to be, they were a different breed than I.

  I went into the common room and poured myself a coffee and sat down — waiting for the arrival of someone to talk to. A young female professor from Newcastle Creek entered the room. She was
a nice lady, and had met me once at the president’s house. She’d once made the remark that she didn’t see how anyone would be able to live without reading Henry James.

  As she sat there I glanced at her. Go on, I said to myself, Ask her — she’s from Newcastle Creek — Newcastle Creek for God’s sake. She’d have cut her teeth on hockey.

  I made a stab at my coffee with a stir-stick and looked about. Twice I went to the door and looked down the hall to see if anyone else was coming.

  Finally I could stand it no longer. Turning to her I ventured, “Did you see the game last night?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Did you see the hockey game?”

  “We don’t have a television,” she said.

  “Oh, what’s wrong?” I said. “Is it broken?”

  Then I thought that maybe she and her husband had a fight over a program and someone had thrown the television through the wall — I know people who do that, so I thought — well she was from Newcastle Creek, so I’d better be discreet.

  “We don’t approve of television,” she said.

  There was an awkward silence.

  I looked about, mumbled something to myself. “Right in front of the net — they score.”

  I too was from New Brunswick, I too had cut my teeth on hockey. I too remember sitting in front of an ancient black-and-white television watching the small figures of men gliding up and down the ice. I remembered the Richard riot, and how even then I thought it was ugly.

  But I had entered, for the first time, another realm, where a woman from Newcastle Creek who may or may not have grown up on salt cod and moose meat could tell me that she disapproved of television and not be a fundamentalist. Could tell me that I wasn’t alive until I read Henry James and believe it.

  “My husband was up early — to listen to the radio so he could hear the score,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said. I smiled. I had misjudged her. Forever I would be sorry for it.

  “Yes,” I said. “Did he find out?”

  “Yes — he’s heartbroken.”

  “No,” I said, “not heartbroken — we won — Canada won 3–2.”