Across the expanse, a crew distributed piles of 1’ x 8’ boards at regular intervals. Another crew plotted lines, cut along them with a chainsaw, then wedged the boards down into the grooves and packed them with snow. Two-dozen rinks were tournament- ready, close to convenient support facilities.
Upwards of 50 teams happily competed. On Saturday, each played three games; on Sunday, only teams who’d won two or more played on through the finals. Surrounding each rink hundreds of spectators, including friends and families, relished the holiday atmosphere.
Signs posted by Pond Hockey Canada confirmed this was just how we used to play: Rinks are unsupervised. Use at own risk. Organizer assumes no responsibility for accidents or altercations. Translation: “Have fun!”
It would upset NHL referees, who increasingly hog the limelight at the expense of good play, that these Canadians could play hockey without mediators. Perhaps even because no referees are in Gravenhurst’s pond hockey mix, the games are well-played by self-regulating teams of skilled athletes who are also savvy sportsmen with children watching. Over two days, I witnessed no “altercations.”
This “Canadian” thrill is a particularly Muskoka Moment. Where else in North America can you play the great game in bracing clean air while gazing upon North America’s last operating steamships, elegant in their winter berths? Or hear pulsating music from speakers on Boston Pizza’s deck, accompanied by the whine of eight snowmobiles zooming in from Lake Muskoka, while playing one day in bright sunshine, another in soft grey with a few idle flakes hanging in the air?
The proximity of family-friendly Marriott and other plentiful Gravenhurst guest rooms proves a Muskoka town’s ability to attract people from southern Ontario hinges on ample, well-located accommodation. Watching 3-year olds in pyjamas play hall hockey brought joy to my Canuck heart; sitting in the hotel’s hot tub after freezing your buns in sub-zero hockey all day is its own reward.
Lincoln Dalbert plays for Thornton’s team, which in 2018 dedicated its play to a team member with terminal cancer. That player dressed, and got in some turns on ice. He has since died. The team won that tournament and gave his widow their $500 prize to help with expenses. This year she returned, with their children, staying at her brother-in-law’s Muskoka cottage –evincing the bonding centred on families sharing hockey, cheering on dads and husbands – “feeling Canadian.”
These present weeks, enriched by generous snowfall, offer non-hibernating and non-migrating Muskokans an authentic extra dimension of a place widely renowned for summer pleasures.
Others who happily embrace winter join us. In January, girls’ and boys’ hockey teams arrived from south-central Ontario for a regional tournament, while others visitors ventured to Bracebridge’s recent Fire & Ice single-day festival. All Muskoka communities have been at this, in various ways, a long time, their experience increasingly paying off.
Helicopter rides, tubing down a snow trenched hill, and dog-sledding, snowmobiling contests and polar bear dips, skiing and snowshoeing, crackling wood fires and tasty hot food, this is a season for Muskokans and the visitors we welcome to experience winter’s opportunities for joyful adventure, whether community-organized or self-directed.
Those who miss our winter fun are getting sunburned elsewhere.
