play. It’s in the west end of Winnipeg, in the center of a group of very modest suburban homes built near the end of the baby boom. Outdoor hockey in the winter meant kids played while parents huddled on snowbanks, shifting their weight from one foot to the other to keep their feet from freezing. Even back then the parents were at least as engaged as the kids playing, if not more so. The problem is that when they’re young, kids can be of wildly different sizes and abilities, and that can impact a parent’s state of mind, especially if your kid isn’t as big as or as good as somebody else’s and you’re the type who wishes otherwise.
At one of the games I inadvertently checked a boy on the other team. At least, I’m pretty sure my bodycheck wasn’t intentional, but since I was only six or seven years old I can’t in all honesty be sure. Afterward, his mother spat on me as I came off the ice.
When my dad saw it happen, he froze. He later told me that the others who saw it all froze too, as if what had just happened was beyond comprehension. There I was, a little kid all bundled up to play hockey outside in the freezing cold, coming off the ice to walk through the snow and into the clubhouse to warm up and take my skates off and get my boots on and go home, with half-frozen spit all down the front of my hockey sweater.
In the aftermath, my dad showed both the best and worst in him. The best was that he immediately de-escalated the situation. The worst was that he didn’t stand up for me but instead more passively worked toward a less confrontational resolution that was not in my best interests. He immediately grabbed my arm and walked me into the dressing room, where he took off my skates, warmed my feet, and kept telling me how well I had played. Then he took me straight to the car and we went home. I didn’t know what to think of what the woman had done to me, but I remember that my dad made me feel good. By the time we were home it felt as if nothing had happened. He did an amazing job. But at the same time he kind of didn’t.
Today there would be lawsuits, calls for suspensions, and media coverage. Back then there was nothing. And my dad’s next step prevented the situation from ever happening to me again. Maybe, he suggested, I would like to try being a goalie? Maybe I could try it out next time?
And with that suggestion—though I had no concept of this at the time—the worst in him came through, his passivity in the face of another’s wrong. Why did he think that I needed to make a change? Why wasn’t I free to play hockey without having to change positions? Did I deserve to have an adult spit on me? Had I somehow done something wrong? Are adults allowed to do things like that to kids?
But at the time, the proposition of changing positions seemed like an opportunity. As a kid, there was nothing more exciting than putting on all of that cool goalie equipment, so I didn’t exactly feel as if I was missing out on anything, and I probably thought this might actually be even more fun. The fact that I could skate well gave me an advantage in the position, and kids like to do things they are good at. So just like that, I was a goalie. And looking back on it, I guess it would have been difficult for my dad to be among the other parents while his ginormous kid on the ice was with the other kids, knocking them around, skating circles around them. Now that I know more about my dad, I believe that pulling me—and himself—out of that spotlight and not being the center of that ongoing conflict would have suited him just fine.
And he couldn’t have predicted what would happen next, when things really started to happen. Because I could skate and was large for my age at a time when the worst skater usually became goalie, I had that incredible advantage in the position. Nobody figured out until years later that given the importance of the position, the better athletes should be made goalies. I moved up a year to play with older boys and then was advanced even further to our area hockey team. As far as I was concerned, it was as if the spitting had never happened, and I couldn’t have been happier with my new place in hockey. It’s only when I look back on it that I wish my dad had stood up for me and my right to play the game in whichever position I wanted.
HOCKEY’S PLACE IN Canadian society has been well documented. My first real brush with that zeitgeist was while playing for Heritage-Victoria at age nine in a league that featured several boys who went on to become professional players. Playing in the area league championship gave us two chances to defeat our bitter rivals, Kirkfield-Westwood. I know how funny that sounds, having a bitter rival at age nine, but at the time we were living the dream and hockey was everything to us. Spring was coming and there was that certain smell in the humid air, a smell that means two things in Canada: summer is coming and playoff hockey is upon us. This was back when most hockey was still played outside, so because the ice was starting to melt during the day, our games were scheduled long after the sun had gone down at times that seemed ridiculously late in the evening given our ages. If we won the first game, it was over—we were champions. If we lost, we still had a chance the next night to win in a winner-take-all game.
All I can remember is the last part of the first game, a game we lost. Do I remember anything at all about the second game, the game we won to advance to the Winnipeg finals, the celebration, the awards, the party afterwards? No. The only thing I remember is that we lost the first game on a very controversial late goal. And the only reason I remember that is because of what the adults did.
There was a play around my net. The referee blew his whistle and then pandemonium erupted—screaming, yelling, allegations that the referee was blind, a complete idiot. The game was stopped, but then everything quieted down after the referee went to the benches and explained to the coaches what had happened. The goal was finally counted and put on the scoresheet, a face-off took place at center ice, and shortly after that the whistle was blown to end the game. We had lost and had to play another game. To everybody watching outside that cool spring night, it looked like we had been ripped off. Except there were two people who knew for sure that our bitter rivals had scored on us—me and the referee. Because I told him.
The shot had come in hard and off the ice. It looked like I had made a great save, blocking it with my glove and then smothering it. Except that when I went down to smother it in the crush of players crashing in around the net (maybe crashing the net is bit of an overstatement, since we were just little kids, but it remains epic in my mind), I nudged the puck over the line as I covered it. Even the other team didn’t know they had scored. But the referee, standing in perfect position, thought he had seen what I knew had happened. He skated over to me to get the puck and said he couldn’t see for sure and asked me if the puck had gone in. I told him it had. And with that, he signaled a goal and a face-off at center ice. And in doing so, it was if he had started a war.
Now, understand what was at stake here. We’re talking the highest level of competitive hockey for nine- and ten-year-olds, so of course that meant hockey scholarships, agents, pro hockey careers, entire futures, right? You would have thought so given how the adults acted. In the midst of the outrage, the referee skated over and told both coaches that the goalie had told him it was a goal. All the other players on the benches heard this, and all the players on the ice who had followed the referee looking for an explanation heard this. I only found this out after the game. I was not a popular person. And on the way home in the car, my dad and I had a conversation that I didn’t understand.
“Nice game. Are you tired?”
“No. Why is everybody mad at me? Why don’t they like me anymore?”
“Well, you’re at an age now and you’re playing at a level where it wasn’t up to you to do the referee’s job for him. You don’t have to tell him that the puck went in if he asks you.”
I was confused by everything I had seen that night, by how the adults had carried on at the rink, by what my dad had told me on our way home. And that’s all that I would have taken with me from that year of hockey, that would be all I would have remembered from the glorious Heritage-Victoria Olympic Nines of 1972–73, except that something else happened later that night. After I had gone to bed, and while I was lying there alone in the almost dark, looking at the shadows of my hockey posters and thinking about the game, trying but failing to fall asleep, I heard my dad’s footsteps come down the stairs toward my room. He knocked at the door, opened it a bit, and stuck his head in.
“Greg, are you still up?” he whispered.
“Yes.”
“You