Hockey Nights in Canada
Hockey - Christie Pits
The experience begins with a walk through the frosty night, boots crunching on the snow underfoot.
In the distance is the glow from the reflected lights on the sheet of white, and before long the distinctive sounds of skate-blade-on-ice and puck-on-board are heard. In the best case scenario, there's a changing shack beside the ice with some sort of basic heating system. In days gone by that would have meant a wood stove, and the aroma emanating from it would have added a pleasing olfactory element to the walk to the rink. If no such shack existed, then the snowbank made from rink scrapings became the impromptu, if icy, bench for lacing up the skates. Then it was onto the ice to join the rag-tag teams of players.
Equipment requirements were the bare minimum...usually only skates and hockey gloves. Facial traumas were reduced by the universal rule that there was no raising the puck in a game of shinny, but that couldn't stop the occasional incident where the disc would ski-ramp up somebody's stick and catch an unsuspecting player on the beak. Other hazards included the one or two public skaters (usually the girls), who would stake out a small section to themselves in one corner of the rink. Thankfully, the lamentable era when females didn't much participate in hockey seems to be well and truly over, and now the sight of pony tails sticking out from helmets is commonplace on outdoor rinks.
On the snowiest nights, frequent breaks would be required and all players would pitch in to shovel off the rink before resuming play. I remember playing one night in a blizzard when the puck became completely invisible, morphing into a strange subterranean creature that could only be tracked by following its trail as it burrowed along.
On other occasions, an errant puck might escape the confines of the boards and embed itself in a nearby snowbank, leaving only an entry hole that would become the starting point of the dig for its recovery. How thoroughly a black puck could be lost in the white snow was often startling...and sometimes its re-emergence would only occur months later courtesy of the spring thaw.
Plus skating outdoors is a much different experience than skating in an arena. For starters, there's wind resistance to contend with. And then the cold. Oh, the cold. Feet that went into cold skates during that snow-bank lace up never achieved warmth. Noses, ears, hands, and ultimately even one's core would feel the bite on the coldest nights. But all those discomforts were set aside in pursuit of a little black hunk of vulcanized rubber, in an activity that must seem like madness to lovers of warmer pursuits.
I can say with confidence that pick-up hockey on an outdoor rink is fundamental to our Canadian soul. When our hockey heroes dazzle us with their spin-o-ramas, behind-the-back passes and crafty feats of stick-handling, we must remember that those moves had their origins in the free-form swirl of the local shinny game.
The post-game burn as the toes thawed out was well worth it.
The Shinny Player
If you would like a print of either of these two paintings, here are the links:
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