Hazy Thoughts of Old Heroes And Then the Luxury of Sleep

By ART STOTT

VICTORIA TIMES

OCTOBER 19, 1965

To me one of the off-season joys of Shawnigan has been the solid sleep that comes with the longer nights and the relative lack of nocturnal human activity around our bay. No late visitors pass in their boats, growling the gutturals of slow-speed outboards, nor rev up their cars preparatory to driving home.

A man, no longer offered the inducements of a balmy evening, comes indoors as early dusk brings its chill. He can sit by the hearth and read while cedar and fir crackle in his newly-lit open fire and doze when the alder he has laid on the glowing base burns softly and forms its red coals.

He can rouse himself from the creature comfort of fireside indolence and wander into his bedroom, sharpened by its cold, make quick work of his changing and nestle down in his sleeping bag. Slumber comes as it warms around him, and the drip of rain from the eaves plays its small monotone.

I varied the routine last weekend, reverting to what was once a boyhood luxury. I switched on a small radio, as I lay snug under the covers, and listened to a hockey broadcast.

Radio was fairly new in my childhood—and I was a great deal newer than I am now. Tuning in any program brought a sense of delight, be it a "name" band playing "Valencia," or the Spanish fluency of an announcer in Mexico. Distance seemed almost as important as program content.

When we finally became blase enough to demand something we wanted to hear—not just any station—we had achieved sophistication. Nothing held greater importance to us than hockey. If we couldn't watch the game, hearing the play-by-play was the next best thing.

Nor were we youngsters alone in our devotion to the game and the Stanley Cup-bound Victoria Cougars, recently renamed from the Aristocrats. Adults cocked their ears to the horns of old speakers to catch the description of Frank Fredrickson making a solo rush from behind his own net, or Happy Holmes blocking a shot on our goal.

Hockey was an addiction and, for those who couldn't attend the games, the broadcast was the drug—so much so that the Rev. Clem Davies, with a flair for the spectacular, crammed the Royal Theatre one Sunday for a sermon titled "Happy Holmes (Homes) Saves."

Television and absence from the rink have left me unfamiliar with most of our hockey players in recent years. When Andy Hebenton came on the ice for Victoria Maple Leafs, though, I picked him as an old friend.

We have met a couple of times and probably have a nodding acquaintance, no more. Yet to me he represents in hockey what they mean when they call an athlete an "old pro" in the flattering sense of the term. I watched Andy when he broke into the Victoria scene with Bobby Frampton and Reggie Abbott on what we once called the kid line. I've watched him since in major league play.

It seems to me that he has always given a little more than 60 seconds' worth of effort each minute he's been on the ice—an honest workman with high ability, a team man and the kind of player who takes his bumps without assuming that the game is a simple excuse for mayhem and bloodshed.

In the stream of semi-consciousness that meanders through the mind of a man on the verge of comfortable sleep, there came to me at Shawnigan the nebulous thought that people like Andy Hebenton might well be examples for youngsters of today, as the Fredricksons, Haldersons, Oatmans, Johnsons, Harts, Loughlins, Walkers and Frasers were for the boys of my generation.

We gave them the worship of young idolaters. They gave us back an image of athletic prowess, sportsmanship and vitality—without, happily, the human frailties we might have noticed had we been more mature.

It seemed to me, as I reached for the dial to switch off the little radio, that the example was a great deal better than some of the sources of youthful emulation today—the off-key song stylists who shun the barber and wiggle, but with nothing like the authority of "Moose" Johnson swinging a hip into an attacking opponent.