A cool winter breeze from a poorly insulated window gusted into my room, and I awoke immediately. Even with three blankets (one being wool) I still couldn’t keep warm. The old farm house was heated by a wood stove, and each morning around 7 am as the wood from the night before died out, the place became frigid.

I went upstairs as each step creaked with anticipation of the next. Once upstairs, my eyes squinted and fought with the bright light of a cold Canadian winter landscape outside. Small snowflakes fell, but I knew they would stop soon. Last night had been one of the coldest nights of the year, and I knew the pond would be in top shape. The sizzle of bacon sent crackles across the room as I came around the corner to see my mom cooking up a storm –God it smelled good. Growing up on a farm, breakfast was by far the most important meal of the day. You don't miss breakfast in this house, plain and simple. We had a farm with about 200 milkers, 50 beef cattle, and a coupe full of annoying chickens. Every morning a days worth of work was put in before most people even crawled out of their beds. After the work was done, it was time to play –it was Saturday and their was only one place to go....

Years ago, my father had built a little log cabin beside the rink, in which it had some benches inside to put your skates on and an old log fire place that kept it toasty. I went outside where a quart of wood was stored under an old make shift tin roof, and grabbed some kindling cedar and a few big logs. Within minutes I had the fire crackling, and some snow being melted on the stove so I could make some hot chocolate.

Do sane people get up this early when it’s -29 Celsius and want to skate on a frozen pond by them selves in the middle of no where? On this day, I figured it was just me that was this crazy. I grabbed a few pucks from the bucket beside the door, full of biscuits that had been lost the previous winter--then found the following spring. I walked up a path that had fresh snow over it, creating my own tracks behind me..

I brought out the old net from behind the shed that had strings and ropes hanging from it, a testament of makeshift repairs with any thread we could find-- what a timeless beauty. The ice was in top shape for me to wheel around and fire a few pucks into that old classic net. I was all alone engulfed by the beauty of everything our great country represented – Nature, Hockey, and Culture. .

The smell of a warm crackling fire in that log cabin beside the pond is something more familiar and comforting to me then anything else in the world – I wouldn’t give that up for anything. The cold Canadian wind whipping across the Prairies like a slap shot hits my face, and I gasp only for a second to find that I want to breathe more of it. My son Jacob takes a wrist shot missing the net and rendering the puck lost into the abyss that is hockey lore. He looks at me like he just broke my favorite coffee mug. I smile at him and warm heartedly tell him “Son, don’t worry about it, we'll find that puck again in the spring”. He smiles and glides away effortlessy, as the laws of movement had seemingly ceased for just one moment. Eventually we all find that puck we lost way back when, at some point or another. As I walk out from the cabin to the pond, a old wooden sign hangs above the door where it has sat for fourty years. It reads " Live for today, dream for tomorrow". I smile and walk out to a rink full of dreams and hope. As I glide out onto the ice, I take a deep breathe of frosty Canadian air, and then smile a little wider --I am home. For just one brief moment in time, I am twelve years old again, with no responsibilities in the world --just a stick, skates, and a million possibilities. Outro: This story was written by the uncle of one of the Gongshow Hockey founders, at the request of GSH. We believed that it represented the roots of the game that we try so hard to represent in our clothing line. Thanks Big Steve!