The Hockey Fan Came Riding

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Sproxton teaches creative writing and Canadian literature at Red Deer
College; his poetry, stories, and essays appear in literary magazines
across Canada. Previous works include Headframe, a collection of poetry
and prose, and Trace: Prairie Writers on Writing. In the present book,
Sproxton turns to his roots as a hockey player and fan in Flin Flon,
Manitoba. This is a vivid, impressionistic account of a middle-aged
man’s efforts to transform the excitement and joys of hockey into
memories. With word play, doggerel, and personal imagery, Sproxton
traces his journey with his sons through the Soviet Union and Europe,
where one of the boys is involved in a bantam hockey tournament in
Helsinki. His personal metaphors capture both the exoticism of foreign
lands and the power of the game of hockey wherever and on whatever level
it is played. He depicts hockey with a humor and an evident love that
transcends any sentimentality. Recommended for public- and
secondary-school library collections.