What do you think?
Rate this book
The Gift of the Game: A Father, A Son and the Wisdom of Hockey
Full of the gentle humour and storytelling that he brings to “Music and Company” every morning, The Gift of the Game is Tom Allen’s exploration of the ways in which hockey can shape the relationship between fathers and sons.
In the winter of 2001 Tom Allen stepped onto a frozen lake with his eight-year-old son. They laced up their skates, set out chunks of firewood as goal posts, and played one-on-one hockey under an enormous blue sky.
This would mark a new turn in Allen’s relationship with Wesley, even as other relationships began to fall apart. When Allen and his wife go their separate ways, it is hockey that forms the enduring bond between father and son. As Wesley grows in confidence and purpose, Allen grows into the mythic role of hockey dad and assistant coach, and spends his empty afternoons working on his own game on outdoor rinks, if only to avoid the silence of his apartment.
But what is this game to which he has entrusted his fragile sense of well-being and his son’s emerging sense of self? With keen intelligence and self-deprecating emotional honesty, Allen sets about answering the questions that shape his new How does hockey mould us? To what degree are we defined by our love of the game and our wish to be admired for our skill on the ice? What are the implications for our culture of a game that so privileges violence? In making of hockey the arena of his pride and love and self-respect, Allen is forced to figure out what the game itself means.
In the winter of 2001 Tom Allen stepped onto a frozen lake with his eight-year-old son. They laced up their skates, set out chunks of firewood as goal posts, and played one-on-one hockey under an enormous blue sky.
This would mark a new turn in Allen’s relationship with Wesley, even as other relationships began to fall apart. When Allen and his wife go their separate ways, it is hockey that forms the enduring bond between father and son. As Wesley grows in confidence and purpose, Allen grows into the mythic role of hockey dad and assistant coach, and spends his empty afternoons working on his own game on outdoor rinks, if only to avoid the silence of his apartment.
But what is this game to which he has entrusted his fragile sense of well-being and his son’s emerging sense of self? With keen intelligence and self-deprecating emotional honesty, Allen sets about answering the questions that shape his new How does hockey mould us? To what degree are we defined by our love of the game and our wish to be admired for our skill on the ice? What are the implications for our culture of a game that so privileges violence? In making of hockey the arena of his pride and love and self-respect, Allen is forced to figure out what the game itself means.
- GenresSports
256 pages, Hardcover
First published October 11, 2005
12 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 21, 2015
I bought this book when it came out. Its author, Tom Allen, talked about it on CBC's Music and Company, the great radio show he hosted at the time. For one reason or another the book sat on my shelf for more than a decade, but recently I finally picked it up and read it.
I have spent a lot of time watching professional hockey and I watched my younger son play minor-league hockey for many, many hours when he was growing up. I love the game. In The Gift of the Game, Allen gave me some insight into what it is like to actually play hockey. It was a fun -- and educational -- read from that perspective. (Among other things, I learned that I was right to fear for my son's life when he was out there on the ice.)
At times I felt Allen was straining a bit to make the lessons he learned on the ice fit with the lessons he wanted to learn about father-son relationships at that stage of his life, and that he was a bit too close to his recent breakup with his kids' mother to put it all into any kind of meaningful perspective. But he gave it his best shot, both on the ice and off. I guess life isn't any more tractable than is a game of shinny hockey.
Tom Allen's still my all-time favourite radio host. The show he hosts now is called Shift. I wonder if he's still playing hockey with the Vultures.
I have spent a lot of time watching professional hockey and I watched my younger son play minor-league hockey for many, many hours when he was growing up. I love the game. In The Gift of the Game, Allen gave me some insight into what it is like to actually play hockey. It was a fun -- and educational -- read from that perspective. (Among other things, I learned that I was right to fear for my son's life when he was out there on the ice.)
At times I felt Allen was straining a bit to make the lessons he learned on the ice fit with the lessons he wanted to learn about father-son relationships at that stage of his life, and that he was a bit too close to his recent breakup with his kids' mother to put it all into any kind of meaningful perspective. But he gave it his best shot, both on the ice and off. I guess life isn't any more tractable than is a game of shinny hockey.
Tom Allen's still my all-time favourite radio host. The show he hosts now is called Shift. I wonder if he's still playing hockey with the Vultures.
October 18, 2014
First of all I'm not a hockey fan period. However the book does show the importance between parent and child after a separation between a child's parents. For myself after school activities are very important to children to especially keep them out of trouble. My son is 6 and show's no signs of ever wanting to play hockey. His sport of preference are bowling and horse riding. The book is well written and I highly recommend it to any hockey parent to read.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews