{"id":17554,"date":"2017-06-14T16:21:24","date_gmt":"2017-06-14T20:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=17554"},"modified":"2017-06-14T16:21:24","modified_gmt":"2017-06-14T20:21:24","slug":"unlikely-bonds-of-friendship-formed-around-the-hockey-rink-for-local-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/unlikely-bonds-of-friendship-formed-around-the-hockey-rink-for-local-writer\/","title":{"rendered":"Unlikely bonds of friendship formed around the hockey rink for local writer"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unless you\u2019re a die-hard hockey fan, sitting around a cold rink watching young hockey players learn the ropes of Canada\u2019s game is probably not your idea of the ideal date night.
\nIt wasn\u2019t Julia Lucas\u2019 idea of a great date night either, but we do strange things for love.
\nShe\u2019s glad she did, however, as, 40 years on, she is still married to her date and, watching his two sons practice on the ice, she formed a rather unlikely bond that sustains her to this day.
\nAn Aurora woman with long-held ambitions of becoming a published author, she shares her story in the recently published Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Spirit of Canada.
\nCo-authored by Amy Newmark and Aurora\u2019s Janet Matthews, it is a collection of \u201c101 Stories of love and gratitude\u201d centred on the Canadian spirit.
\n\u201cLike every Chicken Soup for the Soul book, when you start you\u2019re actually not crystal clear,\u201d says Ms. Matthews on developing her fourth Canadian-themed Chicken Soup book looking for these elusive Canadian stories, having pitched ideas to her database of writers ranging from \u201cHow do you celebrate Canada Day?\u201d to \u201cHave you been inspired by some of our greatest heroes?\u201d
\n\u201cThen, you just wait for stuff to come in and it is always an unexpected surprise,\u201d she says. \u201cYou know what is coming, but you don\u2019t really know what form it will be. What came through was love and gratitude. These stories are about love and gratitude for this county. Whether it is a new immigrant who has found a new life here, or freedom or the first time, they are so grateful.\u201d
\nMs. Lucas\u2019 story is a different spin on the theme.
\nBack in the 1970s, in the throes of early romance, her then-boyfriend Dave used to stop by the rink to watch his two sons from his previous marriage practice on the ice before going out for dinner-for-two.
\nMs. Lucas says she did not grow up in a hockey family, but everyone on Dave\u2019s end of the deal was \u201chockey mad,\u201d so she went along for the ride.
\nOne day, Dave was taking part in a fathers-and-sons game with his eldest and bored watching by herself in the parents\u2019 room, she decided to go sit in the bleachers close to the action.
\nSoon, she spotted a woman coming towards her. Realising she had seen the woman with Dave\u2019s sons, she surmised she was their mother.
\n\u201cHi, I\u2019m Mary Lou,\u201d said the woman, Julia recalls. \u201cThe boys tell me lovely things about you.\u201d
\n\u201cWe started having such a friendly, open conversation,\u201d she shares, \u201cand Dave skated by the boards, saw me, said \u2018hi,\u2019 realised who I was talking to and did the classic double take and skidded down the ice on his skates, banging into another father. Mary Lou and I burst out laughing and then got on with our conversations.
\n\u201cWe became best friends. Dave and I have been together for 40 years now. We have two grandchildren, we all get together at Christmas and family events, and I have never forgotten Mary Lou\u2019s simple, honest kindness.\u201d
\nWhen Ms. Matthews read the story she just knew it was a perfect fit or \u201cThe Spirit of Canada\u201d \u2013 and it was not just the hockey hook, but also the themes of family, kindness, forgiveness, acceptance and healing.
\n\u201cAnd there\u2019s also a bit of humour,\u201d says Ms. Matthews. \u201cIt\u2019s a modern family!\u201d
\nChicken Soup for the Soul The Spirit of Canada brings together these individual stories from coast to coast, from these strong bonds of unlikely friendship forming in the shadow of a sport so proudly Canadian, to stories of resilience and communities coming together in the wake of the Fort McMurray fire, to Syrian refugee families experiencing a Canadian welcome for the first time.
\n\u201cThe goal of every Chicken Soup story is to touch the heart of the reader and inspire them in some way, cause them to gasp or have a moment of realness or inspiration they may not have had before,\u201d says Ms. Matthews. \u201cMaybe have some hope where they didn\u2019t have hope before. I know the stories in this book pretty well and even now when I go back and read the stories I can find myself really feeling the emotion and the intensity of what\u2019s in it. \u201c<\/p>\n

On sale now, Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Spirit of Canada launches locally next Saturday, June 24 at Chapters Newmarket (17440 Yonge Street) from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., featuring several contributing authors eager to share their stories and sign your books.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unless you\u2019re a die-hard hockey fan, sitting around a cold rink watching young hockey players learn the ropes of Canada\u2019s game is probably not your idea of the ideal date night.
\nIt wasn\u2019t Julia Lucas\u2019 idea of a great date night either, but we do strange things for love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/2017-06-15-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4z8","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 14:38:23","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}