Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/375613
T he start of the NHL season is also the puck drop for recreation leagues across the country. It's an annual paroxysm when countless Canadians lace up their skates and squeeze into compression shorts to act out their pro-hockey fantasies. Proudly skating among them is Grant Lawrence, former frontman for college indie rockers the Smugglers and current host of his self- titled alternative-music show on CBC Radio 3. The 43-year-old DJ's unlikely but touch- ing transformation from awkward teen to net-minder for B.C.'s coolest beer-league squad is the subject of his latest book, The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie (Douglas & McIntyre). Hockey Night in Canada's Ron MacLean calls the read, "soul searching, candid and clever," to which he could have added "sur- prising." Although Lawrence's book is very much a story about hockey fandom and the lower-most echelons of amateur sport, it is also a frank depiction of bullying. Lawrence played some schoolyard ball hockey as a kid, but never organized sports. It wasn't because he was short, wore glasses and had loose knees, but because his neigh- bourhood of 1970s West Vancouver had nasty toughs with nicknames like Psycho Powers, Buck, Gooch and Angus the Anvil. "I liked hockey, but I kind of got bullied out of the game," says Lawrence, perched on a bench at the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame and wearing his trademark CBC authentic Cowichan sweater. "Some guys took liberties with me because I was a small, nerdy kid and the youths who harassed me tended to always wear hockey jackets. In the North Shore rinks they were applauded [for their on- ice prowess]; outside of the arenas they terror- ized me. So I thought, 'Why would I want to be a part of a game that harboured bullies?' " In his darkest days of early high school, one particularly unstable jock grabbed Lawrence's BB rifle and shot him in the leg. Lawrence fled through the forest, slipped while crossing a stream and fell off a cliff. The straight leg casts he wore for months afterwards didn't make him less of a target in the hallways of Hillside Secondary. Lawrence eventually found his confi- dence in music when he formed a garage rock band in senior high. The Smugglers enjoyed a 17-year run as a frenetic party group that toured student unions and night- clubs around the world. He didn't rediscover the joy of sport until some bandmates invited him to a pickup ball- hockey game in 1998. There was a moment of hesitation as he wiggled his knee brace and watched his patella shift about "like a hardboiled egg in a saggy paper bag," but he took a deep breath and suited up as a goalie. 34 W e s t W o r l d >> fa l l 2 0 1 4 Christine Mcavoy Photography profile: Grant Lawrence How the CBC radio host rediscovered hockey after being bullied out of the game I absolutely adored the Vancouver Canucks, especially those Cup-Run goalies of Richard Brodeur, Kirk McLean and Roberto Luongo. I have always had a fascination with that unique position and the 'lonely end of the rink.' " ''