Road hockey may be offside for good

Ken Johnston

Hockey Night in Canadian Streets may soon be no more.

A court battle in Hamilton yesterday brought the age old question, “Should kids be playing in the streets?” up again.

Ask just about any Canadian what the national sport is and they will tell you it is HOCKEY; albeit the official national sport is Lacrosse (but that is a subject for another debate).

The sport which saw almost an entire day dedicated to it on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s television network last Saturday, is almost as old as Canada itself.

It’s roots are debated but almost all the stories go back to pick up games played on local ponds. From there it took off and has captured the enthusiasm of generation after generation in this country.

Somewhere along the way kids started to play in the streets, much the same as they play on ice, only without skates. Perhaps that was because not everyone has access to a community rink in their neighbourhood or perhaps it was because artificial ice really did not emerge in a big way until the 1960s. Unsafe ice and huge popularity of the game may have been the forced origin of Road Hockey or maybe it was a need to play the game all year round.

Whatever its origins, I remember many a games on Third Street and in several back alley’s in Rainy River. I even remember playing on the bottom block of kMain St. once; however we were thought to be to noisy in front of the hospital and moved a street over.

The rules have remained the same for decades, with half ice starts instead of face offs (due to the lack of refs) and the stoppage of games when cars came down the street. Sometimes our carved out of the snowbank goal posts got run over by the cars, but for the most part we never had any problems with traffic and rarely did we have problems with the homeowners in the neighbourhoods we played in.

If a woman gets her way in Hamilton the game of road hockey could be forced off the street and quite possibly die all together. I hope the judge remembers all those good times had in the street and that it is actually good for kids to get off the screen at home and get some exercise and have fun doing it.

Can’t wait to hear what Don Cherry has to say about this

–Until then,

Ken

PS Hey guys remember that time a sponge puck ended up on the roof of Laverne Drennan’s car, which he rarely brushed the snow off and we had to chase him up town to get it back?