The Hockey Game

Whatever trouble we might have making a Canadian out of Pete Briggs, the same can’t be said about Skipper Joe Irwin. Why even before Confederation, Skipper Joe used to say how ’twould be a good thing even though he never seemed sure what’d be good about it. And after we got it, he figured that the higher taxes on his ’baccy and fishing supplies was just about offset by the Family Allowances for his two youngest, and for that he said he was thankful.

But he wanted to be more than just thankful; he wanted to be proud. He’s that kind of a man. I’ll never forget the day when Skipper Joe first found something to be proud of in his new citizenship. Almost four year ago it was, a Sunday afternoon. We were sitting in my kitchen, just the two of us, me being a bachelor he says he loves to come here to get away from the women and the youngsters, to find a bit of what he calls peace and quiet. He was in his stocking feet ’cause his Sunday shoes pinched and I happened to turn on the radio, expecting to hear a word of prayer or perhaps a hymn, when what should we hear, Sunday and all as it was, but this hockey game, with a fellow all worked up telling us all about it and a lot of people in the background almost as excited as he was. Yes, a hockey game.

Well in spite of it being Sunday, I didn’t like to switch it off while Skipper Joe appeared interested so we listened. And the game was between a crowd of Russians and a crowd of Canadians from British Columbia. Well, I said that as far as I was concerned, Russia and British Columbia was about the same distance from Pigeon Inlet but Skipper Joe reminded me that ’twas Canada we joined up with four years before, so we kept on listening.

And before long we found another reason for siding with the Canadians. Why, even their names sounded homelike, like our own. Now the Russians, they had outlandish names, like Boboff and Knockemoff and Pushemoff, things like that, whereas the Canadians - why there was one fellow there named Warwick; spry too, and Skipper Joe said he be bound, why he’d bet his compass, that fellow was related to Uncle Tom Warwick from Rumble Cove, just down the shore. Uncle Tom had a brother that went away to the harvest fields forty year ago and Uncle Tom is still expecting him back as soon as he saves up his passage money. But now, with his boy playing on this hockey team, it looks like he’ll bide up there after all.

Anyway, me and Skipper Joe found ourselves getting excited and cheering for Canada and, of course, for Rumble Cove whenever this Warwick did somthing smart. Then they stopped to take a spell and I said to Skipper Joe how perhaps we ought to call out to Grampa Walcott to come over and hear the game. Grampa lives just across the road. He was 83 at the time and Saturday night hockey is past his bedtime. So Skipper Joe said no, Grampa wouldn’t understand it anyway.

You see, Grampa is an authority on local matters like fish and weather and prices, but since Confederation there’s so much crowding in on him at once, he gets confused over what he hears from foreign parts. Like one blowy evening the fall before, he’d heard something on the radio and he went all around Pigeon Inlet saying how polio was spreading something awful up in the United States ’cause he just heard forty thousand people screeching their poor heads off, barred up in a place called the polio grounds. So we decided not to disturb Grampa and me and Skipper Joe listened by ourselves ’til it was over.

And the Canadians got the best of it, five to nothing I think it was, and Skipper Joe said how at last after four or five year, he’d found something to make him downright proud to be a Canadian.

But just then the door opened and who should come in but Grampa Walcott, all out of breath, trying to tell us what a wonderful thing he’d just heard on the radio and how the Roosians, as he called ’em, had given the Canadians an awful beating. Now we tried to explain to him that it was the other way around.

“And Grampa,” said Skipper Joe, “sure didn’t you hear the announcer telling about young Warwick, Uncle Tom Warwick’s nephew from Rumble Cove?”

“Yes,” said Grampa, “ ’deed I did. And a spry young fellow he was too, most as spry as Uncle Tom was in his prime. But,” said Grampa, “he wasn’t half as spry as that Roosian fellow.”

“What Russian fellow?” said I.

“Can’t recall his name,” said Grampa. “’Twas an outlandish name anyhow.”

“Was it Boboff?” said I.

“No, not he,” said Grampa. Well then we tried him with Pushemoff and Kickemoff but he shook his head. Then, “Ah,” he said. “Now I remember.”

“Who?” said I.

“Faceoff,” said Grampa.“That was his name, Faceoff. Why,” said Grampa, “he was ten times spryer than young Warwick. Why one minute Faceoff’d be down in one end, the next minute he’d be down in the other end and before you could blink, there’d be Faceoff smack out in the middle. And another thing,” said Grampa. “He had good wind, this Faceoff. The others’d have to stop every few minutes to take a spell but he bided out there all the time.”

Well there was no use trying to explain hockey to Grampa at his age so we contented ourselves with telling him how it was his duty as a Canadian to cheer for his own side. He agreed, a bit dubiously though, and he hoped the Canadians had managed to convert Faceoff and get him to be a Canadian too. He said, “ ’cause if they kept on playing this hockey, the time’d come when they’d surely need ’im.”