Those rings weighed far more than a regular puck and I stickhandled with them and worked on my wrist shot until my wrists and forearms were rock hard. It was a joy to find the game in the heat of summer, and when I saw a workman cutting off sections of three-inch pipe with a welding torch one afternoon, I asked if he could cut me a couple. Father Leboutilier ran interference for me with Sister Ignacia and got me free time to practice in the hour before the evening meal. Then I took a stick and a puck and began snapping wrist shots at the net. I carried it out to the area where the hockey nets were stored and placed it about twenty feet in front of one of them. As I wiped the chaff away, it felt like ice on my palm. One day when I was working in the barn, I discovered a sheet of linoleum stuffed in the back of the loft. I tapped into the spirit of hockey in those tough training runs. Leaping and bounding between the rocks was exhilarating, and we made a game of it. Once I could do a dozen in a row, he took me along the ridge to where boulders were thrown in a mad jumble at its base. We started to do wind sprints up the face of the ridge. As I demonstrated each new technique, each step up in understanding, the delight on his face was my reward. I learned how to fire accurately off either foot while still in motion and he showed me how my skates could help me handle the puck on the attack. He taught me how to snap off wrist shots like rockets with fast passes he fed me from behind the net. Father Leboutilier taught me how to take a pass on my backhand without looking then switch it to my forehand to take a shot. During those sessions I learned how to transfer what I could see in my head into my feet and my hands. He’d wait until I had scraped the ice clear and done my warm-ups, then lace up his own skates and join me. So it didn’t surprise me when he began to show up at my early morning solo practices. When he coached us or watched the televised games, he lost the solemn priestly facade and became a boy again, licking his lips in anticipation. I stepped onto the ice and Saul Indian Horse, the abandoned Ojibway kid, clutched in the frozen arms of his dead grandmother, ceased to exist.įather Leboutilier loved the game more than anybody. When I hit the ice I left all of that behind me. He was the author of several acclaimed memoirs and more than a dozen novels, including Indian Horse, Medicine Walk, and Dream Wheels. Richard Wagamese (1955-2017) was one of Canada’s foremost writers, and one of the leading Indigenous writers in North America. The following is from Richard Wagamese's novel, Indian Horse.
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