Books like Wayne Gretzky's Ghost

I love this collection of writing about hockey. It includes memoirs, essays, magazine articles, book excerpts, fiction, poetry, and even a one-act play about the game. Some of my favourites are an elegantly written 1954 magazine article by Hugh MacLennan called "Fury on Ice"; Morley Callaghan’s “The Game that Makes a Nation,” an essay on Canada’s “national drama”; Hugh Hood's riveting close-up look at Jean Beliveau's artistry; and Mordecai Richler’s sad look at a retiring Gordie Howe, who sidelines as an Amway salesman. This book is so full of great reads.

The night Brian Spencer first played for the Toronto Maple Leafs, his father was angry that the local TV station was airing another game. After driving to the station with a gun and forcing the staff to show the Leaf game, he died in a stand-off with the RCMP. “Spinner” played 553 NHL games, but life after hockey wasn’t easy. In 1988, a year after his acquittal on kidnapping and murder charges, he died from a gunshot during a drug-related robbery in Florida. O’Malley is an excellent journalist and this is a powerfully told story of a tragic life. 

Ken Dryden is a lawyer, a politician, and a gifted writer. He also happens to be one of the most important goaltenders in Canadian hockey history.

Armed with such lived experience and trained in a variety of disciplines as he has been, Dryden provided hockey with its central and perhaps most enduring literary work. Unlike some of our other choices, The Game is less about larger socio-cultural trends (though there is some of this, especially when he recounts his crucial role in the famous Summit Series against the Soviets in 1972), but rather more about the inner dynamics of a team and what it means to win or lose together in professional sport.

Dryden’s work is, yes, historical, but also highly philosophical; his unique position in goal gave him an ice-level perspective that few enjoy (his iconic stance, gloves atop stick, ever-observing play at the opposite end has already… show more.

This book by an award-winning Canadian novelist mixes memoir and essay. The memoir is set in New Brunswick’s Miramichi region in 1961. Richards has no use of his left arm; his best friend is going blind due to diabetes. They are in their last year of playing hockey. Woven into that story are other memories—including of distasteful meetings with people who don’t like the sport—as well as his thoughts on the game and its place in the Canadian psyche. Hockey Dreams is highly personal, so it may not be for readers, but I loved it. 

Paul Zimmerman, aka “Dr. Z,” was a walking encyclopedia of NFL (and American football) knowledge. In addition to comprehensive coverage of players and coaches, teams and seasons, and big games, his humor and sophistical analytical asides graced the pages of Sports Illustrated for decades. Before that, he was a great reporter for the New York Post. Dr. Z’s memoir pulls back the curtain on his life and his path to prominence as a journalist. Decades before his memoir, Dr. Z brought forthright language to simple and complex football themes in his timeless tome, The Thinking Man’s Guide to Pro Football. Dr. Z’s all-time rankings of NFL players, coaches, and teams and behind-the-scenes tales about Vince Lombardi, Johnny Unitas, and others grab your attention.

For me, and anyone else who loves football, Zimmerman's unparalleled knowledge of the subject and remarkable memory of plays, players and coaches and games spanning… show more.

One of the most profound attempts to capture grief in prose is due to the British experimental novelist B. S. Johnson. Published in 1969, The Unfortunates is a book in a box: twenty-seven booklets to be read in any order, except for “First” and “Last.” Its narrator is a journalist returning to a city he last knew seven years ago, visiting an old friend, Tony, who later died of metastatic cancer. The visit triggers memories that arrive in random order, scattered through the day’s events as chance dictates. Grief has no narrative order, the book in a box seems to warn; and any closure is temporary. Grief can be opened and reshuffled again and again. 

I’m not a sports fan. My good friend, Ryan Harty (author of one of my favorite short story compilations: “Bring me your saddest Arizona”) recommended this book to me many years ago. I’m not a sports fan but he assured me it had very little if anything to do with sports. He was right about that! I gave it a shot and was immediately transported into the narrative. It’s still in my top 5 all-time favorite book list. Ford’s ability to communicate existential crises in deeper but simple ways is so, so good. Frank Bascombe, the protagonist is detached in a way that is both beautiful and unsettling.

This is a classic in rural education.

A highly respected rural education researcher, Corbett documents the educational practices that, while well-intentioned, may contribute to rural depopulation: if rural schools do their jobs well, they are often preparing rural youth for an adult life lived elsewhere.

Still, though, for many rural youth, college remains elusive. As Corbett writes, with typical eloquence, “Higher education remains ‘invisible’ training for invisible jobs in an elsewhere economy…”

With complexity and nuance, this book captures the many dilemmas facing rural youth, families, and teachers, as well as the high costs of higher education for rural communities. My copy is a rainbow of sticky notes and highlights: I consulted it often when writing my book.

I really love this study because it provides a crystal-clear example of how colonialism and dispossession have worked in Canada from the legal, cultural, political, and social angles. It also delves into the topic of the histories we, as a country, choose to remember and those we choose to forget, as well as the issue of who is forgotten in the process. 

By the thousands, young Black men from Canada–some were escaped slaves, others were freemen, often descended from Americans–rallied to join Lincoln’s army.

Reid paints moving portraits of their determination to fight racism, their sacrifices, and their contributions to the cause. I was particularly interested in the historic role played by Black Canadian doctors and Reid delivers a sweeping overview and fascinating details of the main characters.