This Canadian doesn’t like hockey.  I know it sounds unpatriotic.  Hockey is right up there with beer and toques as part of what makes Canadian culture what it is and I certainly realize l that my opinion on this will be unsettling to other Canadians reading this.  Some may feel I should be forced to renounce my citizenship with such a statement, yet I feel I must be honest.  I just don’t like it.   I don’t like playing it for one.  When they say one is ‘on the ice’, that’s me - literally ‘on the ice’.  I can’t skate to save my life, so I’m not about to pick up hockey playing as a sport.   I hate playing it, or rather can’t play it and I don’t like watching it either - especially on television.  First off, I don’t know who to cheer for.  Fans of the game are so patriotic that I could make an enemy of a Canadiens’ fan just by saying I’m a Leafs’ fan.  No thanks.  I’ll just be a fence sitter on the issue.  Maybe in Canada, there are three issues one should not discuss with another – politics, religion and hockey.  To me, the only entertaining aspect about watching hockey on television is the penalty box.  “You’ve been a bad boy and now you can’t play the game anymore.  You have to sit here and watch everyone else playing the game so you’ll learn your lesson.”  While watching a grown man being punished in such a way is frightfully amusing to me, I still don’t watch the game because it would mean I’d have to watch the fights.  Oh, there I go, another Canadian social faux pas.  Oh well.  I have to be honest.  I don’t like the fights.  I feel that grown men should be able to control their tempers just a little bit better.  Can’t they mandate anger management courses for all players?  Surely with their billion dollar salaries they can afford them!  

So, while watching hockey on television is out, out of a sense of duty, I have braved the cold arenas to watch my nephews play.  The sacrifices I make for family.  The arenas are cold.  Darn cold.  I’m not a lover of the cold.

 In fact, though I’m Canadian, I’ve often cursed my ancestors for settling here, rather than following Columbus’ lead and heading toward the Canary Islands.  Not that I don’t love Canada, I just hate the cold.  And I hate the arenas.  You know, the places where they serve horrible coffee, bad hot chocolate and parents are yelling. I always feel sorry for the poor kids these days getting yelled at all the time.  And the pressure!

Not trying to date myself, but it was better, in my opinion, when I was a kid.  My brother and his friends would find a patch of ice somewhere in the neighborhood big enough to play hockey.  They’d clear off the snow, pick teams, mark off their goals with piles of coats and play.  And I mean play!  You know – that thing that kids used to do.  No coach, no parents, no pressure.  They’d play in the morning after breakfast, come home for lunch and then play all afternoon until dark and it was time for dinner.  And the only adult yelling they’d hear was a few faint calls from the distance was from the moms!  “Lunch!”  “Dinner!”   

            Ah, the good old days.  When kids played hockey for fun…  When you cheered for Toronto, and some of those players were actually from Toronto… And when, if you didn’t particularly like the sport, it was okay if you said so.

            Oh, I may in the future find myself the parent of a child who plays hockey in an arena, and I may find myself really enjoying watching his or her games!  I may, down the road, develop some appreciation for TV hockey and even pick a favorite team to cheer for.  But, until then, ‘bah humbug’.
 
© 2002 Jennifer Davies   ArtistMarket.com