Puttin' on the foil. Puttin' on the foil ...
It may be hockey heaven in Saskatoon these days - with the semi-finals and final of the world junior hockey championship about to begin - but we are talking politics, not fisticuffs.
In last fall's municipal election, one candidate for mayor, Johnny Melenchuk, actually did tape up his knuckles with tinfoil, slap on a long black wig and a Charlestown Chiefs hockey jersey and set out to convince the electorate that he was just the man for the job.
He never had a chance, not up against Don Atchison, who may be Canada's most dapper mayor, who was once named "Canada's craziest mayor" and who, most important, actually did play for the Johnstown Jets, the brawling minor-league hockey club that was the inspiration behind 1977's cult classic hockey movie Slap Shot.
Atchison, who once played goal for the local junior club, the Saskatoon Blades, had a brief professional hockey career before going into the men's clothing business with his father and then into municipal politics, where he recently won his third successive term by a landslide.
Atchison's locker with the Jets was right next to that of Ned Dowd, who could often be seen scribbling notes when Atchison and the other players were razzing each other in the dressing room. Atchison one day asked his teammate what the heck he was doing and Dowd claimed his sister, Nancy, wanted to write a screenplay for a Hollywood movie about hockey and he was trying to help her.
"Yeah, sure," Atchison shrugged sarcastically, "and I've got some swampland in Florida I'd like you to look into." But Ned got the last laugh. Nancy Dowd used her brother's notes to write a hilarious screenplay on the game. She took Atchison's big humour and the character of the Jets' other goaltender, little Louis Levasseur of Rouyn-Noranda, and created Denis Lemieux, a Slap Shot character almost as well known as Paul Newman's Reggie Dunlop and the infamous Hanson Brothers.
Lemieux is the one who explains penalties to the broadcaster: "You do that, you go to the box, you know. Two minutes, by yourself, you know, and you feel shame, you know. And then you get free."
"Everything in that movie is true," Atchison says with a laugh.
Even the puttin' on the foil that the Hanson Brothers used to make their knuckles more dangerous during fights?
"Absolutely," Atchison says. "I watched them work it onto their knuckles. I said, 'What's this for?' "
MacGregor 2
"And they said, 'Well, if you just leave a bit out and you hit a guy and twist your fist, it will tear the flesh right off his face,' " Atchison says.
His brief hockey career over, Atchison returned to Saskatoon and, after several successful years in the retail business, decided to try municipal politics. He ran on a platform calling for tough measures against crime and for police reform - this being the aftermath of the infamous "midnight ride" in which a 17-year-old aboriginal froze to death after police dumped him on the edge of town in subzero temperatures - and he won, and kept winning.
Comedian Rick Mercer tagged Atchison "Canada's craziest mayor" after the newly elected politician instituted a strict dress code at city hall, including for visitors. The code was soon dropped, but Atchison still went on Mercer's show to make a humble acceptance speech.
In the years since, his city has prospered as Saskatchewan has become a "have" province. Though some called the city Saskaboom, Atchison refuses to join them.
"I don't like to use the word 'boom,' " he says, "because with a boom, people talk about a bust. What we have here is very long time sustained growth, and it's projected out so that the next 10 to 15 years are going to see really strong growth in our community. A lot of that is to do with the potash industry, the uranium industry, gold, diamonds, education, the university, but especially oil and natural gas."
Though the population of Saskatoon is today roughly 300,000, he believes it is headed for a million, and the plans and projects - ranging from completing Circle Drive around the city to regenerating core neighbourhoods to a $250-million downtown development called River Landing - have both excited the city and brought out the critics. But not so many that it stopped Atchison from breezing to his third term.
Atchison has been in his glory at the world juniors, sitting - sartorially splendid, as always - in the midst of the crowds and cheering wildly for the home side.
The world juniors, he says, have shown the country and much of the world what is happening in Saskatoon. The tournament - along with federal stimulus money and provincial help - has even helped Saskatoon finally finish its rink, SaskPlace, now called Credit Union Centre, where on New Year's Eve a record crowd of 15,171 watched Canada defeat the United States in a shootout.
Next ambition for the city: to have the NHL's struggling Phoenix Coyotes play a handful of games here in the coming seasons, perhaps with an eye to becoming the Saskatoon Coyotes.
Anything is possible, the mayor says, so long as people learn to work together.
"I think that's where sports really makes a difference," Atchison says between matches at the rink. "You've all got to work together. Team Canada right now has 23 athletes. They've got coaches and managers and trainers, and everybody's got to work in the same direction. Everyone is dependent on the other persons to succeed."
And nothing in his life, he says, illustrated this so much as the Johnstown Jets, who managed pretty much what Slap Shot portrayed in the movie: a struggling team turned into a force to be reckoned with.
"There's an example of people who came together who had never been together before," he says. "They figured it out that they had to be able to work together as a unit.
"And if they did that, that they, in fact, could win."
Roy MacGregor