Falcons Gold: Canada's First Olympic Hockey Heroes

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

The first time hockey was an Olympic Games event was in 1920.
Representing Canada was a team of amateurs called the Winnipeg Falcons.
In this book, the story of these long forgotten Canadian heroes is told
with the aid of an old puck and a young boy named Eric.

Afi, Eric’s grandfather, presents a puck to Eric and tells him that
he caught it during the game when the Falcons won the gold medal in
1920. Because Eric has never heard of the Winnipeg Falcons, Afi takes
him to a local arena and shows him a mural of eight hockey players in
old-fashioned hockey uniforms. As Afi explains who the Falcons were,
Eric feels the old hockey puck move by itself in his pocket, and
suddenly finds himself back in 1920 watching the Falcons playing for
Olympic gold.

Although a lot of research obviously went into this book, the storyline
has an unfortunate tendency to veer off track. Instead of concentrating
on the Winnipeg Falcons and the 1920 Olympics, Arnason devotes much of
the book to talking about Eric and a quirky newspaper illustrator named
Charlie Thorson who knew but did not play for the Falcons. A short
factual account of the Falcons at the end of the book (by Mackenzie
Kristjуn) is included, but sadly this fascinating tidbit only shows
what this book could have been. Not a first-choice purchase.