Chapter 4
“Holy cow, Mom! It’s a rink!”
Here it was, just weeks since the last call from Sister Thekla, and Billy Campbell was once again bouncing into the house, yelling at his mother about a rink.
“Calm down, young man.” Anna reached behind him and shut the kitchen door. She took his coat and hung it up. “Now, what are you shouting about?”
“It’s come true. I prayed, and it’s come true.” He was spitting out his words in rapid fire. “They’re building a rink. At the Legion. Right behind our house. Right back there.”
“What are you talking about? We don’t even have snow yet.”
“It’s true. I asked Mr. McCann. There’s a whole bunch of wood over there, and it’s for a rink, with real boards.”
“Isn’t that grand, then? Your wish came true.”
“Yeah, I asked God to get us a rink and He did it. He really did it. And it’s practilly in our own yard.”
Anna Campbell smothered a grin. She had a strong faith in God, but wasn’t so sure He delivered the answers to prayers through the local Legion hall. “Won’t that be wonderful? You’ll have a place to play hockey, and so close.” As soon as she said it, she realized she was looking at a mixed blessing. “But don’t forget the rule: homework before hockey.”
“Aw, Mom, do ya have to remind me?”
“Don’t ‘ya’ me, young man. Go start on your homework.” She watched his shoulders slump as he scooped up his schoolbag and headed for the dining room table. She felt obliged to add, “And relax. It will be weeks before there’s ice over there.” Of course, she knew there would be no relaxation until that rink was up and running.
So it was that Billy Campbell ended up with a rink “practilly” in his own backyard. To the relief of the Campbells, and perhaps Sister Thekla, the Munro Mills Legion had decided the town needed a decent rink. They had been talking about it for a few years, ever since the arena had collapsed under a heavy load of snow in the winter of ’48. The Legion members had successfully petitioned the town council to share the cost of putting up boards and lights on the land they owned behind the Legion hall, which was located next door to the Campbells’ service station, and around the corner from their house. The Legion’s vacant lot stretched behind the Campbells’ house, over to the next side street.
Billy “snoopervised” the project right from the first day, his anticipation growing with every board that was nailed and every eight feet of plywood that transformed that small field into a better version of his beloved silver pond. He had never skated on a rink that size, but he was sure he would conquer it, confident that another summer of growth had worked its magic on him, positive he would dig out his skates, lace them up tighter than ever, and fly off with straight ankles and perfect balance. At least that’s what he imagined as he practised in his stocking feet on the linoleum floor of his mother’s kitchen.
The Saturday before Christmas, he got his chance to try those ankles. There was heavy snowfall that December of ’54, and the men were able to build up an ice surface sooner than expected. All the kids begged for a chance to hold the fire hose, but only the big lads like David were allowed. The little guys had to be content with flattening out the soggy lumps and shovelling more snow into the low spots. On Friday night, the men worked under the new electric floodlights to apply a final spray of water. All the helpers stayed as late as they dared, watching rainbows of mist float to the ice and disappear under an eerie bank of fog.
The next morning, the fog was gone, and the children arrived to find a shining expanse of silver stretched out before them, mirroring the bright, blue sky of a snapping cold day. It made a perfect picture, but that ice just begged for someone to try it out. Still in awe, the children were just working up the nerve to climb the boards and try sliding across, when Mr. McCann showed up. Their envious eyes followed his every step across the ice, as the big man in the army surplus parka and the scuffed, old flight boots walked up and down the surface, kicking at the larger lumps and breaking the small patches of shell ice with his heel. He finally looked up at the small crowd gathered by the boards and grinned. “Any of you guys got skates?”
“Yessir!” the chorus came back.
“Okay, then, go get ’em. Maybe you’ll shave some of these bumps off. Watch out for that shell ice, though. It’ll take a couple of . . .” He gave up. They had scattered instantly to run home and get their skates and sticks.
Billy was the first to make it back to the rink, with his skates already on. He had an advantage that the others could only envy, the luxury of putting his skates on at home and getting to the rink through the broken boards in the fence behind his house. In fact, the Campbell house was so close to the rink that his mother could see it from the window above the kitchen sink. From that window, Anna watched, first with apprehension and then with relief, as Billy’s green toque seemed to float up and down the length of the rink with ever-increasing speed. At first, the toque would often disappear below the top of the boards, and Anna would hold her breath until it popped back into sight. By the end of that first winter, though, the green toque was above the boards most of the time, and she began to worry less about her son’s health.
And just as the Legion hall was a second home for some older citizens of Munro Mills, the rink became so for the younger set, like Billy Campbell and Brian Weir. Usually the first ones to organize the games of shinny, contests that expanded and shrank over several hours as players dropped out and new ones joined in, it wasn’t long before the two boys established themselves as the resident rink rats. They thrived on all the shovelling, strengthening their legs and their lungs, pushing the snow off the ice with heavy metal scrapers. And living so close to the rink, Billy had the run of the equipment, including the job of looking after the nets that Hector Lavigne, the plumber, had fashioned from galvanized pipe. Billy was put in charge of hustling them on and off the ice between public skating and hockey. He was learning to work, all right, just not at the tasks his father had envisioned.
It seemed to his parents that hockey was all he had time for. He was out on that rink every night after school and every available hour on the weekend. He would come rushing in the back door, late for supper, but so filled with enthusiasm that his parents didn’t have the heart to scold him — except to warn him off the linoleum with his skates. He would plop down on the mat by the door and start undoing his skates, all the while talking a blue streak.
“You shoulda seen it, Dad! Gerry Gravelle had the puck in our end, but before he knew it I knocked his stick up in the air — boy did he yell — and I grabbed the puck and — ”
His father would laugh, “You grabbed the puck? Is that allowed?”
“N-no,” Billy would sputter. “With my stick. I got it on my stick.”
“Go ahead, lad, I’m listening,” his father would prompt him as he filled his pipe and leaned back in his chair. “You grabbed it with your stick, you said.”
“Yeah, so I took the puck off Gerry, see, and I started up the ice the fastest I could go, and I got halfway to the goal, and two guys started coming for me. So I yelled at Brian, like I was gonna pass it to him, eh? But when I slowed down to pass, the other guys slowed down, too, and started to watch Brian, so I got the idea to keep the puck and speed up again.”
“I’m sure Brian appreciated that,” Angus would respond as he lit a match for his pipe.
Puzzled, but undeterred, Billy would press on. “So, I speeded up real fast, and before they could catch me I got past them, and there was only one guy left so I hoisted it. And whammo! Right between his legs. My third goal this afternoon. And there was big kids playing, too, eh?”
Angus would take a few puffs before he teased, “What about the goalie? Were the lights on out there?”
“Oh, yeah,” Billy would shrug and look down to struggle with a stubborn lace. “The lights were on, but we didn’t have no goalies tonight. Artie’s mother wouldn’t let him play on account of he didn’t finish his homework, and Jimmy didn’t want to play nets tonight.”
“You mean you didn’t have any goalies,” his mother would interject, growing uneasy with his lazy grammar.
Billy would look up, mystified. “Yeah, no goalies.”
And Angus would laugh as Anna poured him some more tea and said a silent prayer of thanks for her children’s health and her home in the quiet town of Munro Mills in the county of Glengarry.
The boys played their last games of the season on a shortened ice surface, grudgingly giving in to the February sun that turned the south end of the rink to mush. Then they waited, sometimes not long enough, for the April sun to turn the rink into a lacrosse field. But for Billy and Brian, games like lacrosse, baseball, or football were pale substitutes for the real thing. The only Eaton’s catalogue that ever interested those two was the fall and winter edition, with all those pages of hockey equipment — pages that would be dog-eared by the time Christmas and the cold weather returned. “At least,” Anna Campbell would say when winter arrived, “I’ll always know where Billy is.”
By the time another year had passed, Billy’s green toque and Maple Leafs sweater were in plain sight above the boards. He was twelve, that winter of ’55, the year he was discovered by his first real coach.
“Hey, Paul! Look at that kid with the green toque. Some skater, eh?”
“I like the big, blond kid, with the red face. The one that just made that good pass. He’s pretty steady out there.”
“Do you know who he is?”
“Yeah, that’s Dan Weir’s son. You know, the barbershop on Main Street, opposite the post office.”
“Oh, yeah. And what about the little guy with the green toque?”
“I think that’s Angus Campbell’s son, from right next door.” Paul Labelle pointed in the direction of the service station.
“Uh-huh.” Henry Markham had returned his attention to the pickup game that was in full swing under the lights at the Legion rink. A store owner from the town of Alexandria, he was the convenor for amateur hockey in Glengarry county that year. It was early February, and he had come to Munro Mills to coax Paul Labelle, his old friend and manager of the local Farmer’s co-op, into organizing a bantam team for next year’s hockey season.
As Markham watched the kids scramble up and down the ice, he couldn’t help but like the little fellow in the big, green toque, who seemed more determined than his friends to put the puck in the net. “That’s the kind of player you should be looking for, right there, that Campbell kid. He’s not afraid to mix it up with those big guys. Watch him in the corners. Look at him dig. Oops, there he goes.”
They both laughed as Billy was flattened for trying too hard against a boy twice his size. Labelle had to admit, the lad had spunk. “You’re right, Henry. He don’t quit, that kid. Hey, he took it off that big guy again. By George, he’s sure got the right spirit.” Labelle nudged his friend with an elbow as he pulled his overcoat tighter. “Speaking of spirits, it’s getting cold out here.”
Markham stomped his feet a few times in acknowledgement of the temperature. “Okay, let’s go and see what Frank has to say.”
The Legion hall was a modest frame building covered with white, feather-edged siding. A beverage room of varnished plywood and military green dominated the interior. The two men spotted Frank McCann sitting at a table by the window. As the local Massey-Harris dealer and the current president of the Munro Mills Legion, he was well known to most Glengarrians. Markham and Labelle picked up some beer and glasses at the bar, and joined him at his table.
McCann acknowledged them. “Pull up a chair, gentlemen. Sit on the floor and let your feet hang down.”
Henry Markham smiled at the old expression. “G’day, g’day, Mr. McCann. How’s the tractor business?”
“Slow to middlin’, Henry. Milk prices are down, bottom’s falling out of the pork market, everybody’s cutting back. What can I say?”
“Same thing in Alexandria,” Markham agreed, “but that’s life in a farming community. You learn to live with it, or you move to the city.”
Frank McCann smiled. “Or spend your time on hockey, right?”
Markham laughed. “Beats taking inventory.”
“Who’s minding the store? Florence, I bet.”
Markham frowned. “Don’t remind me. Last week my clerk went drinking in Dalhousie on Friday night and didn’t come home till Sunday, with me away at a tournament in Ottawa.” He took a swallow of beer and smiled. “She’s still on the warpath over that.”
“Yes, but how did you do in the tournament?”
Markham beamed. “Took second place, with lousy refereeing at that. Got a good bunch of kids again this year, especially our goalie, young Gagnier. You know, Gerry Gagnier’s son, from the Fourth of Kenyon.” Markham poured himself some more beer and settled his bulky frame back in the chair before he looked up at McCann. “So, when are you characters going to put together that team we’ve been talking about?”
“Sure, Henry. We all know what you want: another team you can beat.” McCann grinned and waited for a reaction.
“Hah, we might let you win a couple of games, if that’s what it will take.”
“Well, you know the problem. Outdoor ice isn’t reliable enough. We can’t maintain a schedule.”
“Then why don’t you get off the pot and build another arena? It’s years since the roof caved in — ’49, wasn’t it?”
“’48,” Paul Labelle answered. “Like Frank said, though, times are tough. It would take a special tax levy, and there just isn’t the support for it.”
“But you gotta work up the interest, first.”
“I know, I know. Tony Stanton’s been trying to do just that. You know Tony; his father owns the Ottawa House by the station.” When Markham nodded, he continued. “Anyway, Tony’s organized a committee to hold events, raise funds, that sort of thing. But it’s slow going. Not a lot of loose change floating around these days.”
“Well,” Markham came back with, “you know what everybody says, eh? That those Scotchmen from Munro Mills are so cheap, they haven’t had a hockey team since the big disaster of ’49, when they lost their puck in the snowbank.” Markham started laughing at his own joke, slapping the table so hard he almost knocked his beer over. The other two couldn’t help laughing with him as they reached over to steady their beer.
When he finally got control of himself, Markham pressed his case. “Anyways, Lancaster doesn’t have one, either. When their outdoor ice is bad, we just move the games to our arena, or Maxville’s. C’mon, waddaya say? You’ve already got the rink. You’d only be on the hook for a few uniforms. Paul could coach them.”
McCann tried to shift the burden. “What about it? Paul? You want to get into the coaching business?”
“Well, it takes up a lot of time — if you’re going to do it right.”
“Sure,” Markham pressed on, “but you’ve got some good little players out there, like that Campbell kid we were talking about.”
McCann nodded. “Angus’s boy? Remember the year Angus won the caber toss at the Highland Games?”
Labelle laughed. “Yeah, entered his name on a dare. Then did it again the next year, just to prove it wasn’t a fluke.”
Markham wouldn’t let them change the subject. “I’ll bet you every kid out there would give their eyeteeth to play organized hockey.”
McCann laughed. “Sure, Henry, but getting the kids isn’t the hard part, is it?”
“Why not try it, then? Get them organized this winter, run some practices, and play some exhibition games. Then you’ll be all set for next season.”
Paul Labelle smiled at his friend’s enthusiasm. “So, who would we play against? Your bantam teams? Heck, half our kids aren’t old enough for bantams.”
Markham shrugged. “It’ll be a good challenge for them. Chance to test themselves.”
Labelle was not convinced. “What about it, Frank? You think your members could scrounge a few dollars for uniforms?”
“Well,” McCann rubbed his chin in thought, “I don’t know. Maybe a set of sweaters. Not socks; they get wrecked in no time. Sweaters’ll last, and we could use them next year, if we go ahead with it.”
“Are you sure, now?” Markham teased. “Would you be needing help from the league, to buy a puck?”
“Careful with the insults, Henry,” McCann retorted. “Paul hasn’t said he’ll do it yet.”
“What about it, Paul?” Markham pushed. “You gonna give these kids the chance they deserve? Maybe the only one they’ll ever get.”
Labelle grinned at the attempted blackmail. “Have to think about it, maybe talk it over with the wife.”
“Uh, oh,” McCann observed. “There goes your hockey team.”
“Waddaya mean?” Markham reacted.
“Well, you know what the three best forms of communication are, don’t you? Telephone, telegraph, and tell-a-woman.”
“What’s that got to do with it?” Markham was still puzzled.
“Don’t you see? First thing Louise will do is call Florence, and get her opinion on this coaching business. That’s sure to put the kibosh on Labelle’s coaching career. Yes, sir,” he teased, “that hockey team will be finished before it starts, right there in Louise’s kitchen.”