“We got to a point where some of us realized that hard work can be beneficial, especially when it came to playing hockey; you get stronger when you work hard…there was a personal satisfaction, at least with me, to be better.”
Kelly Bull
"Hockey took us away from the drudgery. It toned down all the anger and the frustration, yeah; we were too busy playing hockey."
*Chris Cromarty
“There's street hockey today, right? Well we had something similar. We used to
make little goals out of potato sacks. We would also cut a piece of wood ... we would make sure it was nicely rounded like a puck, and we would tape it
to make it stronger.”
Kelly Bull
"Up to that point [the introduction of the Black Hawks hockey team at Pelican Lake IRS], because of unknown factors, we were sort of alone and we stayed to ourselves. But once we started playing on the team, we had teammates. I can always lean on or talk to one of my teammates about things. Things like if anyone was bullying me. Without knowing perhaps that we were doing it, we built a bond."
Kelly Bull
"Enthusiasm among the boys was so intense. Everybody wanted to play hockey."
"[I learned through hockey that] you could get things done if you worked together and you worked hard."
Chris Cromarty
"That was the first time I heard a hockey game. The interest really picked up after that – it spread like fire. We would look for anything about hockey in the papers, or anywhere. It was really interesting to all of us. We'd pass it around and that's how we developed our enthusiasm for hockey. Then every Saturday night after that it was the same thing – we'd all gather around the radio and listen to the hockey games."
Chris Cromarty
All quotations, except with *notation, are from Fatima Ba'abbad's Master's research. To read her thesis, click below.
History of Sioux Lookout Black Hawks Hockey Team (pdf)
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