One snowy evening in February, an old pickup truck trundled onto a frozen lake in tiny Plaster Rock, New Brunswick, carrying the Stanley Cup.
Along the shore, hundreds of townspeople cheered the cup's arrival as part of CBC-TV's annual Hockey Day in Canada. Their names are too numerous to be etched on Lord Stanley's trophy, but to me at least, the people of Plaster Rock are truly world champions.
Each winter, I come to this town for the World Pond Hockey Championship. I come for the hockey, played in its purest form, and for the beer tent, where I laugh and tell tales with hockey pals. But more and more, I come because I love the place and the people.
Small towns have long fascinated me. Although I grew up in suburban Detroit, my parents bought a lake cottage in northern lower Michigan 38 years ago, and I've spent a lot of time in the little towns nearby: Grayling, Kalkaska, Bellaire. In nearly 30 years as a journalist, I've written many stories from tiny burgs like Regent, N.D., Stilwell, Okla. and Hill City, Kan.
For me, cities and suburbs have never held the same storytelling allure. It's not that they lack for quirky tales or colourful characters. Small towns just feel more transparent; I can get to know the people better. So the characters are more complex and the stories richer.
It was easy for me to decide to set my first novel, Starvation Lake , in a fictional town of that name in Michigan. Although the book is purely fiction, the scenes, the food, the dialogue, the weather, the very streets are inspired by things I've experienced in small towns.
As I sat at my laptop writing, I could see Main Street funnelling down to the lake between angled parking spaces and smell the pine on the wind. I could hear the whine of snowmobiles pulling up to Enright's Tavern, see the photographs of the local hockey team lining the bar's walls.
Alas, I've never eaten one of the “egg pies” served at Audrey's Diner, but I could imagine such a dish (eggs and everything in the fridge baked into a cocoon of Italian bread) on the menu of one of the dozens of small-town breakfast joints I've enjoyed.
The characters in Starvation Lake weren't necessarily inspired by small-town folks I've met. They could as easily walk the streets of Toronto or Chicago. But the natural intimacy of their setting made it easier to draw out their frailties and flaws, the things that make them more human and, ultimately, likeable. Likewise, I tried to keep my writing simple and direct, like the characters themselves, while imbuing the plot with many levels of secrets, like the towns.
Like my made-up town, Plaster Rock, population 1,200, straddles a river and loves hockey. Main Street winds along the Tobique River past two gas stations, four churches, two bars, two motels, a grocery, a beer store and a hardware store. The Frisbee-sized omelettes at the Settlers Inn aren't quite what I imagine egg pies to be, but I love them anyway.
I assume the people of Plaster Rock have their own frailties and flaws. But the beauty of visiting for the pond hockey tournament is that you see these people at their remarkable best.
About 10 years ago, the town's indoor rink was condemned. Locals had to drive their hockey-mad kids 40 minutes and more for ice time. The economy wasn't helping; the local timber mill has operated only intermittently for years. Tom Chamberlain, owner of a local motel, and town recreation official Danny Braun concocted a way to raise money for a new rink: Hold a pond hockey tournament.
