Pearl Jam and epic shinny

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/02/2012 (4966 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I’ve always been a nostalgic guy. I listen to music that brings me back to good ol’ times (this music often involves Pearl Jam), I watch movies I loved 10 or 20 years ago (The Fugitive, anyone?), and I often reminisce about the carefree days of my youth.

So, when I gave thought to my favourite place in Winnipeg it shouldn’t have surprised me when my mind drifted away to the old skating rink behind Brock Fleet Park.

During the winter months in the ’80s I spent countless hours there, and though it was almost 30 years ago the memories are vivid, easily replayed in my mind as though watching them on a BETA cassette. I can’t remember a night in those days when I didn’t slide my hockey blade through my skates, sling my stick over my shoulder and walk the short block from Queenston Street to the rink, all the while enjoying a bubbling excitement in my chest at the prospect of playing me some shinny.

And man, I played some epic shinny. But it wasn’t just the hockey that made this place special — I could’ve gone any number of places for that. No, it was the little things that did it, the intangible stuff that never seems important at the time but, in the end, is the meat of lasting memories: It was the warm-up breaks in the hut beside the rink where I sat on those wooden benches, took off my skates, and vigorously rubbed my toes in an attempt to regain feeling; it was the walk from the hut to the ice, that brief moment of anticipation before I stepped across the rubber mat and then exploded onto the playing surface like Thomas Steen; and it was Bob, the icekeeper, who kept that frozen pond smooth and ready, who kept the floodlights shining until well into the night, who made all the kids hot chocolate during toe-rubbing time, and who sat in his little room painting wildlife and landscapes from memory, portraits awash with warm colours we lacked in the stark dead of winter.

Those paintings always seemed beautiful to me, like Robert Bateman himself had made them. Robert. Bob. You never know, I guess.

One day, they tore that old hockey rink down. My parents still live in River Heights, and I find myself at that same spot from time to time. I stand in the middle of where the rink used to be, I close my eyes and it’s like I’m back in the ’80s. I hear metal blades as they churn up fresh ice, the crisp snap of rubber against wood, the clang of goal posts, and I feel the warmth of the hut in my chest, just like I’m downing another cup of that hot chocolate.

 

David Alexander Robertson (www.darobertson.ca) is the author of the graphic novel series 7 Generations and the new graphic novel Sugar Falls: A Residential School Story, which is available now at McNally Robinson Booksellers or through Portage & Main Press (www.pandmpress.com).