Canada On Ice: 50 Years Of Great Hockey

Canada's Hockey Greats

by Michael and Jenish, D'Arcy; Editors Benedict

Anthology of 50 years of great hockey writing from the Canadian magazine "Maclean's".

Genres: Hockey, Sports

347 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I spent a few hours driving across Canada once, but I didn't stop anywhere to find a general interest magazine called Maclean's which apparently had a reputation for excellent writing. One of the frequent subjects, naturally for a Canadian magazine, was hockey, and this book collects some pretty cool profiles, analysis, and opinion pieces on the sport, its players, and teams over the years between 1950 and 1998. I gobbled up whatever histories of the game I could find back in the 70s, when I discovered it, and that helps me understand the references in many of the older pieces, which assume that the reader has some idea of what has gone on in the game before.
I'm endlessly fascinated by the days when hockey was a workingman's game - the later pieces in here spend way too much time on the business, endorsements and even a wedding of impossibly wealthy young men. But give me a story of Maurice Richard worried about what he could do when he hung up his skates, or Bobby Hull, in between time on his cattle farm, cozying up with his young sons (including a 1.5 year old named Brett) in 1966, and I'm happy. There is some terrific writing on the game here.