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A Must read Canadian History book

my grandson has alas been at it since three. He is 13. They have curfews. I don't know how my daughter and son in law deal with all the travel. They have three jobs and drinking and partying does not happen. My daughter brings work with her as she has to work.. Meanwhile SIL is usually recovering from 90 hour work weeks as a paramedic supervisor in CT or actually at work..

The oldest just sprouted from 5'4" to 5'10" in about six months. He's technically off season and playing lacrosse which he likes ( Grandma its legal to whack people in the legs with your stick"!) but still hockey two times a week. He is 140 lbs of muscle and aspires to be a wingman in the NHL.

I have to remind him ( his mother does too) that NHL is not forever and there will be life after that to be ready for.

The kids in our hockey program are not allowed to have grades below B. Anything below B. Not one C. I think school should come first too. He is in an academic school system where the college entrance rate is 96 percent or so. And not just any college.

We have met many Canadian hockey parents and they sure are more polite than some of their American parent brethren; who still have not learned that if they engage in obnoxious sideline coaching they and kids will be ejected. One team last year endured 18 hours on a bus from Nova Scotia to New Hampshire in the dead of winter during a storm and the bus heater broke down. No wonder they lost their first game.. they were exhausted. They did well in future games but really six games in three days is really barbaric.

My grandson has missed nine days of school, the max allowed. Were travel times shorter than four hours things would be different but its insane.. Games are never local. What gets me is they come here to play ( 6 hours) a team that is ( 15 minutes) near them at home.

O my we are drifting . You Canadians started it.

BTW the grandkids want to go back to Toronto this summer to the Hockey Hall of Fame. They were there a whole day last summer and their parents were bored after a couple of hours. Not so the kids.
 
My brother works for the Boston Red Sox, he has always been a fan of them even when Toronto got a team, it is his dream job. I am a Jays fan and always took the opportunities to tease when the Jays would come from behind and beat the Red Sox. One day he got up and hit a door and broke it. Funny how I remember that.

I don't follow hockey much but would be a Leafs fan even with the Jets being the rave of Winnipeg.
 
I was in my favourite bookstore today to pick up the 3 titles I'd ordered a month ago. I know I know, I could've just sent some business Amazon way but I really like this little bookstore. He keeps prices down and fills out the shelves with a fascinating array of used books. And he's friendly and personable. I don't get "Would you like to join our loyalty-membership bonus point plan??" Roy the owner already has my loyalty, we don't need any bonus point plan to pry my e-mail address from me. He just scribbles my phone number down in his old tattered notebook, and he remembers my name. "Oh Brad!! I'm sorry I didn't call you about your books! I've been, um, busy." No problem Roy. I heard he was under the weather, and of course he's always studying scripts for the local plays he's involved with. In any case I picked up my books, but not without roaming the shelves to find three more impulse buys. I found as a matter of coincidence 1867 And All That, but after a quick skim through decided to leave it for another day. There are only about a dozen or so books in that "category" of "another day buys" on Roy's shelves. They are mostly local history books, many of them anecdotal diary type self published copies about pioneer days in early Canada. In recent years I've been moving towards those kinds of reads, more personal histories and fewer encyclopaedic tomes. My poor memory struggles with dates, names and histories; but the forgiving fluidity of story telling soothes my brain rather than taxes it. Where was I again?
Oh yeah, crazy history stranger than fiction. It's probably all in the telling and not so much the tale, but I've always loved history (in particular Canadian and American) delivered as adventure epics detailing personable people and their very real lives. History delivered as studious texts "Mr Smythe, born 1775 died in battle 1841, son of Colonel Thelonius Smythe..." Zzzzzzzzzz.
1867 etc looks like a fun read. I'll pick it up next time.
 
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