Paul Henderson - How Hockey Explains Canada: The Sport That Defines a Country

Copyright 2011 by Paul Henderson and Jim Prime

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Henderson, Paul, 1943

How hockey explains Canada : the sport that defines a country / Paul Henderson and Jim Prime.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-60078-575-7

1. HockeyCanada 2. HockeySocial aspectsCanada. 3. CanadaCivilization. 4. CanadaHistory. I. Prime, Jim. II. Title.

GV848.4.C2H46 2011

796.9620971dc23

2011018191

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ISBN: 978-1-60078-575-7

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To my wife, Eleanor, who lives life better than anyone I know as a wife, mother, and grandmother. She is my hero.

To our three daughters (Heather, Jennifer, and Jill) and their husbands (Alex, Mike, and Bryan). They have given us our grandchildren: Josh, Jacob, Brandon, Zachary, Charlotte, Alton, Brynley, and Logan. All are in my heart, thoughts, and prayers daily. P.H.

To our beautiful daughter-in-law, Jung-Hyun Park Prime. Since arriving in Canada from Korea just over a year ago, she has soaked up our culture and language at an alarming rate. One of her first rites of passage to Canadian citizenship was embracing the game of hockey. We watched the 2010 World Junior Championships together on TV and despite lacking any previous knowledge of the game, she was immediately hooked.

To my grandson Finley Canton, a two-year-old with the irresistible charm of Jean Beliveau and the endless energy of Alexander Ovechkin. He wears his Toronto Maple Leafs jersey with pride and already knows how to shout Goal whenever he picks up his little plastic hockey stick. With his wonderful parents Catherine and David, and his loyal sidekick Frankie, he is destined for greatness in whatever field he chooses.

J.P.

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by Prime Minister Stephen Harper

I HAVE TO ADMIT that my memory of when I first got interested in hockey is misty. I was born in 1959, and when I was very small my parents followed the Toronto Maple Leafs very closely. I know that more from later stories than from much actual memory of the time. Living in New Brunswick, my motherand in particular my fathergrew up rooting for the Maple Leafs. That was their team.

My fathers first cousin was married to Leafs defenceman Carl Brewer, so my parents knew most of the Toronto players of the great 1960s teams. They obviously didnt know them well, but they had met them. They followed those teams very closely, but when youre following a championship team and suddenly theyre no longer a championship team, you lose interest. Thats really what happened to my parents after Brewers first retirement and after the Leafs stopped winning the Stanley Cup. Even though I knew theyd been big fans, they never really introduced me to the game. I vaguely remember when the Leafs won the 67 Cup, but I wasnt following it that closely at that point. I actually started following it the next year, in 1968 with a schoolmate. Wed watch the games on TV. Thats how I really got into following it. I was about 9 or 10 years old at the time.

I didnt play ice hockey until I was 10, and I still cant skate well. I did play for three years, but I was pretty marginal. I played a bit of pond hockey but not nearly as much as road hockey. I played a lot of road hockey! We played from the time school was out on Friday afternoon until we were back Monday morning. All we did was play road hockey. A while back some exschool chums threw a little reunion for me and they reminded me of a game we used to play in the schoolyard. It was invented by me and a friend named George Cribb. We called it foot hockey. According to my friends this game had extremely elaborate rules, but I dont remember it as being all that elaborate. We played with relatively small netsthe size of a real hockey netusing a tennis ball. You just played with your feet, like in soccer. Thats what we played at recess and before and after school for years. That was my contribution to Canadas game, foot hockey.

The rest of the time we played road hockey. We played from the time I was about 9 until I had almost graduated high school when I was 17 or 18. Ive played it quite a few times since. In fact when I was Leader of the Opposition, we used to play every weekend with the local kids at Stornaway. We havent played much at 24 Sussexwe just havent had time for it. Frankly, the kids are a bit older now and I cant keep up with them, but when I used to play a lot I was actually a pretty decent road hockey player.

We had a pretty well-understood rule among those of us who played regularly and that was no contact. But we went even further; not only were you not allowed to play the man, you were not allowed to play the stick either. You had to play the ball, so you couldnt lift sticks or hack at the stick, and the reason was simplebecause with no gloves the guys got their hands injured. Basically, you had to play the ball at all times and for playing the stick the penalty was essentially that you were kicked out of the game for a while. Still, even though you could not play the stick, somehow we managed to have brawls every so often, I dont know why.

When a vehicle came down the road wed yell, car! and there was always one old lady who didnt like us going across her lawn. But you always have to navigate those things. It was good practice for politics. Those incidents are the exceptions. The fact is that kids are often very inconsiderate but with a little bit of consideration you can place the net to avoid the lawn that wants to be avoided.

As a kid my favourite player was Dave Keon, who I later had a chance to meet. It was a great thrill when he came back to the Leafs reunion in 2007, a very special moment. I loved all those guys but he was my favourite player. When I was a teenager it became Borje Salming, who I also got to meet a couple of years ago at an International Ice Hockey Federation event. Salming is also a very nice man and a very tough guy! You sometimes hear the knock on Europeans that theyre not tough or they dont play in the clutch. Salming was one of the toughest players in the NHL. He was not necessarily the best fighter but he certainly could take a punch and he wasnt afraid to block shots.