EXCLAIM HOCKEY SUMMIT of the ARTS 2008

For the past eight years I have been playing in the Exclaim Hockey Summit of the Arts. I first played for the Montreal Stompies and as I got to know people I began playing for the Gas Station Islanders with my son in law Dylan. You can find a history of that team in my blog GSI further along on this page. I have never played in a tournament quite like this one. Over the ten years of it’s existence it has grown from a match between two teams, to this year having thirty eight co-ed teams from all across Canada. From Victoria to Halifax. It is truly amazing. It is open to the public. The games are at Canalan Ice York University during the day and the team/band Hootenanny Performances are at the El Mocambo in the evenings.

Here is what I wrote after taking part in the 2004 Summit.

Puck Rock 2004
In the winter of my fifty second year, I got body-checked by my seventeen year old self. It seems the circularity of life will always be a revelation. Let me explain: when I was seventeen I was living in Northern Ontario attending high school, playing hockey and moonlighting as a rock musician. You might say typical teenage territory, but at that time, which was the sixties, (although the North still thought and acted like it was the fifties), combining a love of the game of hockey and a new found love for the burgeoning world of pop music was not typical. So I say moonlighting as a rock musician, because sports and rock music really didn’t go together according to prevailing thought. You were either a jock or a music geek but seldom both. The old world glory of team sports was just beginning to feel the shift of attention to the exploding excitement of pop music. It was a new thing trying to meld both worlds. Nevertheless we did. At least a few of us did. I played music AND hockey in our old corrugated metal, quon-set hut arena that by the way, had natural ice indoors. My band used to rent the YMCA gym for five bucks, charge fifty cents to get in and fill the place. We were the only band in town and we had just enough kids to make a team. So both worlds, although seemingly in opposition, even shared the same house. It’s now 2004, I’m fifty-two years old, have just finished one of my best seasons of hockey, ever, and Saturday night I was jamming in a club in front of four hundred people. The circularity gives me a warm and fuzzy buzz. The culmination of my hockey season and my musical presence onstage comes courtesy of Exclaim magazine. The best music mag in Canada. For the past few years Exclaim and it’s distribution manager Tom Goodwin have sponsored and organized the Exclaim Hockey Summit. Twenty-four hockey teams made up of musicians, actors, comedians, writers and artists from Vancouver to Halifax gather in Toronto for a hockey tournament. Although my youthful years melding both those worlds may have been cutting edge, that is not a truism any more. Nowadays being part of both worlds is obviously commonplace. In fact, it’s pretty much one of the rites of passage for Canadian boys and girls these days and there are quite a few young women playing on this weekend. I have played in quite a few tournaments and there is nothing quite like this one. A lot of these people, even though they are from all over the country, know each other because of the cross related network within the entertainment/arts industry. There is camaraderie amongst teams, not just within your team, that is novel and sets things apart. You can play as hard and tough as you want in the hockey games, but you have to face these people, laugh with them, even dance with them in the evening. Some of them are friends, co-workers and acquaintances you haven’t seen for awhile. If you let the dark side take hold of you in hockey, you will loose out on or even damage the unique spirit this event perpetrates. Teams actually get deducted points if they do not perform in the stage portion and you can get points if you do not get any penalties. That is not to say this is hockey lite, on the contrary, hockey contains the physical elements of speed and intensity, and players and teams in competition will inevitable escalate the dance . It is the nature of the game. You may just want to leave as much the crap as possible, elsewhere.
My team the Gastation Islanders is named for and sponsored by the famous Gastation recording studio which is now located on Toronto Islands thus the Islanders moniker. There are members from the Dinner Is Ruined band, By Divine Right, the Rheostatics, the Ron Sexsmith band, a Juno award winning producer, writers, managers, and agents on this team, which is indicative of all the teams present. We Islanders have played exceedingly well and have tied the Wheatfield Souldiers (Winnipeg), smoked the Ottawa Songbird Millionaires and got beat by the new kids, Versus Magazine, a punky skateboard/music mag from Toronto. I got 1st star in the opening game for a beautiful goal I managed to score, my team has it’s own personal hockey card and I have the tee shirt. Imagine that.
So this is how I found myself playing bass onstage in front of four hundred sweating, buzzing revelers in a downtown Toronto club doing a version of Camper Van Beethoven’s Take the Skinheads Bowling that team-mate Tim Vesely of the Rheos has challenged us with. As I look out at this throbbing mass of friends, musical heroes and battered hockey mates, this weird dimensional time shift takes place. Flash, I’m seventeen, playing in my band These Boys in an arena in Northern Ontario, which my hockey team the Hornepayne Beavers played hockey in that afternoon. I can still detect the smell my hockey gloves leave on my sweaty hands, and my fingers have blisters from playing bass so enthusiastically, there are so many shared moments. Flash, I’m back, with a two minute penalty for game delay. I have just been body checked by my former seventeen year old self. Whoooo!

~ by gwcollins on March 7, 2008.