A hockey sweater, in Canada, is a serious thing. If you don’t believe me, try wearing a Flames sweater in an Edmonton sports bar, or an Oilers sweaterA hockey sweater, in Canada, is a serious thing. If you don’t believe me, try wearing a Flames sweater in an Edmonton sports bar, or an Oilers sweater at a sports pub in Calgary, and see what kind of reception you get. The hockey sweater serves a practical function � to keep one warm during a shift on the ice � but it can also serve as a badge of one’s regional and cultural identity within the world’s second-largest country. And all those elements of what a hockey sweater can mean within Canadian life come to the forefront in Roch Carrier’s 1979 story The Hockey Sweater.
The Hockey Sweater, which is probably the best-known example of the contes for which Carrier is so well-known, takes place in Sainte-Justine in 1946, and is based on a real-life incident from Carrier’s childhood. The narrator begins by stating that “The winters of my childhood were long, long seasons. We lived in three places � the school, the church, and the skating rink � but our real life was on the skating rink.�
The importance of hockey in the life of the narrator and all his schoolfellows quickly becomes apparent when the narrator states that “We all wore the same uniform as Maurice Richard, the red, white, and blue uniform of the Montreal Canadiens, the best hockey team in the world.� The boys all style their hair like “Rocket� Richard, lace their skates and tape their sticks like “Le Rocket.� As the story’s narrator puts it, “We all wore the famous number 9 on our backs. How could we forget that!�
The narrator insists that “You’ll never put it in my head to wear a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater�, but his ever-practical mother responds that “it’s not what you put on your back that matters, it’s what you put inside your head.� Besides, the sweater fits him perfectly, and if she writes back to Monsieur Eaton (a Torontonian and a Maple Leafs fan), he will be insulted; and by the time he sends the correct sweater, winter and hockey season will be over.
There is nothing for it but for the narrator to go to the skating rink in his Maple Leafs sweater. The illustration shows his isolation: he is outside the skating rink, looking morose and miserable in his Toronto sweater, while eleven boys on the ice, in their matching #9 Montreal sweaters, point at him with angry looks. Usually a first-liner, he is told that he will be playing on the second line; and then, when he takes the ice with the second line, he is told that he’ll be needed later, to play defence. In the third period, when he finally takes the ice and is immediately assessed a penalty, he is outraged, and shouts, “This is persecution! It’s just because of my blue sweater!�
What follows is the crisis of the story, after which the school’s young Catholic curate tells the narrator to go into the church and ask God to forgive him for losing his temper. The prayer that the boy does offer provides a humorous denouement for the story.
In an afterword, Carrier writes that “I wish to dedicate this story to all girls and boys because all of them are champions.� Stylistically, I found that The Hockey Sweater reminded me of the work of the American humorist Jean Shepherd, whose winter-holiday tales of his Indiana boyhood were adapted into the film A Christmas Story (1983). There is the same use of humour and exaggeration to dramatize how incidents of childhood that might seem trivial to an adult loom large in the life of a boy or girl, increasing and exacerbating feelings of being alone and misunderstood. The stories have sentiment but not sentimentality, and it is for that reason that Carrier’s work, like Shepherd’s, holds lasting value.
But why bother? This is a great, human story for any parent in any country to read to their child. One need not know the difference between a breakaway and a game misconduct to love this story. Roch Carrier, a master of the art of the short story, truly outdid himself with The Hockey Sweater, a true classic of Canadian literature. He shoots, he scores!...more
The Toronto Maple Leafs have played a vitally important role in the life of hockey-mad Toronto since the team's founding (under the first of two otherThe Toronto Maple Leafs have played a vitally important role in the life of hockey-mad Toronto since the team's founding (under the first of two other names) in 1917. With 13 Stanley Cups, they are the second-winningest team in the history of the National Hockey League. But they have not won a Stanley Cup since 1967 � the longest championship drought in the NHL � and both the team and its legions of dedicated fans are acutely conscious of that unhappy fact, as Lance Hornby makes clear in his 2017 book Toronto and the Maple Leafs: A City and Its Team.
Having covered the Maple Leafs for over a quarter of a century, usually in the pages of the Toronto Sun, Hornby unquestionably brings a lot of street cred (or ice cred) to the writing of Toronto and the Maple Leafs. Fans throughout Leafs Nation will no doubt relate to the way he dreamed as a boy of playing for the Leafs, found that he did not have the requisite athletic skills, and settled for writing about them instead. His appreciation for the team and his hope that they will soon end their long streak of futility come through on every page.
Throughout Toronto and the Maple Leafs, Hornby mixes personal reminiscences about the Leafs and their fans (in sections titled “Leaf Life�) with information gathered through interviews and historical research. With no Stanley Cups since 1967, Hornby must find other highlights to write about � and he does, as when he describes how centre Darryl Sittler had a 10-point game, with six goals and four assists � an NHL record that stands to this day � when the Leafs hosted the Boston Bruins on February 7, 1976. A piquant detail behind the story of Sittler’s historic game: the Leafs� mercurial owner Harold Ballard had criticized Sittler, publicly and in print, earlier that very day, saying of the Leafs that “If we could find a centre, we’d be dynamite� (p. 48). Well, Ballard certainly found a centre that day.
Of particular interest to me � and potentially, I would think, to many Torontonians and Canadians generally, whether they follow hockey or not � was a chapter titled “The Leafs Go to War.� The chapter begins with an attention-getting visual � Leafs veterans Mark LaForest and Mike Gartner holding up a blue-and-white Maple Leafs flag that also bears the inscription “Kandahar 07/08,� from when Hornby accompanied the former Leafs players on a visit to Canadian Forces personnel serving in the war in Afghanistan.
It turns out that the Toronto Maple Leafs have a longstanding connection to Canadian Forces� military valour in faraway theatres of war. Conn Smythe, the famously tough-minded businessman who owned the Leafs for more than 30 years and built the legendary Maple Leaf Gardens arena for their home games, had served Canada with honour in the First World War, and was not going to be told that he couldn’t go back to Europe to fight for his country in the Second World War just because he happened to be 45 years old.
Smythe established a volunteer artillery unit, went with it to Europe, and participated in the fighting in France after D-Day. During the fighting, “an ammunition truck was set on fire by a flare from a fighter plane. As Smythe bravely tried to pull the burning protective tarp from the truck, there was an explosion that buried a piece of shrapnel in his back. He was knocked out of the war and in pain the rest of his life� (p. 105). Smythe’s wartime courage in defence of democracy was shared by many members of the Maple Leafs team he led: 63 players for the Maple Leafs or their minor-league affiliate teams enlisted for service in the two world wars, and of the 22 players who served in the Second World War, three died in action.
And it may be that part of the reason why Leafs Nation, particularly across the province of Ontario, loves the Leafs so is because the Leafs have been such good citizens, giving back to their community with generosity and grace. A chapter titled “City Lights� shows how often Leafs players like Darryl Sittler, Bob McGill, Mats Sundin, Curtis Joseph, Peter Zezel, and Tomas Kaberle have provided humanitarian and philanthropic assistance, in the GTA (the Greater Toronto Area) and beyond. Particularly moving was the account of the friendship that sprang up between Sittler and Terry Fox.
Fox is a national hero across Canada; but for the benefit of readers from other countries who may not know his story, here is a brief explanation. Fox, in 1980, was a 24-year-old cancer patient who had lost a leg to osteosarcoma, but nonetheless undertook to run all the way across Canada � 26 miles a day, every day � in order to raise money for cancer research and treatment. His quest, a marathon in more ways than one, began quietly; but by the time he reached Toronto, Canadians from sea to sea were transfixed with admiration for this young man’s bravery and resolution.
Sittler read about Fox beginning his run on the Atlantic coast of Canada at St. John’s, Newfoundland, and was impressed: “I thought, ‘Holy Moses, this guy has got guts and courage.� I trained, but to run 26 miles every day on one leg with the disease that took his other leg?� (p. 154) Accordingly, Sittler sought out Fox, ran through downtown Toronto with Fox, and gave Fox his #27 All-Star Game jersey; there’s a nice photo of Fox wearing the jersey while greeting supporters outside Toronto City Hall. Beyond that, Sittler supported the CTV telethon that raised more than $10 million for cancer research, and to this day he has continued to advocate for cancer screening. His story is characteristic of the way in which Maple Leafs players have been active in the life of Toronto, Ontario, and Canada, and in points beyond.
Hornby helpfully includes many evocative photographs, along with a “Leafs� Top 100: By the Numbers� supplement that should provide competitive trivia amusement for many a group of Ontarians watching future installments of Hockey Night in Canada around their televisions in Mississauga or Don Mills. For these reasons, and others mentioned above, Toronto and the Maple Leafs is a fun read for any hockey fan, whatever their favourite team may be.
“The Leafs� are the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League. They represent, on the ice at Air Canada Centre, the largest city of a nation w“The Leafs� are the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League. They represent, on the ice at Air Canada Centre, the largest city of a nation where hockey is at once a culture and a sort of civic religion. They bear on the front of their blue-and-white sweaters the national symbol of Canada � the maple leaf. They have won the second-most Stanley Cup titles in NHL history � but they have not won a Cup since all the way back in 1967. All of these considerations are important to keep in mind when chronicling the history of the Maple Leafs, and Brian McFarlane does so in his 1995 book The Leafs.
McFarlane is an Ontarian, a former Maple Leaf Gardens commentator, a frequent contributor to Hockey Night in Canada, and a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto (for his writing). He has written prolifically about the great Canadian game � perhaps most memorably when he crafted his “Original Six� series of short histories of the six teams that constituted the entire NHL from 1942 to 1967: the Boston Bruins, the Chicago Black Hawks, the Detroit Red Wings, the Montreal Canadiens, the New York Rangers, and of course the Toronto Maple Leafs. All of the books are very good. In the case of The Leafs, the fact that McFarlane is writing here about a team to which he has a variety of personal ties may give this volume from the series particular immediacy.
The Leafs abounds in vivid stories from Maple Leafs history that demonstrate well McFarlane’s ability to convey the speed, the drama, and yes, the violence of hockey, as when he tells the story of how Leafs left winger Ace Bailey, a future Hockey Hall of Fame inductee, endured, at the Boston Garden in 1933, a particularly brutal hit that ended his hockey career and almost killed him.
McFarlane explains that the famously tough and combative Boston Bruins defenceman Eddie Shore got tripped by Leafs defenceman King Clancy, became angry that no penalty was called, and decided to retaliate. It is not clear whether or not Shore mistook Bailey for Clancy, but what happened when Shore raced up at full speed and struck an unsuspecting Bailey from behind is all too clear:
The players on both teams, most of the fans, and the men high in the press box heard a crack that might be compared to the sound of smacking a pumpkin with a baseball bat. Bailey’s head hit the ice and he lay on his back as though his neck were broken. His legs, bent at the knees, began twitching. (p. 57).
The Bruins� team physician recommended that Bailey be administered last rites. Luckily for Bailey, two of the best neurosurgeons in the world practiced in Boston, and they worked skillfully and diligently to save Bailey’s life, while Canadians from Gander to Victoria prayed for the stricken player to survive his injuries. Luckily, Bailey did survive; and a few weeks later, when a benefit game was held for Bailey at Maple Leaf Gardens, “Bailey and Shore met again, at centre ice. When Shore offered his hand and Bailey took it, indicating there were no hard feelings, the crowd erupted in a tremendous ovation� (p. 59).
McFarlane chronicles, with evident relish, the glory days of the Toronto Maple Leafs under their legendary coach Clarence “Hap� Day. His famously tough coaching style had record-breaking results: “In nine seasons behind the Leaf bench, he had captured five Stanley Cups�, including one Stanley Cup victory that was particularly memorable: “In 1941-42, his Leafs made history by losing the first three games of the final series to Detroit, then storming back to take four in a row to capture the Cup� (p. 101). No team in NHL history had ever come back from being down, 3 games to none, to win four straight games and capture the Stanley Cup; and no NHL team has ever done it since.
Left wing Bob Davidson, who played on that “comeback Cup� team, described two factors that gave him and his fellow Maple Leafs powerful motivation not to give up after falling behind 3 games to none. The first was that “Jack Adams, the Detroit manager, went on radio and said his team would wrap it up in the four games. He sounded pretty cocky and it made us mad� (p. 79). The other motivating factor came from closer to home:
Hap Day, our coach, read us a letter from a little girl in Toronto who said she’d be ashamed to go to school the next day if we lost four straight games in the finals. That inspired us to do our best. Even so, we fell behind 2-0 in the second period [of Game 4]. Then I scored a goal that got us going and we won 4-3. We just took off after that and wouldn’t be beaten. After we captured the Stanley Cup, [centre] Syl Apps and I went to visit the little girl who’d written the letter and told her how much she’d helped us. (p. 79)
The years 1967 and 1972 were both momentous years in the history of the Toronto Maple Leafs. For all Leafs fans, 1967 holds profound significance as the year when “the Leafs celebrate Canada’s centennial by defeating Chicago and Montreal in the playoffs to capture their 11th Stanley Cup� (p. 204). It was a great, and seemingly an auspicious, occasion � the club that longtime owner Conn Smythe worked so hard to establish as “Canada’s Team� winning the Stanley Cup on the 100th anniversary of Canadian confederation. But any Leafs fans who might have thought that the centennial Cup win would be the beginning of a Hap Day-style run of Cup victories would have been severely disappointed. The Leafs have not won a single Stanley Cup since then.
And 1972 was an important year in Maple Leafs history � if not a happy one � because it was in 1972 that Harold Ballard, “at the age of 68…takes over control (71 percent) of the Maple Leaf organization� (p. 204). In an indicator of how tempestuous the Ballard years would be � for the Toronto Maple Leafs team, the city of Toronto, the province of Ontario, and a great many hockey fans throughout Canada and beyond � the Leafs� new majority owner made national news for another, non-hockey-related reason: “In October, Ballard is sentenced to three years in jail after standing trial on 47 fraud and theft charges involving an amount of $205,000. He serves 12 months� (p. 204).
Ballard was the sort of sports-team owner that frequently gets referred to as “mercurial.� He quarrelled with his players, with Toronto sports media, with political leaders, and generally with whoever else might be around. He cultivated a leadership style that was widely seen as autocratic, and he garnered publicity and controversy in abundance. What he did not manage to garner, during 18 years as majority owner of the Maple Leafs, was a Stanley Cup for Toronto.
Author McFarlane had his own run-ins with Ballard. He describes how “In 1968 I went to work for Harold Ballard� (p. 156). He expressed surprise at how small the salary was for the job of publicity director for the Leafs, but took the job. Working for Ballard was not, for McFarlane, a positive experience:
After nine months on the job, it was over. Ballard didn’t want to spend any money implementing any of my plans, and I had had enough of Ballard and the Gardens. One day, on the eve of my summer vacation, one of Harold’s flunkeys came around and mumbled something about Ballard wanting to close down the publicity department. That was enough of a hint for me. The job was going nowhere anyway. So, without ever speaking to Ballard, I went on vacation and never came back. (p. 157)
No doubt Ballard has his defenders � but many an urbane, civilized, unfailingly courteous Torontonian has been moved to vocal expressions of anger when the name of Harold Ballard is mentioned.
A resident of the GTA (the Greater Toronto Area) born on May 2, 1967 � the day the Leafs won that last Stanley Cup � is now well into their fifties, and the people of Leafs Nation are still waiting for that long streak of futility to end. I, too, hope that the Toronto Maple Leafs will soon return to Stanley Cup glory, and will look forward to toasting their future success with a glass of fine Ontarian cabernet sauvignon from the Niagara Peninsula, on that much-to-be-anticipated day....more
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