Street hockey,of course was a Canadian institution.Any street that you passed in Moncton was bound to be crowded with youngsters playing hockey.Two opposing nets would be set up on a street.This could be any street,even fairly busy ones.Sometimes kids would have a net,or maybe even two.By that,I mean a store bought net of nylon mesh and light aluminum that could be easily picked up and moved around.Most kids though didn't have store bought nets so they would just mark out a net osing two rocks as goal posts.Nobody ever measured to see if both nets were the same width,so far as I know.And it was generally disagreed on that the net was as high as a persons head.By person,I mean any given goaltender.Since goaltenders came in a lot of different shapes and sizes,there ended up being some arguments about when a goal was scored.It was usually better to have a shorter kid as a goaltender,because in theory it meant the makeshift net was smaller.Also,it allowed the taller kids,those being mostly older,stronger and more athletic to play outside the goal,and that was far better for scoring goals.
Now along with the nets,hockey pucks were usually also makeshift.They might be an actual puck,but more often they were some kind of a ball.A tennis ball worked best,but kids used all sorts of balls,whatever they had.Usually it was some sort of sponge rubber ball,very soft,the kind kids would play catch with.A time or two I'd see kids playing with India rubber balls,what they called "super balls." There was one thing wrong with that sort of a ball,and that was that it had a lot of action,so,when you shot it as hard as you could,unless the goaltender actually blocked it,you would end up running halfway to the Nova Scotia border to get the stupid thing back.Kids loved hockey,but I never saw anyone who was really keen on the amount of exercise they got from chasing a super ball.One time I was involved in a hockey match where the only thing we could find was a blue croquet ball.This was really not the best thought out idea,but if it was the only thing around,giving up on a really bad idea was not the best thing young boys did.As I recall there was a general agreement that we should shoot the ball gently,but the presence of testosterone made that idea only last until someone got pissed off about something,and really started putting some arm power into the shots.So all we really accomplished was teaching each other how to sing soprano in one easy lesson.There was even a ball made especially for street hockey.It was larger than a tennis ball,day glo orange in color and it didn't bounce around much,nor were they made of wood.Much nicer than a croquet ball.They were kind of expensive though,and most times kids preferred a slightly livelier ball.So,in my part of the world the old mud soaked,dog dung streaked,half worn out,slush sodden and then frozen brown but used to be green or yellow tennis ball was the hockey puck of choice.They were about the dirtiest thing any kid could lay their hands on and most likely had more viruses than your average pig pen or American voting machine.When a frozen one hit you where the Lord split you,it was a right of passage.Not the real deal as far as ice hockey goes,but a ubiquitous symbol of Canadian culture nonetheless.Whenever you see one,you know exactly what it was used for.
Watching a street hockey match,or even just passing by one,a person would become educated on one of Moncton's and in fact,Canada's most prominent cultural schisms. Kids liked to wear hockey sweaters when they played street hockey.In fact,kids would even show the world their hockey colors when the weather was well below zero.Sometimes they would layer up,sometimes they woulds not.The most obvious colors were red,and blue.The red sweaters had a letter H enclosed within a larger Letter C.The Montreal Canadians,or Canadiens if you preferred.The blue sweaters had white arm bands and a big white maple leaf on the front.The Toronto Maple Leafs.Two of the original six NHL teams,and bitter rivals.
The rivalry demonstrated something about Canadian culture.I could tell that even at five years old,watching street hockey for the first time,even if I had no real understanding of what the different sweaters meant.Montreal is a predominately French speaking city.Many of it's hockey heroes had French names. Toronto was mostly English,and it's players had English,Irish or Scottish names. Moncton was split pretty much fifty fifty as far as language and culture were concerned.So both sweaters were very popular.It was never a really hard and fast rule,but French kids usually wore red sweaters,English kids the blue ones.There was even a book written about this aspect of Canadian culture* So,thanks to my new ability to explore,I was receiving my very first lesson in Sociology.
Author's note:
* The Hockey Sweater by Roche Carrier was originally written in French,then adapted to English.It was also made into a short film by The National Film Board,which is available on Youtube. It is a rather short and completely charming,light hearted look at the culture noted above.Easily worth the few minutes that it takes to view.
Now along with the nets,hockey pucks were usually also makeshift.They might be an actual puck,but more often they were some kind of a ball.A tennis ball worked best,but kids used all sorts of balls,whatever they had.Usually it was some sort of sponge rubber ball,very soft,the kind kids would play catch with.A time or two I'd see kids playing with India rubber balls,what they called "super balls." There was one thing wrong with that sort of a ball,and that was that it had a lot of action,so,when you shot it as hard as you could,unless the goaltender actually blocked it,you would end up running halfway to the Nova Scotia border to get the stupid thing back.Kids loved hockey,but I never saw anyone who was really keen on the amount of exercise they got from chasing a super ball.One time I was involved in a hockey match where the only thing we could find was a blue croquet ball.This was really not the best thought out idea,but if it was the only thing around,giving up on a really bad idea was not the best thing young boys did.As I recall there was a general agreement that we should shoot the ball gently,but the presence of testosterone made that idea only last until someone got pissed off about something,and really started putting some arm power into the shots.So all we really accomplished was teaching each other how to sing soprano in one easy lesson.There was even a ball made especially for street hockey.It was larger than a tennis ball,day glo orange in color and it didn't bounce around much,nor were they made of wood.Much nicer than a croquet ball.They were kind of expensive though,and most times kids preferred a slightly livelier ball.So,in my part of the world the old mud soaked,dog dung streaked,half worn out,slush sodden and then frozen brown but used to be green or yellow tennis ball was the hockey puck of choice.They were about the dirtiest thing any kid could lay their hands on and most likely had more viruses than your average pig pen or American voting machine.When a frozen one hit you where the Lord split you,it was a right of passage.Not the real deal as far as ice hockey goes,but a ubiquitous symbol of Canadian culture nonetheless.Whenever you see one,you know exactly what it was used for.
Watching a street hockey match,or even just passing by one,a person would become educated on one of Moncton's and in fact,Canada's most prominent cultural schisms. Kids liked to wear hockey sweaters when they played street hockey.In fact,kids would even show the world their hockey colors when the weather was well below zero.Sometimes they would layer up,sometimes they woulds not.The most obvious colors were red,and blue.The red sweaters had a letter H enclosed within a larger Letter C.The Montreal Canadians,or Canadiens if you preferred.The blue sweaters had white arm bands and a big white maple leaf on the front.The Toronto Maple Leafs.Two of the original six NHL teams,and bitter rivals.
The rivalry demonstrated something about Canadian culture.I could tell that even at five years old,watching street hockey for the first time,even if I had no real understanding of what the different sweaters meant.Montreal is a predominately French speaking city.Many of it's hockey heroes had French names. Toronto was mostly English,and it's players had English,Irish or Scottish names. Moncton was split pretty much fifty fifty as far as language and culture were concerned.So both sweaters were very popular.It was never a really hard and fast rule,but French kids usually wore red sweaters,English kids the blue ones.There was even a book written about this aspect of Canadian culture* So,thanks to my new ability to explore,I was receiving my very first lesson in Sociology.
Author's note:
* The Hockey Sweater by Roche Carrier was originally written in French,then adapted to English.It was also made into a short film by The National Film Board,which is available on Youtube. It is a rather short and completely charming,light hearted look at the culture noted above.Easily worth the few minutes that it takes to view.
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