Does anyone have Stompin’ Tom’s Good Old Hockey Game now on repeat in your head? That classic ode to Canada’s game, and its singer, Stompin’ Tom Connors, was a favourite of my Dad’s, along with Bud The Spud of course. I took the photo above last night at the Toronto versus Vancouver “Retro Night” hockey game in my new home town on the west coast where I sat happily in my Mike Palmateer jersey, surrounded and protected by a pocket of Leafs-jersey-wearing-card-carrying-devout-until-death fans just as excited as I was to witness our home team on the road. Many of my dear readers know this as I generously over-shared my love for the game and my experience across all my social networks with gleeful abandon. Sorry for that folks!

You see, I love hockey. I always have. My Mum is probably enormously grateful her youngest daughter did not come shooting out of her womb carrying a goalie stick, shouting “Go Leafs!” But the hockey love did follow soon after. Growing up on a farm in Southwestern Ontario, we had an extraordinarily large black and white TV “console” that carried, at best, 3 channels. Our favourite was the CBC, of course. After a hard week of school work and farm chores, our family would gather around this magical device to watch Hockey Night in Canada each Saturday night. Due to where we lived (and much good sense), we were Leafs fans of varying degrees. My Dad and I were the healthiest followers who lasted to the bitter end of the game each week, often yelling at the TV if the game did not go our way.

I adored Leaf’s goalie and fellow red-head, Mike Palmateer. In fact, I was his first stalker. I may have invented the term. I would spend many hours carefully drawing the Stanley Cup with his name engraved on it along with fellow Leafs Darryl Sittler, Lanny McDonald and Borje Salming. I would also sketch Palmateer making a variety of spectacular saves, goal pads stacked like The Great Wall of China. These earnest drawings I would send off to Maple Leaf Gardens to Mike’s attention. To my utter delight (and perhaps the first cardiac arrest for a person under 10 years of age) he sent me an official Mike Palmateer post card with a short note of thanks in return…much better than a cease and desist letter 🙂 I was, of course, smitten. I still am!

After school and often late into the evening throughout the fall I would pound away at my Canadian Tire hockey net placed strategically at the end of our veranda, gradually wearing all the paint off the floorboards. A lawn chair served as a squat, inadequate goaltender. When winter finally set in, I would also find any patch of ice around our farm and skate until the cows came home. Literally! I still remember with fondness the Christmas eve when we returned from town to find a garbage bag on our veranda. Garbage was not inside. Far from it! A neighbour who knew my passion for hockey left a variety of equipment, likely from grown sons or daughters, for me to use as I practiced my craft on our frozen farm puddles and ponds. My Mum and Dad also supported my love for hockey the best way they knew how. Mum was a fantastic sewer and so devised for me a backpack for school made out of burlap with the words “I Am a Hockey Nut” embroidered with much love on the back. I adored that backpack! Dad sat with me each Saturday night and indulged my impassioned cheers for the Leafs when they won, and absorbed my young, distraught tears when they lost. Which wasn’t often if I recall correctly 🙂

By high school I actually got the chance to play hockey. In the long, hot summer between Elementary School and High School my sister and I partook in a “character-building” exercise called “growing cucumbers.” Ugh! Each morning, bright and early, we would drive our old pick-up out to the half-acre cucumber patch and pick the tiny, green, gherkin-sized scoundrels until we had 10 burlap bags full. Again with the burlap bags…no longer my friends! But by the end of summer, thanks to Bick’s Pickles, I had $500 sweat-equity-earned dollars to spend at Pete’s Sporting Equipment in London, Ontario. I blew the whole lot on the oddest assortment of used goalie equipment you have ever laid eyes upon! Yet, I still did not have enough money to buy the most important, yet most expensive, pieces that served Mike Palmateer so well, the goalie pads. I should not have worried. Much like our good Samaritan neighbour, I had a good friend who I rode the high school bus with who knew my plight and as a fellow goaltender, donated a pair to my cause. Now, before you get teary-eyed at this heart-melting story, you need to know that these goal pads had also recently acted as a stopper for something else far more sinister than a puck. They stopped a torrent of furnace oil from engulfing my friend’s basement. They not only wicked away water from melting ice; they stunk to high heaven! But they were mine. And I appreciated no end the good will of my kind and generous benefactor.

Why tell this over-long story of young hockey love you ask? My missives here on this blog are usually short, and hopefully to the point. But this story is different. I urge you to ask anyone who watches hockey on Saturday night. Or any night for that matter. Or who spends their first born’s inheritance on a ticket to see a game live. Why do you love hockey? Why? Each of us at that game last night would likely have a different story to tell about how hockey shaped our childhood. From backyard rinks to early mornings at the local arena, to stories about team work or hard work. We are all stitched together with the same fabric called friendship that makes hockey Canada’s game. How do I know this?

Last night, surrounded by Leafs-jersey-wearing strangers who quickly became friends, if even for one game, I felt something very important shift. For the first time since we lost our dear Dad to cancer last July, I thought of him without an onslaught of grief. I didn’t need him to wipe away my childhood tears that came from a too-deeply felt loss. For the first time in months, I actually felt buoyed by joy because I felt him WITH me! Beside me. And around me. Cheering our beloved Leafs on to victory.

I am so grateful we will always be bound by our shared love for The Good Old Hockey Game. It is a love that will last and sustain me for a lifetime. Go Leafs Go!