Gare Joyce creates the ultimate Leafs fantasy
It’s a plot line so laughable, it’s sure to reduce Leafs fans to tears.
Toronto author Gare Joyce, who has written extensively over the years about hockey — both fact and fiction — is out with his latest work on the game. And, it’s a whopper. Every Spring A Parade Down Bay Street chronicles “sport’s most fabled winning streak” — the Leafs’ 45 straight Stanley Cup wins begun in 1967 — through the eyes Red York, a sports columnist with the Toronto Telegram.
“The ultimate exercise in nostalgia would be to remember a losing team as a champion,” Joyce said in an interview this week. “That’s where I’m going.” Some might say gone. Way gone. Joyce, from East York, admits that he started to write the book more than five years ago “on my own time, for my own amusement.” Its initial reception amongst friends and editors was not good.
But, as the Leafs Stanley Cup drought stretched to what is now the longest among NHL teams, the idea of an alternative history took on more appeal. So, Penguin Canada, publishers of Joyce’s series of mystery novels featuring former hockey player-cum-sleuth Brad Shade, has released Every Spring A Parade Down Bay Street as an ebook that’s also raising money for charity.
“It wouldn’t be enough just to say the Leafs won,” Joyce said. “You have to have an explanation of why they won. And, the best explanation I could come up with would be that they did everything differently.
“It’s the ultimate do-over for the team.”
It’s also a love affair with the way things were in Toronto. People lucky enough to see a game at Maple Leaf Gardens, which continues to host the team, wear business attire, are knowledgeable, respectful and never leave early. Colour televisions and cable TV are eschewed in favour of the newspaper, in which Red York is an unrivaled celebrity and star. But most of all, it’s about a hapless team turned good. No, great. So, in 54 swift-flowing chapters, a long list of Leafs’ gaffes are set right. Dave Keon doesn’t bolt for the WHA, Frank Mahovolich is never traded, Harold Ballard embraces the importance of club and civic tradition and former Leaf Wayne Gretzky has his jersey raised to the rafters at Maple Leaf Gardens. Jiri Crha and Jeff Ware are among a long list in a wing of the Hall of Fame for Leafs, as will one day be Brian Burke and Ron Wilson.