White Snow Blackout

By Joseph A. Byrne

In 1972, when Paul Henderson scored that great goal for Canada against Soviet Russia, the whole country stood still. It gave us cause to be proud of our game, our players, our love for it.
White Snow Blackout connects, that great goal, that great series, to our own setbacks and triumphs in our own hockey worlds. The story is told as seen through the eyes of a child. It is at times riveting, always passionate.
I invite you to take a journey with me to the roots of hockey, to the very wonderland of it. There, you will immerse yourself into a passion that only sheer innocence can bring.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456602376

Book preview

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CANADA RUSSIA 1972 - WHY IT MATTERED

I was seated in Geography class that September of 1972, at the University of Windsor, watching my favourite professor, a man named Ledoux, set up for class. Ledoux was a man’s man, a rugby star, rough around the edges, with a soft heart. An intelligent man, he was on the path to stardom in the U.S.A, when he came to Windsor. He always tried to hide his obvious soft side.

I had selected a seat near the door, knowing I would have to leave class early, in order to watch the hockey game. It was not just a game. It was Game 8 of the Canada-Russia super series. I figured Ledoux might even cut class early for the game. Ledoux had endeared himself to the class last year, when he took us on a field trip to New Hampshire. After crossing the international border into the United States, at the Ambassador Bridge, a clamour went up in the bus to stop at a variety store. Unknown to the professor, many of the students went in and bought three bottles each of the cheapest apple wine on sale there. They were then ready for academics.

After three days of pure fun, parties and learning, Professor Ledoux announced that each student would present an oral dissertation on an assigned topic. We would, each in our turn, present from the loud speaker at the front of the bus. We would be marked by three of our fellow students, serious types, who were apparently shocked by the fun-loving nature of our learning methods. My topic was ‘the cultural heritage between the cities of Schenectady, New York and Westchester, Massachusetts. We were given a half-hour to prepare.

Not knowing much about the cultural geography of that area, I decided to write out every joke I could remember and give them a cultural twist. If I ever got the Professor laughing, I would launch the one-liners in rapid fire to keep him laughing, spinning the next one off each time, before he could fully digest the prior one.

Student after student went to the front of the bus, showed a serious side, giving their best academic presentations, always giving it their best shot. Each time, they were marked down and ridiculed by the three appointed judges--fellow students who had no appetite for learning with apple wine. Professor Ledoux moderated many of the marks.

When my turn came, I began seriously, with a few academic points and then, imitating the serious and sour judges, I scolded the class in mock. I had waited until one of my colleagues had shouted out a smart remark.

I scolded by saying, This is a serious presentation. This is no time for apple-wine-induced geography. Let’s keep it academic.

Then I said, Your answer was a nice try, but it is not accurate.

No, I said, just because you see a lot of hydro poles and telephone poles, as I motioned outside, and even telegraph poles, that does not mean we are passing through a Polish district. The ruse worked. The Professor started to laugh and I hit him with one-liner after one-liner.

The Professor, unable to catch his breath, laughed harder with each punch line. He then eventually waved his arms as if to surrender, as the sour judges looked on. The Professor’s loud uncontrollable laughter was now the subject of uproarious laughter by my classmates and colleagues. When I couldn’t be heard any longer, I switched to sight gags.

I pulled a 12-inch cigar out of my pocket as the laughter was now too loud for anyone to hear anything I might say. I put on a pair of plastic glasses, with a heavy plastic moustache, flicked the cigar a couple of times and penguin-walked, in Groucho Marx style, down the aisle of the bus, all while playing out the falsetto of disdain at the conduct of the class. The Professor was appreciative of the sight gags. He reached for the microphone from me, while laughing uncontrollably, fell out of his seat and rolled down the front steps of the bus, surrendering completely to the laughter. He waved his arms for mercy, a couple of times, before I stopped.

After several minutes of pandemonium, the professor thanked me, between buckles of laughter, for stopping before, in his words, he split a gut or fell out of the door and onto the highway. I accepted the thanks without telling him I was out of ammunition. I couldn’t think of another joke anyway, other than walking upside down up the bus aisle, while delivering my speech.

After order was restored, five to ten minutes later, as Professor Ledoux was ready to speak, I beat him again to the microphone.

I’m disappointed in the class, for laughing at my cultural presentation, I said. Professor Ledoux is running a serious class and this is not a Polish area, I repeated.

As I gave the microphone to the professor, the sour judges started to indicate their disdain for the performance I had just given.

Mary, the sourest one, started, I gave him a zero!

Professor Ledoux interrupted. No, no, no. This student knows his geography. This is not a Polish district. I am giving him 11 out of 10, and he couldn’t finish saying it, as he started to laugh again.

I was smiling as I thought of this story, while unpacking the books I hadn’t read last night and setting up for class. It was early in the year, September still. I was wondering at the arbitrary class selections I had made in high school. But back then, they seemed fitting. At Assumption High, I had to choose between Latin and Geography in Grade 11. I couldn’t take both. I chose Geography because my cousin did, even though I liked Latin class better. This was probably because of the immense man of a Latin teacher, a priest I had in both Grades 9 and 10 Latin.

"Conjugate habeo, senores, he would say. Decline puella, senores," he would continue.

I was thinking at exactly that moment that this professor actually taught us something about Latin that stuck.

Ex, cum, sine, ab, in, de, all take the ablative, so they say, he would state over and over as though his life depended on it. Father was an immense man. When he gave the strap to a student, seldom as it was, his whole body would shake and vibrate as the strap struck the hand lightly. We would naturally laugh, and challenge each other to accurately count the jiggles.

I felt fortunate to have him as a teacher. In another class, the Basilian priest, also a teacher, asked a student to decline a noun of the first declension. The student took the teacher’s name.

Fagius, Fagii, Fagio, Fagium, Fagii, Fagio, the student started, his obvious errors showing. Father Fagius rose on his chair, hopped on the top of his desk, ran across the tops of the students’ desks and threatened to fly at the student. We held our breath. The student changed his tact. Sunus, he started, sunii, and so on.

I was waiting for Ledoux to make an observation or wisecrack, as he often would at the beginning of class. I thought he might talk about the tennis war of words he had started with a female geography professor, Dr. Sanderson. Professor Ledoux stated over and over for days that he was a better tennis player than her and that she didn’t have a chance.

For your homework, he would say, I want you to come up with the top ten reasons Dr. Sanderson will lose against me at tennis. And predict the score, but not in numbers. I will win by twice, or triple, or shut her out. You get the idea. I will overpower her, he would say over and over, just like I do to the guys on the rugby pitch. They were a perfect parody here, at the University of Windsor for the hot topic of the time, the battle of the sexes, epitomized by tennis stars Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs. The original battle of the sexes, between real tennis stars, was playing out just then. To him, a woman, even a good player, wasn’t likely to beat a man like him. Ledoux would not even hear of being beaten at tennis by the female geography professor, and, of course, on the day of the match, he lost. But, he certainly made a great spectacle of it.

As I was seated at geography class, there in Dillon Hall, thinking of this colourful man, Professor Ledoux, this man, with all the markings of greatness, began to speak. I waited for a witticism from him, but a tug at my shirt distracted me.

Hey, Joe, the voice called. We better get down to the Ambassador lounge. Canada and Russia are playing.

Oh, yeah, I said.

The game didn’t start for an hour yet, but my cousin, John and I, rushed out of class anyway, flying down the steps from the second floor, bursting out the door, running across the square to Ambassador Auditorium, in what is now the CAW Centre.

Where’s the fire? Ledoux called out, knowing full well where we were going.

To our great relief, the auditorium lounge was not full, but the best seat, right in front of the television monitor was taken. It was a sofa. A guy lay on it, moaning something about how boring his ancient Greek and Roman mythology class had been. His girlfriend, or if not a girlfriend, a female fellow student, or if not a female or a fellow student, just someone, sat on the edge of the couch, at his mid-section and lay sideways across his chest. She looked quite uncomfortable, but stayed in that position for a long time—long enough that some gentlemen offered her a helping hand, in case she was in distress.

My cousin and I surveyed the lounge, each of us grabbing a lounge chair from opposite sides of the room and dragging them to opposite ends of the couch. We sat there, the distance of a couch apart and waited for the game. We both could have sat next to each other, but then one of us would not have had the best available view of the game. Opposite ends of the couch offered the best view.

The series had become a nail-biter. What we thought would be a laugher turned out to be a laugh at us. Would we be good enough, determined enough or lucky enough to come back and win? This was the only thing that