Wayne Gretzky's Ghost Read Online Free PDF

1999)
    L ong after I had stopped asking about Santa Claus, I still believed that hockey in this country was a creation of The Royal Canadian Legion.
    In the fall of 1956, the year I turned eight, my mother gave me the two dollars necessary to sign up for town league hockey. With the two-dollar bill and my birth certificate in pocket, I walked with Brent and Eric, then and still the very best friends in the world, down the hill and along the leaf-splattered Muskoka River to the Memorial Arena in Huntsville, a small town on the edge of Ontario’s famous Algonquin Park. It was a typical rink of its day, large and bulky, erected in honour of those who had fought for their country, and the women of Branch 232 ran the snack bar. I was placed on the Legion Auxiliary team, which naturally meant we would be called the “Legion Ladies.” We were, as I recall, proud to be called this, for the simple sweater—blue, with a white maple leaf—not only made us feel like miniatures of the real Leafs, but it guaranteed quick service at the hot chocolate counter.
    The Legion itself, further up the hill from the river, was also where the minor hockey organization held the year-end banquet and would one day, a few years later, be the site of the one moment for which Brent and Eric and I are forever remembered in Huntsville minor hockey lore. Unfortunately, it had nothing to do with what we could do on the ice. One of us—history has conveniently forgotten which—passed wind so loudly during Mayor FrankHubbell’s opening remarks that it brought the awards ceremony to a dead halt. The three of us, giggling and red-faced, crawled and crouched beneath the drooping white cloths of the long table assigned to the bantams—and we stayed there, the room silent, the mayor clearing his throat, until Mrs. Kelly, resplendent in Legion uniform, stuck her stately head under the cloth and informed us, in no uncertain terms, that we would all be given one chance to smarten up or else. It was, and remains, the best piece of advice the three of us ever received.
    Forty-three years after I laid down that first two-dollar bill, I am still a hockey player. There have been small glories and large disappointments. I have made teams and been cut from teams, played in front of crowds and, today, play in front of no one. As an old-timer, I have passed recently from teams that worried about the goaltender showing up to a team that worries whether or not the doctor on left wing will be out tonight, and yet the love of the game remains as intense, if not as simple, as it was that very first season of 1956–57, when I was fortunate enough to wear the blue and white colours of the Legion Auxiliary.
    The “highlight” of that season was the day the
Toronto Daily Star
and
Toronto Telegram
and the
Globe & Mail
all came to town to see the wonders that had been created by a few townsfolk who had cared enough to build a rink and organize the kids. The following Wednesday the local
Forester
ran a photograph that shows me with two teammates and the coach of the town’s all-star teams, the cutline reading:
    Last minute adjustments to the goalkeeper’s pads are made by Huntsville’s top notch hockey coach Mye Sedore before Roy MacGregor, Terry Stinson and Donny Strano of the Legion Ladies’ Auxiliary team took the ice to perform before Maple Leaf scouts Bob Davidson and Pep Kelly and Toronto newspapermen at the Arena last Saturday morning when 270 Huntsville kids showed the visitors how the TownHockey League functions. They put on a grand show and the three Toronto daily newspapers told the story in big pictures and lots of type in their Monday and Tuesday editions, attracting countrywide attention to this Muskoka town and its surrounding district.
    Perhaps the cutline ran on a bit, but so too did our imaginations back then. Having been scouted, at age eight, by the Leafs’ very own Bob Davidson, who had even come into