Southwest Alberta author looking for some good hockey stories
Gordon Hunter is looking for a few good stories for a sequel to a book he wrote several years ago about hockey experiences.
The retired University of Lethbridge professor has penned three books about hockey including one about the voices behind the microphones who do play-by-play of major junior and junior A hockey games.
He’s also written a book of hockey poetry called “What Rhymes with Puck?” which contains no vulgarities despite its suggestive title.
First published in 2015, “The Older I Get the Better I Was” features Lethbridge area residents and former colleagues of Hunter writing about their experiences in the game widely considered to be Canada’s national pastime.
Now Hunter, a Ph.D. and Professor Emeritus at the U of L, who still teaches an online course for a university in Munich, Germany, is planning a sequel.
Over his career, Hunter has taught at universities in Canada, Hong Hong and Singapore and conducted more than 150 presentations at universities around the world.
He has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the U of Saskatchewan and a PhD from the Strathclyde Business School in Glasgow, Scotland.
A former goalie, whose photo from his intramural days at the University of Saskatchewan in 1967 graces the cover of his first volume, Hunter is hoping he can get enough submissions to fill a second book.
Anyone interested in writing a chapter can contact Hunter via email at ghunter@ uleth.ca and he will send a chapter outline.
When time permits, Hunter also wants to write a follow up to “Hockey Talk – Stories Behind the Voice.”
The title of “The Older I Get” came from a line he stole from golfing great Lee Trevino.
His first book has chapters featuring the stories of people including Rajko Dodic, Clint Dunford, Mikko Makela, Cheryl Neufeld, Brook Paisley, Mark Campbell, the mom of former Hurricane Zack Stringer and Hunter himself. It also features a chapter written about Vic Stasiuk.
“Their experience with hockey is what it is. So it doesn’t mean you have to play, it doesn’t mean you’ve gone a long ways. Some guys are just talking about their dads,” he said in a recent interview.
Contributor Ian Paisley, for instance, talks about his own hockey experience but more about his daughter Brook, he said as an example of the types of contributions made to the first volume.
The genesis for a second book came after people who were featured in the first told him of interest by others who weren’t included in it.
“So I said ‘OK, I’d do another one.’”
Hunter grew up in Saskatoon and played hockey with the likes of future NHLers Keith Magnuson and Cliff Koroll. He made the
U of S hockey team but he was going to be the third-string goalie “and I thought I’m not going to waste my time sitting on the bench,” he recalled.
Hunter was the first in his family to finish university. He dated his wife Shirley for six years before they got married and she asked him if he was going to play hockey or get a job with a university degree. So Hunter put aside his ambitions for a future between the pipes and focused on his studies.