Alumnus nets a winner with 'How Hockey Explains Canada'


Jim Prime with a copy of 'How Hockey Explains Canada'

By Fred Sgambati (’83)

Can hockey really explain Canada?

A new book by Paul Henderson and Jim Prime (’69) published in November 2011 tries to do just that. How Hockey Explains Canada is a 208-page collection of anecdotes and observations that consider the impact of our national obsession on such things as Confederation, Feminism, Don Cherry and the Cold War among other things. Even Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a hockey historian in his own right, weighs in, penning the foreword to the book.

Prime, who lives in New Minas, Nova Scotia with his wife Glenna and was an interim editor for the Bulletin while at Acadia, is a veteran sportswriter with a dozen books to his credit. Most deal with baseball, however, so when his publisher, Triumph Books in Chicago, approached him with an idea to write a hockey book Prime said he was interested, but a bit flummoxed.

He asked for and received permission to approach it any way he wanted and then took time to figure out if the question could be answered at all. “I wasn’t sure I could answer it definitively,” he says, “so I thought the way to do it would be to interview as many hockey people that I could. I didn’t want this to be a serious tome. In fact, I’d rather read about hockey personalities and what they think of the game and how it has affected them.”

The publisher asked him who he would like to work with and two names sprang to mind immediately: Jean Beliveau, former captain of the Montreal Canadiens, and Paul Henderson. Prime was interested in Henderson for several reasons: Henderson certainly had the name recognition the publisher wanted; Prime believed Henderson had stories to tell; and he was, after all, the guy who had scored The Goal in Game 8 of the Summit Series.

The publisher approached Henderson and he agreed to do it. “That really got my juices going,” Prime said. “He’s one of my heroes and working with Paul on a book for the Canadian market was really cool.” The two have become friends and Prime says Henderson is unfailingly affable, a great ambassador for the sport and a tremendous fount of information.

‘A Kennedy moment’

Prime likens Henderson’s Summit Series goal to a “kind of Kennedy moment, one of those moments in your life when you remember where you were when it happened.” Many people have met Henderson as he toured the book and shared stories of where they were when he scored and what it meant to them. There’s no doubt it’s a watermark in the nation’s collective memory.

Thirty-five interviews and 10 months of writing produced a completed manuscript. “I talked with Paul a lot during that time,” Prime says, “and he gave me tons of stories. And through Paul, I was able to talk to virtually everyone I wanted; his name was such a door-opener. He’s a presence throughout the book and I couldn’t have done it without him.”

What he discovered in his conversations with current and former NHL players, coaches, executives and commentators such as Beliveau, Ron Ellis, Darryl Sittler, Alan Eagleson, Serge Savard, Bobby Clarke, Tiger Williams, Geoff Molson and Harry Sinden to name a few is that hockey is not just a game or an athletic endeavour. “It’s a focal point,” Prime says, “reflecting our pioneer spirit. Hockey is where we have gathered together; it’s an ecumenical thing and it reflects us as a people.”

Several interviews stand out. He says he was starstruck by Jean Beliveau, whom he describes as a class act from the word go.  Eagleson was another standout because, in hockey circles, it’s possible he’s the most reviled man in Canada.

“But when you talk to these guys,” Prime notes, “they become people. Eagleson was very generous with his time for me. He loves the game of hockey, created the Players’ Association and was the architect of the Summit Series. He did a lot of good, but a lot of bad too, and hurt a lot of people.”

Former Philadelphia captain Bobby Clarke was a surprise, too. Prime admitted going into the interview thinking he wouldn’t like Clarke because of his infamous slash on Russian star Valery Kharmalov in the ’72 series. “I thought, ‘Do we really want to win that way?’” and he was worried that Clarke would be abrasive and defensive.

Just the opposite. Clarke answered all of Prime’s questions and even walked Prime through the moments leading up to the slash. “He didn’t dodge it all,” Prime says, “and I have grudging respect for that. I respect the fact Clarke put his hand up and said, ‘I did it.’”

And he was emphatic in saying that Team Canada assistant coach John Ferguson did not prompt him to go after Kharmalov, as some have suggested. Clarke says Kharmalov’s stick had come up and touched his face during the game and that gave him an excuse to “hunt him down and hit him in an unprotected area.”

It’s our game

Prime has confirmed what he always suspected: people take hockey very seriously and feel a strong sense of ownership. There’s a clear imperative that it’s our game and we don’t want it taken from us.

“You ask the average Canadian what keeps people together,” he adds. “It’s hockey.” He cites the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and Sidney Crosby’s gold-medal winning goal in overtime or Henderson’s tally in the 1972 Canada-Russia Series. Decades apart, yet millions of Canadians gathered to share each of those moments “and there’s no need to be embarrassed or ashamed of that. Hockey at its best is an art form. Like any art form it has its low points, but there’s no reason to be ashamed to say it’s the glue that keeps this country together.”

Hockey, in Prime’s estimation, touches on our patriotism and provides a rallying point for Canadians that is unrivaled by anything else in our culture. It’s something we should embrace and nothing to run away from.

“We all know that the Summit Series didn’t end the Cold War,” Prime says with a smile, “but there are a couple of nice jumping off points in this stuff as a writer and it was a lot of fun to do this book. I felt like I was returning to my roots.”


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