One evening on a refrigerated rink 35 years ago, I concluded I was never going to skate and shoot well enough to keep playing our national game. I felt less Canadian.
But to my good fortune, I was arriving at pickup hockey to often discover the goalie was a no-show. By the way, a tip: that is a proven Canadian way to lose friends. Then again, I can confirm a proven Canadian way to make friends is to pull together some equipment and just stand in goal and occasionally stand in the way of a puck.
To do better than that is much harder than it looks. It felt like a fool’s errand then, and many nights at the rink decades later it can feel the same way.
At my age, we no longer talk in the dressing room about our injuries; we talk about procedures. Where Wayne Gretzky talked about going where the puck will be, my teams mostly move to where the puck was or where it might never have been.
Matters not.
Oldtimers’ hockey has furnished friendships, networks, escape and the remnants of virility and youth. The rink ritual serves as the Great Canadian Cave, a safe zone of camaraderie and trash talk, of weekly catch-up on the family and the job and the idiots who govern.
But to be fair, there are much more crucial things to consider. Hockey is mostly a momentary dodge of the imperatives of community, and as we age our obligations grow to use our resources and resolve more regularly to address need. And if we can mix that pursuit with a pastime, so much the better.
That will draw me this year to meet a new batch of fellow travellers, this time for charitable purposes. The Hockey Helps The Homeless (HHTH) tournament November 26 at Thunderbird Arena at the University of British Columbia is a mixer of beer leaguers and real players (two National Hockey League alumni per team) who raise funds for the privilege of playing.
The day’s gathering of dozens of teams has taken place for a quarter-century across Canada in more than a dozen cities. The most recent Vancouver event in late 2019, one of the country’s largest each year, furnished $495,000 to homelessness initiatives. Nearly $4 million was raised nationally.
Our homelessness challenge in Vancouver needs no introduction, but let’s remind ourselves that when we tuck ourselves into bed tonight there will be more than 3,600 on our streets without shelter. Many are suffering multiple physical and mental health challenges, many are contending with addiction issues, multigenerational trauma and violence in their lives. They are at a profound remove from the men and women who will play for charity, but in talking to those who have participated, many can cite an inflection point where the plights of our homeless could have swallowed them, too. That often draws us to a charity; a donor could have easily been a recipient.
Any eye test on the Downtown Eastside would conclude conditions have worsened in the pandemic, and the sprawl of homelessness is encompassing new districts. With that has come several associated symptoms: deteriorating health circumstances as the rain and colder weather ensues, open drug use in several neighbourhoods, overdoses as a tragic daily feature and public concerns about street safety. Of course, no one wants this and Vancouver is trying, but failing, to grasp the extraordinary threat to well-being and loss of human potential that comes with the inadequate response – as are other Canadian cities.
The depth and complexity of the challenges require profound institutional reforms in health, education, housing and income support, among others, that no government seems willing or able to undertake because even partial solutions will take a generation. Instead we muster mostly a containment strategy.
That being said, it would be abhorrent to just let everything be. There are steps we can take to mitigate the daily and deepening harm that comes to our fellow Vancouverites, and for that we should be grateful for and supportive of organizations well into the weeds daily.
HHTH keeps the funds in the communities where they are generated. Locally from its last tournament in late 2019, some $495,000 was distributed locally to the Salvation Army, Urban Native Youth Association, Raincity Housing, Covenant House, Bloom Group, Westminster House, Zero Ceiling, First United, Lookout Housing and Health and Last Door. This year’s target is $500,000, and at this writing we are close to eclipsing it.
The deep roster of local business sponsors is impressive: the Canada Life insurance company, law firms like Dentons, Farris and Cassels, resource companies like Wheaton Precious Metals and Pan American Silver, financial services like Canaccord Genuity, BMO Capital Markets, Haywood, Winchester Securities Corp. and TMX, professional service firms like KPMG, Deloitte, companies like the Sandman Hotel Group, the Davidson & Co. accountancy, the Kingston Construction and Metrie building firms, the Bissett Fasteners manufacturer, the Hello Pal app, the Keurig Dr. Pepper and Pepsico beverage giants, the Odyssey production house, the Lift bakery and more. The Canucks’ J.T. Miller and wife Natalie are luncheon sponsors.
My ask comes last: My goal is $5,000. Please help me reach the goal at: http://tournament.hhth.com/goto/kirklapointe
Donations of more than $25 to indulge what will likely be my embarrassment earn a tax receipt. •
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of BIV and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
