To Skate, Perchance to Dream

In my mind I work through the welter of excuses, the oft-rehearsed reasons for my failure to skate. Medical—I had severely weak, almost deformed, ankles as a child; familial—I was a late child and both my parents were too old to teach me; financial—we lived in a poor part of town and I couldn’t afford streetcar tickets to the rink; cultural—I preferred baseball to hockey; physical—too cold and too many ice bullies.

It takes something approaching an act of will to avoid learning to skate in this country. It is almost a prerequisite to citizenship. My ignominy is compounded by the fact that I went to a hockey high school, the most famous hockey high school in the world—St. Michael’s College School, whose motto is Doce Me Bonitatem et Disciplinam et Scientiam. Teach Me Goodness, Discipline and Knowledge.

On my very first morning at St. Mike’s, I bumped headlong into Frank Mahovlich, the greatest star on the great team. He was then an upperclassman, in Grade 13. I was a lowly Grade 9, trying to find my locker. We were both wearing our blue school blazers, his a bit worn, mine brand new, with the school crest on the breast pocket. I apologized in a nervous voice. He said it was all right, that it was his fault. His voice was high-pitched, just shy of squeaky. The most famous junior hockey player in the country, apologizing to me.

St. Mike’s was then a working-class Catholic high school, most of the boys Irish or Italian. If your family had money, you went to De La Salle. We hated Del. The place reeked of money and privilege, a kind of Catholic Upper Canada College. And their teachers weren’t even real priests, merely brothers. In 1961, when St. Mike’s won the Memorial Cup, some friends and I roared our junk heap of a car up Avenue Road to Del to tear around the campus, screeching our contempt.

The St. Michael’s Majors was the most famous junior hockey team in the country, and its graduates populated the nhl with some of its greatest stars—Red Kelly, Ted Lindsay, Dick Duff. Joe Primeau. Dave Keon was in my French class. Gerry Cheevers was in my year. Cesare Maniago and Arnie Brown were a couple of years ahead of me, Mike Walton a couple behind. The Majors were coached by the legendary Father David Bauer, who later established Canada’s international hockey presence.

Lefty Bauer was an amazing man and an inspirational coach. His brother Bob was a member of the Boston Bruins’ fabled Kraut Line, alongside Woody Dumart and Milt Schmidt. Everyone but Bauer himself said he could have played in the National Hockey League. Instead, he became a Basilian priest and teacher. He was my homeroom teacher for two years and I never let on to him that I couldn’t skate. Throughout high school, I played basketball, a bit of football, and some field sports. I kept my secret about being a non-skater and stayed away from the rink.

Something about the shame of those skateless years must have planted a seed of regret that chose to germinate all these years later. Which is why, at age sixty-two, on a cold November night, I am standing in the hockey section of that cathedral of Canadian consumerism, Canadian Tire.

The sales clerk tells me he is from Lahore, Pakistan, but he knows everything about skates, and will sharpen them, free of charge.

I ask for a pair of ccms, size eleven. He frowns.

“How are your ankles?”