The Salt Ponds

Posted on June 22, 2013 under Storytelling with one comment

According to all statistical evidence, childhood obesity is nearly an epidemic in North American.  Children rarely walk to school, or anywhere else for that matter.  Part of this stems from concerns about safety but a larger part is that many of them don’t get out much.  They don’t need to meet friends face to face any more.  As long as they can move their fingers at the speed of bee pollinating flowers, there isn’t much urgency to walk, or god forbid, run anywhere.   And even when they do poke their heads outdoors, they walk like zombies, with head phones on to drown out the sounds of nature, texting madly all the while.

I was out for a brief walk this morning.  I was waiting for Sobeys to open, so I decided to walk the perimeter of the mall parking lot.  After I passed the Canadian Tire store, I looked off to my right and just beyond the tree line I could see the perfectly flat expanse of land that was once called “The Salt Ponds”.

The Salt Ponds was located to the rear of the confluence of the West River and Brierly Brook.  I suspect that the name came from the fact that these rivers contain tidal water that comes in from Antigonish Harbour.

When we were kids, this land flooded all the time for obvious reasons of topography.  In the winter it turned into a gigantic outdoor skating rink.  For a generation of kids this is where we learned how to skate, play hockey, figure skate and, most importantly, how to shovel snow.

In the winter time at the end of the school day, dozens of kids from the neighborhood descended upon this wonderful piece of real estate.  You must remember that in those days, families of 8 and 10 children was the norm so it didn’t take too many households to generate enough bodies for a game of hockey.  We would gather up our skates and walk over to Church Street, descend a steep bank and then lace them up at the edge of our natural rink.

If it had snowed the previous night, everybody took a turn clearing the ice.  This was not optional.  If you didn’t help shovel, you were persona non grata.  The rules of the jungle were applied equally and fairly.  Even before the puck was dropped you had worked up a pretty decent sweat.

A game could last for hours and on weekends it could last past sundown with substitutes coming and going throughout the day.

When is the last time you felt the exhilaration of skating with reckless abandon on a cold, crisp winter night, with the moon as your only source of light?  We all dreamed of becoming Maurice Richard, Gordie Howe or Bobby Hull.  I don’t ever remember heavy hits or the hint of a fight.  This was hockey in its purest form.

And after a rain, followed by freezing temperatures, the Salt Ponds became the biggest rink on earth.  With no snow to slow the puck, an errant shot on net could take upwards of two minutes to retrieve.  Sort of like a television timeout.

We absolutely hated to go home for supper facing the prospects of being badgered to do homework.

As I completed my walk, I lamented the passage of simpler times when getting in shape didn’t entail joining a gym.  We were blessed that we didn’t have many recreational facilities.  We used the landscape to create our own.

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