Early morning practice
Broadcast Date: Dec. 2, 1996
On winter mornings, in homes across Canada, a weekend ritual begins with an alarm clock piercing the darkness. A sleepy child is coaxed into clothes. The car slowly warms while parent and player navigate icy roads to the arena. Sometimes you wonder "why on earth you do this," says Roy MacGregor, hockey dad and author of The Seven A.M. Practice: Stories of Family Life, in this clip from CBC Television's Midday.A special bond is forged, MacGregor says, in those early hours. Paul Jordan, a Toronto hockey dad and coach with four boys, agrees. "I do it, not for the love of the game, but for the love of my children." Heather Haworth of Halifax loves the mornings and credits hockey with bringing her oldest boy out of his shell. They don't do it for the hockey-rink coffee, Jordan adds.
Early morning practice
• Roy MacGregor's 1995 non-fiction book, The Seven A.M. Practice: Stories of Family Life, is a collection of his newspaper columns. Many of the stories feature his own four children's adventures in amateur sports, including hockey. "People in this country need to know there is still a game out there, waiting," he wrote in one column.• MacGregor is the author of several hockey books. They include Home Game: Hockey and Life in Canada (1989) written with former goaltending great Ken Dryden, and Home Team: Fathers, Sons & Hockey (1995). He has also written the popular Screech Owl book series about a fictitious minor hockey team. As a young boy in Huntsville, Ont., MacGregor often played against future NHL superstar Bobby Orr, who was on a team in nearby Parry Sound.
• Hockey mom and humorist Catherine Lawrence has joked that arena food is "a separate category in the Canada Food guide." The category, she told the Globe and Mail, "includes beef jerky, cheese glop from a pump bottle and stale buns."
Early morning practice
Medium: Television
Program: Midday
Broadcast Date: Dec. 2, 1996
Guest(s): Heather Haworth, Paul Jordan, Roy MacGregor
Host: Brent Bambury
Interviewer: Tina Srebotnjak
Duration: 9:08
Last updated:
June 1, 2007
Radio
19:19
Roch Carrier reads his classic story and Peter Gzowski responds with a hockey tale of his own.
Television
2:51
The prize of Howard Dill's hockey memorabilia collection is the frozen pond out back.
Early morning practice.
The CBC Digital Archives Website.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Last updated: June 1, 2007.
[Page consulted on Feb. 13, 2012.]