A longtime resident of Uxbridge, Ted Barris has written professionally for 40 years - for radio, television, magazines and newspapers. The "Barris Beat" column began in the 1950s when his father Alex wrote for the Globe and Mail. Ted continues the tradition of offering a positive view of his community. He has written 16 non-fiction books of Canadian history and teaches journalism at Centennial College in Toronto.
A skate of passage
Our family enjoyed a once-in-a-lifetime moment last weekend. It was one of those rites of passage events that almost always happens in this country. You can bet on it each winter when the snow falls, ponds freeze and community recreation centres shift to wintertime activities. This rite of passage began a few weeks ago - at Christmas - when it was agreed our granddaughter would take her first skate this winter.
“I've got the bob skates,” my daughter told me last week. “And Take Time Uxbridge is offering a free one-hour pleasure skate at the arena.”
“I'll be there,” I said.
I immediately understood my role in this enterprise. I would assist in strapping on the blades. And once we hit the ice, I would be part of the support team … literally. I would help prop up the first-time skater and then help propel her around the rink. Well, the results were predictably charming and both emotionally and physically exhausting.
Bear in mind, my granddaughter, Layne, is just over three years old. She has the energy of a jack-in-the-box, the curiosity of a kitten and the vocabulary of a child two or three times her age. She's also extremely social. The minute my daughter and I sat Layne down in the arena dressing room to strap on the bob skates, she was greeting other skaters, pointing out that she had new skates for the occasion and wondering when the skating would actually begin. Watching her take those first exploratory strides - even though they were just on bob skates - was a treat. And once she realized that skating fast was even more fun than just skating, that's all I heard.
“Let's skate faster, Popou,” she called out. And I was expected to grab her under the arms, lift her just off the ice while I speeded up, and then set her back down allowing her skates to skim along the ice at death-defying speed while she hung on for dear life. But soon my back was breaking and it was time to invite Layne's mom back into the picture and we each held one arm, 'til the pain in my back subsided.
“Let's skate fast again,” she'd say. And we repeated the process.
I must add, by the way, that Take Time Uxbridge did a terrific job promoting and staging this event. It's all designed to get kids moving and healthy. They managed to attract skaters of every shape, age and calibre to the event. There were moms and dads and tots all on skates. There were hockey greats-in-the-making. There were young figure skaters galore (in fact, Take Time Uxbridge had recruited members of the figure skating club to assist on the ice). There were even a few teenagers enjoying the leisurely skate while checking out skaters of the opposite gender.
It reminded me of my own pleasure skating days as a teenager. Friday nights were special at the old Agincourt arena. The one at the foot of Glen Watford Drive was an outdoor facility in those days, but, as with most community pleasure skates, teenagers never felt the cold. At least they never admitted it. The object of the game was to meet, skate with and (most important) hold hands with that special someone for a couple of hours on a Friday night without parents or teachers chaperoning. Of course, that gave the boys and girls involved the entire weekend to talk about who skated with whom, or who didn't skate with whom.
What's remarkable is that those weekend community skates go back what seems like a million years. I met a Calgarian last year during a writing retreat out West. He told me that back in the 1930s his mom and dad had met at a weekend pleasure skate in Port Arthur (later amalgamated as part of Thunder Bay). In those years, he told me, the local co-op dairy used to dump the skim milk out behind the creamery plant allowing the discarded liquid to freeze in winter. That's right, they pleasure skated on frozen milk. And the night his parents allegedly met on the co-op milk rink, his dad invited his mom, but got there early - just paying his own admission, thus saving her admission - agreeing to meet on the ice. They met, fell in love (he saved a quarter) and later married happily for more than half a century - thanks to the co-op milk rink.
All these images of the weekend pleasure skate accompanied those landmark circuits around the Uxbridge arena last Sunday with my granddaughter. I wondered when Layne would graduate from bob skates to figure or hockey skates, whether the teenaged tango on ice would still be around when she reached that age, and whether she would remember her first strides on bob skates.
I know I (and my back) sure will.
