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

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From childhood, young boys in the long winters have little choice but to embrace the games of ice and snow. There are few facilities that can accommodate children playing football or baseball indoors during the long winter months, so thousands of children travel to the closest rink, or to a frozen pond or homemade rink, and join their friends.

It’s an upbringing that is unavoidable. The relationship between Canadians and the winter has created a culture that almost exclusively holds winter events as the defining moments in the country’s sports history. Some of the best-defined cultural events of the past fifty years have involved the game of hockey. Arguably none was more significant than Paul Henderson’s goal to win the Summit Series with Russia (okay, they called themselves the Soviet Union, but to Canadians they were Russians) in 1972. Canadians also recall the collective joy of the nation following Mario Lemieux’s goal for Team Canada in 1987 in the penultimate match with those same Russians.