03-08-2025
This summer, I played hockey in steamy Toronto rinks — and fell even harder for the game
In the traditional hockey season, winter challenges me to get to every game — manifesting sudden blizzards, biting wind, and frozen roads, as if trying to make a hard game even harder. Summer hockey, on the other hand, delights in getting me to my station in the crease with ease, sending me to the rink in sunshine and warm breezes, sporting a tan that belies the role. From May to August, the game transforms me from an ice warrior into someone in running shoes, holding a Sno Cone.
While winter ends for some of us, playing hockey does not. The ice is still Zamboni'ed, the benches are mopped and swept, the showers and washrooms cleaned with ammonia, and the clocks set and reset on the game clock, which is how the chilled skaters of summer measure the passing of time. Just this year, Lambton Arena in Etobicoke kept their ice in for the whole calendar, and my home rink, McCormick on Brock Avenue, while a little less busy than in the depths of February, still sees people lugging hockey bags through the double doors — only this time in shorts instead of winter coats, exiting into the sunshine where equipment, when laid out, dries in a crisp instant. For many, hockey is forever our cardio, our social release, our strategy for keeping our mental health in decent shape. We can't all be mountain biking or swimming in the river or water-skiing at cottages that we don't have. Canadians identify as cold-weather creatures fighting through the sleet and snow, but it's those that seek a frozen place in the heat of July who go beyond even that.
