The Stick

By Bruce Dowbiggin

NEW EDITION COMING SOON

Book Overview

The Stick

Pick up a hockey stick. You hold an iconic symbol of the place that gave it birth, a tangible bit of Canadian culture, a link to Canada’s past. From the earliest one-piece sticks, carved from tree roots by the Mi’kmaqs of Nova Scotia, to the two— and three—piece models turned out in small towns in Ontario and Quebec, to the composite models now produced with scientific precision by Easton, the stick has always reflected something distinctly Canadian. Today it has become "cyber-product," globally sourced, anonymously produced, and expertly marketed.

As sporting tool, as weapon, and as cultural artifact, the stick is a part of Canadian history. Consider the London schoolteacher whose basement is a treasure trove of old sticks. The Calgary handyman who turns broken sticks into kids’ furniture. The NHL owner whose rec room floor is made of hockey sticks. The artist who sculpts oversized sticks out of granite. Dowbiggin introduces us to Stan Mikita, who invented the curved blade (or did he?); Jeremy Roenick, who lets no one else touch his stick; Adam Oates, who uses a stubby, cut-off blade; and Eric Lindros, whose stick is so stiff most people can’t even bend it. We discover how Carl Brewer helped bring European laminating expertise to North America and how Ken Dryden inadvertently changed the way sticks were marketed.

Full of love and lore, The Stick is a celebration of our past that’s destined to become as treasured as an autographed, game-used, Wayne Gretzky Titan 1002.