The Survivors Speak

Sports and recreation • 191
We started having new skates, start having good, good socks. We starting having
bought, what you call, Toronto Maple Leafs and the Canadiens, those were the two,
so we, we had two set of sweaters. And Maple Leafs, we used them at home, and then
when we go out and play out we have to be Canadiens, so but none of those things,
just toques, that’s all, no facemask, nothing, no, no. We had little, finally we got those
things, too. So, he bought all that stuff for us. So, we start getting bigger, better hockey
players, too. We started competing. We came, we came and compete in town, in
Meadow Lake. We had, they, they call us bush hockey players, but we, they couldn’t
beat us because we were, we were, we had a good coach, so we started winning. 704
Orval Commanda recalled that sports played a positive role in his life at the Spanish,
Ontario, boys’ school, and that the opportunity to play sports was used as an incentive to
get the students to do their school work.
So anyway in, when I came here, in ’52, there was a lot of sports going on, and, and
I was into sports, you know. I played hockey, and basketball, and at the time they
played softball, like, and also played pool, because I started playing pool when I was
seven years old....
And I liked playing sports. You know if you wanted to be on a hockey team, you had
to have your work done, you know? 705
William Antoine was one of the students who credited Jesuit Father Maurice for the
extensive sports program at the Spanish school.
The one thing I liked over there was the sports. Oh, there’s, there’s any sport you
wanted to play. You know, there’s basketball in the fall of the year, you know. And
then hockey, you know, in the winter time. And, summer time there was softball,
baseball, lacrosse. Lacrosse was my, my favourite sport; I really loved that sport and
I was good at it too. A little ball you threw around to get in the net, yeah. I really liked
that sport. And I was good at running; you know I was fast, I was skinny. You know I
was pretty agile, that’s why I loved that sport.
Under Father Maurice, there were also sports banquets to honour student and team
accomplishments, and annual field days.
You know, running, jumping, pole vaulting, high jumping, and shot put. All those
games, you know we played those games and that was a real fun time, fun day you
know. It was for one day and it was all day; and, and whoever won, well they got, they
got, a medal of some kind and it showed that you, you know, you were, you were
good at what you did, you know. So that was so, very rewarding. 706
Joseph Maud learned to skate at the Pine Creek school.
And I remember, I remember some of the activities that we would, we’d, we would
do, like, there was a skating rink outside, and my brother Marcel taught me how to
skate. And once a week on Saturday evenings, we would have a skating party, where
the girls would join the boys, and we would skate maybe from, like, from 6:00 o’clock