Words on Ice: A Collection of Hockey Prose

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Until 1996, Canada had a single official national sport, lacrosse;
however, that year, through typical Canadian compromise, hockey became
Canada’s official national winter sport, while lacrosse was relegated
to being just the nation’s summer sport. Hockey is not only played on
university campuses and studied in faculties of physical education, but
is also the subject matter of a first-year English class at the
University of Saskatchewan, where, in 2002, Kennedy, a sessional
instructor who holds a doctorate in Canadian literature from the
University of Ottawa and who is also a freelance sportswriter, combined
his interests to introduce the course “Reading Culture: Hockey in
Canadian Literature.” Words on Ice, a collection of 22 pieces of
hockey-related prose, grew out of the readings Kennedy required of his
students.

Kennedy organizes the pieces—which are a combination of short stories
and essays plus extracts from books, both fiction and non-fiction—into
one of four sections, which correspond to a hockey game’s three
periods plus overtime. Thus, a section labelled “Third Period: The
Puck Stops Here” contains four goalie-related selections. Authors
include the readily recognized (Peter Gzowski, George Plimpton, and
Mordecai Richler) and the less well known (Calvin Daniels, Justin
Bryant, and Rudy Thauberger). Content ranges from Richard Gruneau and
David Whitson’s scholarly essay “Violence, Fighting and
Masculinity,” to Edo van Belkom’s “Hockey’s Night in Canada,”
an alternate history premised on the Russians’ having won the 1972
Summit Series, and to Roch Carrier’s beloved children’s story “The
Hockey Sweater.” The historical and contemporary hockey found within
the pages ranges from kids’ “road hockey” or shinny (Doug
Beardsley’s “The Sheer Joy of Shinny”) to the adult amateur and
professional levels (excerpts from Don Reddick’s The Dawson City Seven
and Douglas Hunter’s A Breed Apart), old-timers’ hockey (Peter
Behrens’s “Wives”), and women’s hockey (Marsha Mildon’s
“Number 33”). Central characters, factual or fictional, can be
parents (Steven Shikaze’s “Hockey Dreams” and Tina Lincer
First’s “In the Penalty Box: Confessions of a Reluctant Hockey
Mom”), hockey scouts (Aaron Bushkowsky’s humorous “The Phantom
Centre of Great Slave Lake”), and failed NHL wannabes (Tom Brand’s
“The Glass-Eyed Winger”).

Like any collection, Words on Ice invites cover-to-cover reading or
browsing, and it should be found in libraries serving adults and young
adults.