I don’t know if hockey is a traditional part of Canadian Thanksgiving, but playing some puck was how I celebrated the holiday.

It was getting close to the time I needed to be in New Brunswick, and I still didn’t have a game lined up.  The most viable options appeared to be the rinks in Moncton or Fredericton, but I didn’t have any connections in either city and the rinks had nothing scheduled on the holiday.  I booked a hotel in Moncton and wracked my brain for some way to scare up a game.  Then it hit me: Kijiji.

Kijiji is basically like Craigslist.  While both services are available in Canada and the States, Kijiji tends to be the more popular option north of the border.

I ran a few searches for hockey in New Brunswick on Kijiji, and I stumbled upon a posting:

Players needed for pickup hockey

We are looking for a few players to join our hockey pickup games. every Monday at 12pm (noon) from October until March. $10 / skater for each game or $160 for the entire season. Open to all skill levels.

I was going to be in New Brunswick on a Monday, so it seemed perfect.  Two questions: would they play on the holiday, and would they need a goalie?  Only one way to find out.

Hi-

Are you playing any pickup this coming Monday (Thanksgiving)? If so, are you looking for a goalie? I’ll be in the area from out of town and am looking for a game to play in. Let me know. Thanks!

Jeff

The response came quickly:

Hi Jeff,

We’re playing this Monday but should be covered for goalies. I’ll keep you in mind if one of the goalies cancels before then.

Cheers,

Cosmin

I did not give up.  We had a bit more back-and-forth that didn’t get me anywhere, then I sent this:

Ok, thanks for the info.  I’m just passing through this weekend (I’m this guy: http://www.nationalpost.com/month+goaltending+odyssey/5497354/story.html ), but thanks for the offer to put me on the list.

Best of luck this hockey season!

Jeff

Playing the trip card worked:

Hi Jeff,

I didn’t know you’re on a quest 🙂

For the Monday pickup I’m one of the goalies — I don’t mind giving you my spot if that means you can check New Brunswick off your list 🙂

Let me know,

Cosmin

Success!  For the third time on the trip, one of my goalie brethren yielded his net so that I could play.

Cosmin turned out to be an upbeat guy who had moved to Canada from Romania over a decade prior.  He walked into the dressing room wearing a Steam Whistle t-shirt, and I found him immediately likable.

In his day job, he was a researcher for Canada’s National Research Council.  With a PhD in computer science and areas of research in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, he was no intellectual slouch, but he interacted swimmingly with all of the guys at the skate no matter the colors of their collars.

He told me that there seemed to be an abundance of goalies in New Brunswick, so he had started his weekly pick-up game in part to give him a place to tend goal.  I felt honored to take his place for a week.

Thankful, even.

Driving from Ottawa toward Montreal, I noticed an increasing bias towards the French language in the signs and advertisements along the road.  Then I crossed the border, and the English language seemed to be wiped from the Earth.

The Canadian flag became as rare as a unicorn, replaced instead with the azure-and-argent Fleudelise in front of businesses, homes, and provincial government buildings.  Strange restaurants appeared in place of more familiar chains.  The colors of the road construction cones changed from the black plastic with orange stripes seen in the rest of Canada, to orange plastic with white stripes.

I was not in Kansas anymore.  Then again, I have yet to visit Kansas at all on this trip.  But I digress.

There’s no Canada like French Canada.

— South Park, “Christmas in Canada”

The brilliantly warm orange and red colors of the rural Quebec autumn quickly gave way to the cold steel and concrete of Montreal.  Pastoral scenes changed to vast expanses of black tarmac.  I had been going along at a decent clip until then, but once near the city, the traffic was terrible.  Not once in the 48 hours I spent in Montreal did I see something other than bumper-to-bumper traffic on the freeways.

Eventually, I made it to my hotel.  I popped on the tube to watch the Habs regular-season opener against the Leafs, but I found that the only broadcast of the game was in French.  I do not speak French.  I watched anyway.

The game was exciting in the same manner that watching a soccer broadcast in Spanish draws you in.  There was something about hearing the action described in that Romance language that seemed to enhance the subtle flourishes of skill usually missed.  Perhaps I was simply better able to pay attention to the game without trying to simultaneously process the call.

South Park's depiction of French Canada was inaccurate: I saw no beret shops the entire time I was in Quebec. (From "Christmas in Canada")

I played hockey of my own the next day thanks to Vimal.  Most hockey players I’ve seen on this trip have been white males.  Almost all of them, if I’m honest.  Vimal helped to break that pattern: he was of Indian heritage.

Talkative, energetic, and outgoing, Vimal was a student at Concordia University in the southern part of Montreal.  He had invited me to join him at a pick-up game at a nearby rink, and I jumped at the opportunity.

I wasn’t sure what to expect on the ice.  Would people shun me for not speaking French?  Would the game be noticeably different?  Would guys be drinking wine after the game instead of beer?

No, no, and no.

I was the only goalie to show up for the skate despite a good number of skaters being present.  That might have been the rink’s fault: that rink was the only one up to that point in the trip that had required goalies to pay to do the drop-in.  It was only a few dollars, but at risk of sounding entitled, that was an affront to goaltending norms.

Once past the greedy rink gatekeeper, everything was fine.  The guys appreciated having at least one goalie, the teams were horribly lopsided, and nobody played defense.  It was just like pick-up hockey in English Canada and America.

Vimal and me. Observation: this rink in Montreal was one of the only ones I saw in Canada that had an American flag; almost all rinks in the US have Canadian flags. Then again, this was also one of the few times in Quebec where I saw a Canadian flag.

I switched ends every 10 minutes during the game.  At one end, I just stood around.  At the other end, I had quite the workout.  I think I was doing pretty well for most of the game, but near the end I was getting pretty tired.  I needed something to recover: poutine.

I had gone out to the bars with a group of people in Jasper, Alberta back in June, and during that experience I ordered a poutine off the menu.  What came out was, according to the Canadians present, not a very good poutine.  They told me I had to try it in Quebec and that it would be better there.  When I made it to Ontario, I asked Matt about poutine, too.  His advice was similar: order it in Quebec.  Thus, after the hockey game, I asked Vimal about poutine.  He said he wasn’t a big fan of cheesy gravy fries, but he knew a good spot.

Not where I ate poutine, but I thought the mascot sculpture deserved a photo: it's a bird eating a fry.

The poutine in Montreal was far better than the one I’d had in Jasper, but it only reinforced my suspicion that it wasn’t really my thing.  At least I learned.

As in Ontario, I decided that Quebec had enough influence on hockey to justify playing there multiple times.  I squeezed in another game the morning I left Montreal.

A woman named Steph invited me to skate with her Saturday-morning group.  Half the time would be for working on skills, and half the time would be for a scrimmage.  They needed another goalie, and I was happy to help out.  The big difference from past ice times: gender.  Mike (the coach) and I were the only men on the ice.  All of the skaters and the other goalie were women.

Thus, Montreal added a second strong dose of diversity to my hockey trek cast.

The skill levels of the women varied widely.  Some had the refinement of high-level competitive play.  Others looked like they had learned to skate the previous week.  They all shared a love of the game.

A love of the game is really what keeps all of us adult rec and pick-up hockey players going.  We do not play for fame, glory, or money.  We put up with the expenses of time and money, the damage to aging knees and backs, the often horrendous ice times — simply because we love playing.  We are children again when we are on the ice, living the youth we have not lost.

I played pretty well except for two goals: one that went in high-glove, and one that went in after I didn’t seal up to my blocker-side post.  That isn’t to say the women made it easy.  Even those who were at the lower end of the skill spectrum had a hunger for the puck; they never gave up.

The women all cheerfully thanked me for coming to their skate, I told them I had a wonderful time (because I had), and then I set off towards Quebec City.

I did not play hockey in Ottawa.  I was supposed to, but I made the cardinal sin of a pickup hockey goalie: I backed out of a game.

After he interviewed me for his article in the Ottawa Citizen, Ken Warren offered to help me find a hockey game in Ottawa.  He put me in contact with Rob Millican, who runs Ottawa Rec Hockey.  Rob responded to me right away with an enthusiastic email saying how much he’d love to have me come and play hockey with the group Thursday morning.  I told him that sounded great and that I’d be there.  That was Tuesday morning around 3:00 a.m.

Later on Tuesday, Ken’s story hit the papers and got the attention of CTV Ottawa’s morning show.  Did I want to be on the show when I was in town on Thursday, they asked?  Of course I did, but there was a problem: I had already committed to the game.

I thought about it for a while.  It was a lose-lose situation.  Either I’d go to the game and regret missing out on the bright lights of television, or I’d go to the television studio and regret missing the game.

I had already played in Ontario, so strictly speaking I didn’t need the Ottawa game to complete the quest, but I really hate backing out of games.  Actually, I didn’t even know what it felt like to back out of a game.  Up until that point, I had never — not even once — backed out of a game after committing to play.

Rob had been accommodating finding me a game on short notice.  He had sounded so excited in his email.  On top of that, I felt like backing out would be a slap in the face for Ken, since he had written such a great article about my trip and had connected me to Rob.

I was tormented.  I felt physically ill, which might seem like an overreaction, but the choice was really getting to me.

In the end, I decided that I would regret not doing the TV interview more than I would regret not doing the game, so 22 hours after I accepted the game, and about 30 hours before the start of the game, I emailed Rob to back out.  He acknowledged the change with a terse response.  Though the tone was neutral, it was such a change from our earlier correspondence that I could tell he was irritated.

Sorry Rob.  Sorry Ken.

People often ask me, “Where do you sleep at night? Do you sleep in your car?”  Really — those questions are almost always paired.  Is the rest of the world obsessed with the notion of sleeping in cars?

Anyhow, the answer is that I spread my nights among motels, tent camping, couch surfing, and yes, that one time I tried sleeping in a car.  But that doesn’t really tell you much.  The real challenge is finding places to stay.  So it was with Ottawa.

“Do you have a place to stay in Ottawa?” Steve asked as he opened the car door.

“Not yet,” I said.

I was giving Steve a ride back to his house in Toronto.  It was the night before my Canada AM interview, and we had just got done celebrating a win with Steve’s hockey team at one of his teammate’s restaurants.  Steve was the normal goalie for the Pylons, but he skated out to give me the net.

We pulled up to his house.  Steve hopped out and grabbed his bag from Sam’s back seat.  He paused and said, “I might have a spot for you in Ottawa.  Give me 30 minutes.  Watch for an email.”

I thanked him and said goodbye.  Even though Steve had come through with the Hockey Hall of Fame Resource Centre tour and the hockey game, I was somewhat skeptical that he could find me a place to stay in Ottawa on such short notice.  I would be there the next day.

Any doubts were quickly put to rest.

The next evening, 250 miles to the northeast of Toronto, I showed up in Ottawa at Steve’s aunt Carol’s house.  I had never met Carol before. Mind you, I had met Steve in person only a day earlier.  I knew nothing about Carol and had absolutely no idea what to expect.  Likewise, Carol knew almost nothing about me.

A maple-butter beavertail, minus a bite. Beavertails are often associated with Ottawa, ON. They are delicious and have nothing to do with finding lodging.

There was a great deal of uncertainty on both sides, so Carol heated up the kettle and we chatted over tea.

Carol was in her 60s, but had she not revealed that, I would have thought her not a day over 50.  She was fit, upbeat, and not in any way pretentious.  After talking with her for an hour, I felt as at ease with her as with one of my own aunts.

Her day job was as a profiler for a bank, which I understood to mean that she was involved with vetting deals that the bank might make.  Somehow, that also involved her in diplomatic circles, but that might have simply been a function of her location in Ottawa, Canada’s capital.

As we drank tea — full leaf, prepared in a proper teapot — I asked her how it was that she agreed to host me for the night.  She laughed and smiled, going into the story.

“Steve has always been one of my favorite nephews.  He sent me a text last night asking if one of our family members was in town, since that person often stays at my house when he’s visiting.  I replied back that no, he wasn’t going to behere for a few days.  Steve quickly responded, ‘Great,’ and then immediately called me.”  She took another sip of tea before continuing.

“On the phone, Steve told me that you needed a place to stay for the night in Ottawa, and he asked if I might be able to host you.  I could hear Steve’s girlfriend in the background protesting that he didn’t know you well enough to be making that kind of request.  Something about how the two of you had met for the first time only earlier that day, and how you could be a serial killer or crazy or something.  Nevertheless, Steve ignored her protestations and insisted that you were a good guy and that I would like you.”

I laughed.  “I had similar reservations, since I had no idea who you were or what you were like,” I said. “I just decided to trust Steve.  After all, we’d played hockey together that night, and besides, he’s also a goalie.”

We talked for a while longer, but eventually I had to retire to bed.  I had to be at the CTV Ottawa studios early the next morning.  Carol showed me to the guest bedroom in her house and bade me goodnight.

My head hit the pillow, and seemingly immediately my alarm clock announced the arrival of morning.  I departed before Carol woke.

Whenever I have ever been invited to play with a hockey team on this trip, I have been warned by the team representative that “they aren’t very good.”  Not once have I heard from a team, “We’re doing great this season, don’t screw it up!” It’s almost like modesty is an unwritten part of the hockey code.

I ran into a similar problem, in reverse, when I was at Stanford.  I had a wood chessboard in my apartment, and occasionally when people would come over I’d ask them if they were interested in a game.

Invariably, they’d look at the board, look at me, look back at the board, get a little smile on their lips, and shake their heads no. I insisted that I wasn’t any good, but they didn’t buy it.  Eventually, I started to get the feeling that my owning a nice chessboard signaled that I was a good chess player, or at least better than them.

What did they think, that I was trying to hustle some chess?  I mean, maybe Stanford was the sort of place where that would be done, but seriously, I was not a good chess player.

So it goes with hockey, too.  The teams tell me that they aren’t very good, and I tell them that I’m not a very good goalie.  We go through a dance to set low expectations:

Team: “Glad to have you here!  But we have to warn you, we aren’t very good.”

Me: “That’s okay, I’m not a very good goalie.  I play just for the fun of it.”

Team: “Haha, us too, but seriously, we aren’t very successful on the ice.  Hope you like a lot of shots!”

Me: “Wish I were a good goalie so that I’d be able to stop a few of them!”

We then head out to the ice, lose, and come back to the dressing room, where this conversation ensues:

 Me: “Wow, sorry about that one guys.  I was a total sieve.”

Team: “No, no.  You did fine.  We just left you hanging.”

Me: “Um, no, I really should have had most of those.”

Team: “Bah.  You can’t be expected to stop 2-on-0 rushes.”

Me: “Well, maybe, but…”

Team: “You were fine.”

Are they trying not to hurt my feelings?  It’s not like I can’t tell when a goal was a result of netminder error versus defensive-zone breakdown.  Must simply be good manners.

Or maybe it has nothing at all to do with me or manners.  Perhaps it is simply the self-effacing nature of beer-league teams.

—

That brings us to my second game in Ontario, in which I tended goal for the Pylons.  I had been playing only once in every state and province, but there was so much hockey energy in Ontario that I couldn’t resist spending a bit more time on the ice there.

Steve, in addition to getting me a great tour of the Hockey Hall of Fame Resource Centre, hooked me up with the game.  Steve was the usual goalie for the Pylons, and like Matt did in Waterloo, he skated out so that I could have the net.

The Pylons were in the over-30 division. Most of the players had no problem qualifying, but I was technically six months shy of being eligible.  Fortunately, that rule didn’t seem to be enforced, especially not for goalies.  Steve had been playing with the team since his mid-20s.

I knew very little about Steve before the day of the game and the Resource Centre.  Based on our email and phone conversations, I pictured him as being in his early 40s and built with a solid frame, perhaps with a bit of the “extra insulation” that becomes so common as people age.  Boy, was I off.

When I walked into the Resource Centre, I was surprised to find that Steve had a runner’s build and was about my age.  He spoke and wrote with the conviction and skill of a mind beyond his years.  It was a complete surprise.

I came to find out that he had played at fairly high levels of hockey as a goalie when younger before burning out around the time he went to university.  He spent several years away from the game before gradually returning to it as an adult.  Nowadays, he’s on the ice four or more times per week, both tending goal and skating out.  The Pylons are just one of his teams.

What makes his return to hockey even more remarkable is that he’s living in Toronto without a car, so he schleps his hockey gear to and from the rink using public transportation.  I find it a hassle to bring my gear in from the car; I can’t imagine the hassle faces.  Still, assuming that the gear bag fits on the bus in the first place, it’s probably a good way to get some extra space.  Eau de hockey is not exactly an attractive scent.

The Pylons dressing room was crowded.  I knew it was going to be a fun game.  When a team can get most of its roster to show up to games consistently, it means they know how to have fun.  They might win a lot, they might lose a lot, but regardless, they keep people coming back for more.

My initial assessment was reinforced by the laughter, teasing, and up-beat attitude warming up the cold air.  They even had guys who could no longer play due to injuries showing up just to be a part of the fun.

One guy whipped out the screwdriver on his multitool and took apart a cover over an AC outlet; the sounds of rock and roll soon reverberated in the room from the small stereo.

We took to the ice.  Our bench was packed, while our opposition had only one sub.  Things looked promising. I took some warmup shots, and the game began.

Although our opposition, in particular their goalie, put up a noble fight, in the end the realities of fatigue took their toll.  We won handily, 7-3.

After the game, there was more laughter and celebration in the dressing room, and then we continued to the after-party at Blueberry Hill, a restaurant owned by one of the Pylons, Al.  There was good food, good drink, and good fun.  The teammates teased each other about their hockey skills, their jobs, their receding hairlines, and various other flaws, real or imagined.  Al captained the restaurant from his chair at the table, effortlessly transitioning from just one of the guys to business manager and back again.  I felt fortunate to be part of the camaraderie.

The Pylons at Blueberry Hill. Steve is on the left. Al is third from the right.

Were the Pylons a skilled team?  Was I a good goalie?  We won, yes, but I suspect the evening would have turned out much the same even if the score had been reversed.  We celebrated the win, but more importantly, we celebrated the friendship that the hockey enabled.

I bid the others farewell, dropped Steve off at his house, and retired to my hotel to get some sleep before my Canada AM interview in the morning.