Canford Sports Centre made the winters shorter

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/01/2018 (3155 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For two decades beginning in my teens I spent every winter playing and refereeing sponge hockey at Canford Sports Centre.

It was originally located at an old community club on Ham Street just north of Grassie and Lagimodiere Boulevards before moving behind the Cavalier Hotel.

Even though the Cavalier had the added benefit of a pub and Burger Factory within walking distance, the old location was Canford at its best. Eight rinks went four hours Mondays to Thursdays, nine hours on Saturdays and a good 12 on Sundays. At its peak more than 250 teams and 2,500 players were registered.

As a referee you had to get there early for your shift because the last one in got the dreaded Rink One — an extra large sheet right off the highway. If there was a cold wind, you caught it on Rink One. One of Canford’s quirks was that referees, like the players, didn’t wear skates, so you had to hustle if you wanted to stay in position, or act the part if you didn’t. You had to pace yourself, especially on Super Sundays when a few of us diehards did 12 games in a row.

You had to layer, and keep extra layers nearby just in case. I could fill a washing machine with the clothes I needed to complete a shift. An extra whistle for when the first one froze, and another stopwatch for when the first one fogged up, were wise investments. Some of us even spread Vaseline on our faces to stop the wind. It worked and also served as the base for a running joke where one ref would place a hunk of the stuff in another’s tuque so it would smear all over his hair. If you caught him just before game time, he’d be stuck like that for a good two hours before he could do much about it.

In addition to calling penalties and goals, the referees sometimes had to protect players from themselves. When it got really cold, we had to watch for signs of frostbite. A guy would come up for a faceoff and he’d have solid white spots the size of dimes on his ear lobes or nose and you’d have to send him inside. Oftentimes he’d argue, so you’d give him a game misconduct and write “frostbite” in the penalty column.

Canford had its share of characters over the years and leading the pack was the founder John Robertson. Johnny always made the best ice in town and when other sites struggled to flood a good sheet, Johnny, Robbie, Junior and Beav could do eight. For a few years he hosted a public access TV channel where he interviewed some of those characters and talked about spongee issues. Yes, spongee had issues.

While it’s been more than a decade since I’ve been involved with Canford Sports, I made many lifelong friends and have a trove of fond memories.

Tony Zerucha is a community correspondent for East Kildonan. Email him at tzerucha@gmail.com