Читать книгу Let It Snow. Keeping Canada's Winter Sports Alive онлайн

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This was no “slough of despair” as described in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, a book that ironically might have sat in the limited library of those Bible-believing skaters. It was a special place in which skates were clamped on one’s leather shoes, eventually tearing off the soles. Hockey sticks were fashioned from crooked willow branches and a puck could be anything from a block of wood to a frozen cow pie.

In eastern Canada the dream of winter was more often of the pleasures found in natural rinks built in schoolyards or in one’s backyard. Long into the nights youngsters would glide over the glassy surface, drawn home only by the call for dinner.

In Ontario your treasure was most likely a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater. In Quebec youngsters donned the bright “rouge, blanc et blue” of Les Canadiens, unless, like the unfortunate child in Roch Carrier’s “The Hockey Sweater” (“Le chandail de hockey”), the T. Eaton Company mistakenly sent the young Quebecker one emblazoned with “une abominable feuille d’érable” or “an abominable maple leaf,” in which case your mother made you wear it so as not to disappoint Mr. Eaton.