Reading Ken Reid’s latest book Hometown Hockey Heroes brought me back to my youth of sixty years ago watching the local legends playing hockey in Napanee and Kingston. Ken catches the essence of what it was like for the local sports fans to follow their heroes who they could reach out and touch and speak to every day on the street.
” Readers in every small town in Canada will be able to read and enjoy the book. Why? Because we all can relate to Hometown Heroes. Every town has them.”
In the fifties and sixties when I was growing up professional sports and the stars of that era could only be listened to on the radio or watched on black and white TV. You could not hear the cutting of the skates through the crisp ice, the smell of the smokey arenas mixed with the aroma of French fries, hot dogs, and hamburgers.
Ken’s description of these arenas brought me back to these cold old barn-like buildings, filled with dedicated fans who lived and died with their local legends.
Reid delved into his subjects’ lives; where they worked, their wives, children, and friends. Describing small-town sports so genuinely from those eras.
Each chapter of Hometown Hockey Heroes gave me as the reader a colourful picture of the town, fans, hero, and the games that he played in. Packed rinks, the up and down adrenaline kicks of the fans as they lived and died with wins and losses.
I really appreciated Ken Reid’s research and interview style. His storytelling was always complete with what happened to the “Hero” in the end.
Ken gained my undying respect when he talked about the Indigenous “Heroes” and the racism, taunts, and discrimination that they went through to play a game that they loved. That showed me Ken was a true writer who was not afraid of writing about the dark side of sports during that era.
I enjoyed this book immensely. It was beautifully written, and researched. Readers in every small town in Canada will be able to read and enjoy the book. Why? Because we all can relate to Hometown Heroes. Every town has them.
Ken brought back great memories of my softball coaching years. In 1980 the Verona Merchants, the softball Yankees of the Kingston area, played a 7-game series against the Napanee Juniors. In seven games eight thousand fans took part in this series. Verona had a population of six hundred and Napanee 3000.
Thanks, Ken, for such a wonderful book.
Ken Reid has been adding his unique brand of humour and style to Sportsnet Central since joining Sportsnet in 2011. Throughout his more than twenty years in sportscasting, he has covered the Olympics, the Stanley Cup Finals, Grey Cups, and the Super Bowl. He is the bestselling author of Hockey Card Stories: True Tales from Your Favourite Players, as well as five other books. A proud native of Pictou, Nova Scotia, Ken now lives in Toronto, Ontario, with his family.
- Publisher : Simon & Schuster (Oct. 24 2023)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1668015013
- ISBN-13 : 978-1668015018