Why I don’t ice-skate.

Why I don’t skate.

Firstly, I don’t ice-skate because I simply can’t, maybe I should rephrase that I don’t skate because I never wanted to learn. Okay, never is a big word: I don’t skate because…

When I was just wee lad of say 8 or 9 and already living in Canada, after emigrating from Holland, my parents thought it would be fun for me to learn to ice-skate, a typical Canadian winter pastime. At that time of my life, I was wearing a large metal brace on my left polio inflicted leg. This brace started from just under my crotch and went the length down to my foot. At the knee, there was a movable joint allowing me to bend if I needed to sit for example. Although, if I straightened my leg this sliding joint would fall down, closing the brace, making my leg solid and unable to bend through its entire length. At the bottom, my brace met a high cut boot at the ankle, where there was another joint allowing partial movement in a back and forth direction. The boot itself was raised by a thick lift of about 5 cm. attached to the bottom of the boot. Quite a contraption really, and one that I truly learned to hate over the years.

Drawing which I made, some years ago, using my leg-brace as the image.

The doctors in London, Canada, for whatever reason, felt that it was important to immobilize my leg; where as the doctors in Holland did not agree and did not encourage wearing an apparatus that would further atrophy my already weakened leg. My parents living in London had little choice but to adhere to the decisions of the local medical community. This is the backdrop to my lessons on trying to have fun with the Canadian winter and assimilate into a culture where winter plays a big part as we have ample winter in this country.

So then at age 8 or 9 my parents thought I should learn to skate as they were also taking my two sisters Margaret and Anne to partake in their Canadian birthright at the local ice-arena. The problem was that I wasn’t allowed to take off the brace and we most certainly couldn’t afford to have a custom-made brace built with an ice skate for a boot: which when you think about it would be a poor investment. My parents being as resourceful as they were, thought by strapping a bob skate (two bladed skate) to the bottom of my existing brace the problem would be solved and I’d be able to go down to the arena and skate with my sisters.

Childrens Bob-Skates

I remember that day as if it was yesterday, even these 40 years later, the day I was introduced to ice-skating. Off we went to an ice-arena nearby called Glen Cairn Arena. There where hordes of other children on the ice, as we sat on the benches preparing ourselves to go out and skate with them. My sisters had shiny white figure skates and were off in a flash, skating around the rink with ease. I on the other hand took sometime longer to ready as the logistics of fastening a bob skate to the bottom on my elevated boot took at little more thought and time. I was ready to go! Off I went, my left leg immobilized from the brace and with the bob skates attached to the bottom of my boots. You can imagine the image of me hobbling out on to the ice with my restrained braced left leg, wearing two bladed skates, on top of the already cumbersome brace. Behind a chair, I pushed myself around the ice in the center of the rink, occasionally receiving a gentle nudge forward from one of my sisters. My mother sitting in the seats watching her son do what he always did best: I am one of those people that takes on a “little engine that can” character, I know I can, I know I can….
When suddenly I couldn’t! I looked out of my little self-obsessed world, in trying to learn to skate, when I noticed that almost every eye in that arena was cast upon me. I can understand why of course, here was a kid with a big metal brace that had a 5-cm. lift under its boot and his entire fragile frame was being held up and propelled by two bladed skates. Who wouldn’t have looked – even I would have. The fact is that Canadians skate like Dutch people ride bicycles. Ice skating is as common here as soccer is to an Italian. Young children learn to skate on single bladed skates almost as soon as they learn to walk and start playing hockey sometime soon there after. Virtually every Canadian knows the rules or terms of Hockey even if they never played the game, it is a part of our culture. Canadians even go so far as to say, “Hockey is our game”.

Typical image of a Canadian child: Little Jean Reid on Bob Skates (daughter of Photographer Harry Reid)

So there I was standing on the rink, wearing what would seem like very odd twin bladed skates attached to a leg-brace and lifted shoe, standing behind a chair, being pushed by girls, with every eye transfixed on me. I didn’t feel like a star and it was not the kind of attention that I was seeking. I felt like a fish in an aquarium with a scuba diving tank; a rather odd thing to see. Instead of being the “little engine that could” I wanted to quit right there on the spot and get the “jiminy cricket” off that ice. I felt humiliated, as though everyone’s startled face was laughing at me. I know now that they were not laughing, they were just perplexed to see something so strange; and strange it was, even from my perspective now. Nevertheless, as a boy of 8-9 this was not a fun filled afternoon of partaking in our National pastime it was an hour in hell, a hell of cold and ice. Who said hell couldn’t freeze over because it certainly felt that way for me that afternoon?

I never wore those skates again and the only times I ever went to an arena after that was to attend music concerts or watch the occasional hockey game from the seats. That’s why I don’t skate and have never had an interest in learning since. Every time I even think on trying to skate, I see all those eyes coming out of the dim of my memory and I am handicapped again. Truth is that I probably should have continued, as it would have benefited me in having yet another thing to do in those cold filled days of winter.

A funny little side note is that I now live next to a public park that also has an indoor ice-arena. There is not a winters day that goes by where I cannot here the sounds of skating and hockey every time I step outside in the clear cold air; the whistles, the pucks slapping the boards, the jaunts of the fans, as well as seeing the Zamboni empty it’s frozen skimmed ice contents into the lot behind the arena.
I did however go skating again. I took my two children to skate as infants in the Canadian tradition. I stood behind them in my shoes and held them up until they learned to skate on their own. As for me, well I learned to love to swim. In the water, I never had to wear that damn brace and a good thing to, as it would have drug me to the bottom to meet my demise. In water, I was never handicapped and subsequently developed of love for anything to do with water, that was of course until the water froze.

When I think, back now I laugh because you know the picture of a fish lying on frozen ice just about sums up how I felt: a fish out of water.

That is why I don’t ice skate.