Hockey Dreams: Memories of a Man Who Couldn't Play

Ian A. Andrews is a high-school social sciences teacher and editor of the New Brunswick Teachers’ Association’s Focus.

In this book, award-winning novelist David Adams Richards recounts his
boyhood experiences on the North Shore of New Brunswick. The focus is on
the year 1961, when Richards and his prepubescent friends still fancied
themselves as future NHL hockey stars. The frozen river, backyard ponds,
and the old wooden Sinclair Rink were the sites of unforgotten memories
of triumph and disappointment.

Switching effortlessly from past to present, from adolescence to
manhood, Richard conveys his emotional attachment to the game of hockey
while underlining his thesis that “Canada is hockey” and that
“hockey defines Canada.” There are rounded portraits of boyhood
friends and family: the diabetic hippie Stafford; the effeminate Garth;
the hard-as-nails Michael from the wrong side of the tracks; the
ever-present and reliable Ginette; and the unfortunate orphan Tobias.

Richards’s grassroots tribute to Canadian hockey does for hockey what
W.P. Kinsella’s fiction has done for baseball.