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Go Outside and Play

14 January 2007 - 20:37 .

While I was going to visit my grandparents this afternoon, I saw the most beautiful sight, on the side of Highway 17 no less.

I saw people playing shinny. Pickup hockey. Outdoors, on a frozen body of water.

Granted the body of water was nothing more than pooled rain water in a poorly drained field. And the hockey that I saw looked like it was being played by 4 year olds (still very cute). But it was outdoors hockey, on ice, in the winter. In the Vancouver area. The quintessential Canadian experience. It made me miss Montreal a bit, where I grew up, since the conditions are hardly ever right for this to happen in our city.

The City of Montreal used to have all sorts of outdoor skating rinks, every winter. They were free, they were flooded regularly, and they were where I learned to ice skate. My oldest memory of skating involves being at Terrebonne Park, where the summer playground was replaced in winter by a free form skating surface that wound between trees and around jungle gyms. I was about 5 years old, and my grandmother was standing there in her coat, freezing her toes off, while I skated for about an hour. All so I could be a better skater for the hockey game (at the other rink in the same park) in a few days. That's what it was like to grow up back east... you skated, outdoors, whenever you could. Anywhere possible.

I kinda miss it. I haven't been in Montreal since 1989. I should go back sometime soon.