Penetanguishene, Ontario

On Friday the Alliston Hornets played the Penetanguishene Kings in a Georgian Mid-Ontario Junior C Hockey League game. The players, typically under 20, are billeted with families, usually get paid a couple of hundred dollars a month and will never get a taste of the NHL. This, as they would say, is a labour of love.

Tickets for the game were under ten dollars and there was a pretty good crowd at the rink. When we walked toward the bleachers, we were quickly accosted by a man who sported a patchy, not-quite-as-full-as-he-wanted-it-to-be goatee, and told that we had to wait until there was a stop in the action to proceed. He took his responsibility seriously. However, the swarms of undefeatable 12 year-old girls, as if a new and limitlessly powerful species, proved far beyond his control. They moved about freely, in happy packs, completely indifferent to his waving arms and demands that they wait for a stoppage in play.

At the concession stand hotdogs were deep-fried, poutine gobbled like popcorn at a movie, and brand-new teens ordered The Grave Yard, a drink that was comprised of a couple of ounces of every flavour in the fountain. Women in cowboy hats sold 50/50 tickets, and parents watched over their children with greater care than they paid to the hockey game. It was beautiful, like a country fair, and it proved to be an entirely transportive experience, relocating me to a time and place where the routes to first loves were all still being negotiated.

On the ice, the boys, in the transitional stage between acne and full beards, celebrated goals or punched one another in the head behind the net, living a love that would stay fresh within them for the rest of their lives, while outside the snow banks rose up over our heads, and the drone of snowmobiles blew back from the lake and through the town.