FROM JUNE 2022 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX

I have no favourite neighbourhood bar, café or club, even though I’ve lived through endless waves of new ones, old ones and in-between ones. I don’t have an auto mechanic who tells stories from under the bonnet of our aching Nissan and I haven’t learned the names of all the check-out clerks at Fiesta Farms, at least those who take over once Kathy and Sera have gone home. The florist at the end of our block is a kind woman with a grey bun who ties bouquets together with an elastic band, and the clerk at Foto Grocery measures his words without opportunity for a rejoinder. Dog walkers pass my house every day. I have a dog, but I don’t know them either.

But these people I know: Danny, Rick, Justin, Brian, Paulie and, occasionally, Neil. I know who among them has recovered from a cancer diagnosis (Rick); I know who takes beer cans left after games and carries them bulging like plump morels in clear bags to the flatbed of his truck (Danny); I know which of them speaks low and smokes quietly while hoodied outside the rink (Brian); I know who once had a wild dream that he was riding an elephant while snogging with his girlfriend, leading Janet to shout: “The elephant is a Zamboni!” (Justin) I know who is related to bandleader Fred Spek (Neil); and I know whose mom recently spent time in the hospital, putting a crease in his plans to compete again for Portugal in the World Ball Hockey Championships (Paulie, who grew up in Regent Park playing hockey with ex-NHLer Glen Metropolit). I also know that the Colorado Avalanche’s Andrew Cogliano’s nonno ran the snack shop in the adjacent rec centre – a photo of Andrew was taped to the wall – and that two notable Americans – Muhammed Ali and Robert Kennedy Jr. – both visited McCormick Arena, the place where I’ve spent more combined hours than anywhere that isn’t home.

McCormick was named after Mary McCormick, a wealthy American philanthropist who employed musicians in her retinue and whose Toronto estate set the record for “the largest fete ever held in Canada,” a four-day festival in 1916. The arena sits on the site of the former Grand National Rink, off Brock Avenue, between Queen and Dundas, its ice machines thrumming through the brick. The building and attached rec centre are pleasantly fused to the neighbourhood, although occasionally residents of Frankish Avenue, the street that runs along its north side, wish it were elsewhere, owing to clusters of Saturday-night warriors lingering in the skinny parking lot shouting about refs and crossbars. Still, that it’s parcelled between Brock, Frankish, Sheridan and Middleton – knees-up to McCormick Park along the south end – means that neighbourhood figure skaters, hockey players, swimmers, gymnasts and others can play and learn and exercise minutes from their homes, requiring no costly or awkward shepherding of sporting children across town. Inside there are purple and gold walls and a metal tribune that clangs when struck by a game-bound player tapping it for good luck. The rink glows with life and wonder, its lobby lights swishing out to the street. When renovations were announced a few years ago, some chewed on fingernails worrying what that might mean to the arena’s hard-won charm, but all it amounted to was fresh paint, new dressing room benches and better lamps for lighting (there was also major electrical done). Some rinks’ dressing rooms are known for volcanic garbage cans, sewer-water showers and days-old pizza crusts smushed in their soggy corners, but despite all of the sweat and farts and beer spray, McCormick Arena remains forever bright and clean, speaking to the crew’s ability to run out there one more time.

One evening before a game, I noticed a middle-aged woman in a zippered-tight parka and hood skating slowly with eyes pressed close in a crowd of younger skaters doing impressive twirls and spins and salchows. I observed her for a handful of consecutive weeks and, eventually, I noticed that the older gentleman with his head pressed against the glass was former Maple Leaf Mike Walton, who won a Cup – that Cup – with Toronto in 1967. I approached him and he told me that his daughter had had a brain injury and that she was recovering by learning how to skate. We talked about growing old and the importance of continuing to play sports, even when age conspires against you.

I first walked into McCormick Arena in 1988, invited to a game by members of the enduring rock band UIC, who lived at 13 Grenadier Ave., the first house they saw after migrating from Exeter, Ontario. Saturdays, Sundays, sometimes Wednesdays and Fridays. It’s been 34 years. I’ve never stopped.

When Paul Myers asked where his brother, Mike, might play hockey while in town for a film shoot, I told him: “McCormick.” When someone asked a friend where Choclair might be photographed sitting on a giant ice throne for his album cover, he suggested: “McCormick.” The artist collective Fast-Wurms have been skating here for 30 plus years, and when environmental champion Mark Mattson told me that Bobby Kennedy Jr. was in town for a Waterkeepers’ address, and could we do something different with him, I offered: “McCormick?” Ice was rented and we gathered for some shinny. Bobby moved on the tips of his skates and everyone tried to put him through on a breakaway.

His cameo brought to mind a chain of historical West End walk-ons: a few streets north, The Band played at the Concord Tavern before joining Bob Dylan, who wrote “Hurricane” about the unjust imprisonment of Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, who ended up living one street west on Delaware. Carter was a boxer in the time of Ali, who visited the McCormick rec centre in 1966 while in town to fight the great George Chuvalo, and whose activism mirrored Bobby’s dad’s (and his uncle’s) by helping to establish the Civil Rights Act. It was around this time, also, that Gord Downie came out to play goal for us, fierce and serious once his mask was snapped into place. John Tavares played here, Jordan Kyrou and Akim Aliu, too. In his youth, Patrick Chan was a local figure skater. The city’s story is written in these ice grooves.

I’m at McCormick a little less these days. It’s partly because of COVID, and partly from injuring my back after getting fallen upon in the crease by a large real estate agent. For the first time in my life I had to work harder to summon the desire to skate. Skating has always been about freedom – the pipes open and everything inside pours out to make room for nothing other than what’s happening – but I was too weary and sore to think of anything other than being weary and sore. I suppose this is part of aging, but the cold of the rink usually freezes such concerns. It takes very little to get moving and once you’re inside the stride, it’s gone. You’re a wave, you’re a streak, you’re an arrow, you’re a train. But pain sucks and so does the real world. Together, they can conspire and every now and then they take you down.

On the south side of the rink boards are three enormous hockey card photos that hang, fittingly, over the penalty box and timekeepers’ hutch (McCormick is unique in that there is but a single box, so players with coincidental minors have to sit together and work their shit out). The people in the photos are Joey Panko, who suffered a heart attack and died while playing here; Rick MacDonald, a darkly goateed referee who took his own life in the waters of Lake Ontario; and David Blacquiere, another ref who was murdered in 2017. I knew Rick and Dave, and I liked them both, and looking up a few weeks ago while watching a friend’s game reminded me of the precious freedom of play, and how one minute it’s there, and the next it’s not. One minute you’re ordering some nickel goon to sit for two minutes and the next you’re moving into the frigid water for the last time. One minute you’re leaning against the boards and shit-talking some forward about how they’ve lost a step and the next you’re tumbling out of your car, fatally stabbed by your dealer in front of a drug store. One minute, you fall out of love with the game and the rink and the next you realize it’s a place where you feel safe, cared for and understood.

You’re skating again.