Recalling the ghosts of world juniors past

Editor’s Note: This is one in a series of 12 of the best Christmas stories from years past by Hamilton Spectator journalists.

In this column from 1998, sportswriter Steve Milton remembers a Christmas past spent working overseas that brought him both tears and joy.

DEC. 24, 1998 — Fourteen years ago tonight, I endured one of those Christmas Eves that we all dread.

Lonely. Depressed. Thousands of miles from home. My two very young children and then-wife back in Canada while I was in dark, dark Finland with Canada’s national junior hockey team.

That was the Wendel Clark team. The 18-year-old made himself the spring’s top draft choice when he came off the bench to score against Czechoslovakia on New Year’s Day and give Canada its first-ever world junior championship on European ice. That would establish the successful template for 13 years of Canadian junior teams.

But eight days earlier, no one would have predicted things would end so well.

Canadians had lost interest in the tournament — three straight years out of the medals will do that — and that is why I was there. No major Canadian newspaper, no wire service, no radio stations, aside from rights-holding CBC, was going to send a reporter for the entire tournament. So Hockey Canada asked me to go. Paid me to go.

The team lacked the star power of previous Canadian squads which featured the likes of Mario Lemieux and still couldn’t win. And on Christmas Eve 1984, they had not yet established a team chemistry. Most of the players hardly knew each other. They were nervous about each other, and about the Russians, Finns and Czechs.

And, like me, they were lonely and far from home.

That Finland observes Christmas so vividly served only to make the absence and distance more pronounced.

Since most families have some kind of rural roots, a day or two before Christmas, Helsinki disgorges most of its population into the countryside and the city becomes an unpeopled echo of itself. In one hotel, the entire staff, save a caretaker and switchboard operator, departed for 36 hours, leaving food in the kitchen for the teams quartered there to retrieve on their own.

In Finland, it is a Christmas Eve tradition to place lighted candles at the gravesites of departed loved ones. As Team Canada’s bus worked its way from the practice rink back to the hotel through snowy, empty streets, we passed a vast cemetery and were struck silent by the legions of tiny flames flickering bravely against the long, ebony Scandinavian night.

A few small groups bearing candles were walking toward the cemetery and it didn’t help my sense of disconnectedness that a couple of these groups consisted of two small children and one parent.

It made you wonder about, and fear for, the other parent.

Back at the hotel, Team Canada staff tried to make the best of it for their teenage charges. All of these players were accustomed to living away from home but few, if any, had ever spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day separated from their families. Now, only one or two — those with parents confident, or rich, enough to have booked the trip to Helsinki — would be with their families on the most emotional family day of the year.

The hard part would be Christmas Eve. The team would bus to distant Turku to play the Russians on Christmas afternoon and on game day, hockey players kick over to emotional autopilot.

So, over a decidedly northern European dinner, team management tried to approximate a North American Christmas Eve. Stories and jokes were told and some offkey Christmas carols were sung, awkwardly at first, more boisterously as the kids loosened up.

Three other national teams were registered at our hotel: Finland, U.S.A. and the Soviet Union. On the way into dinner the Canadian players exchanged friendly, if wary, Christmas greetings with the Finns and Americans but the Russians — this was still the Cold War, remember — shuffled by without responding. And when the Canadians began wailing their carols, the Russians abruptly stood up en masse and stone-facedly left the dining room. There was to be no foxhole truce on this night and it severely deflated the already-fragile mood.

It was tough to sleep. On my Walkman, I listened to a Mormon Tabernacle Choir collection of seasonal favourites which thankfully didn’t include “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

I read a little. I cried a little. I felt sorry for myself a lot. And hours later, finally fell asleep.

Christmas morning was crisp and temporarily bright and I awoke early, grateful that I had got through the hard part. I stepped into the hall to see if anyone else was up.

When I turned to re-enter my room, I froze. Hanging on the doorknob was a bright red cloth stocking and into the white fringe at the top, someone had stitched what appeared to be my name. Right there in big red letters: STEVE.

For one split second, I was completely disoriented. For one split second, I was seven again; I was six; I was three. For one split second, I completely forgot — forgot purely and joyously — that for adults there is no Santa Claus.

Still confused, I glanced up and down the corridor and saw a personalized, red stocking on every Canadian door. ‘Bob’ for Bassen; ‘Craig’ for Billington; ‘Claude’ for Lemieux; ‘Stephane’ for Richer, ‘Brian’ for Bradley.

And, (I checked again, just to be sure), ‘Steve’ for Milton.

The suspension of my disbelief had been anything but willing. I didn’t have time to will it. Within seconds, I realized that team management — guys like Terry Simpson and Sherry Bassin — had arranged this, probably weeks before.

But the return of logic didn’t prevent me from tearing back into my room like a kid, and greedily hauling out the contents: a hockey puck; a comic book; a Canadian chocolate bar; a Canadian pin; a Canadian flag, I think.

It was a tiny haul by suburban standards, but to me it was a motherlode. I ate the chocolate bar very slowly and read the comic about three times. When I got down to breakfast, I could tell from the players’ combination of teenage bravado and secret smiles that they had experienced the same thing I had.

I have thought of that stocking — and of those boys, smiling shyly despite their outrageous testosterone — every Christmas for 14 years.

And that is the essence of cultural symbols: their impact is far more staggering than their substance. If the tradition of Santa Claus makes people kinder to each other, makes people spend a moment to think about other people more closely than they normally might, then Santa Claus is real.

And yes, Virginia, I know you’ve heard that before.

For one split second, I completely forgot — forgot purely and joyously — that for adults there is no Santa Claus.

Steve Milton is a veteran sports columnist with The Hamilton Spectator.