570News Blog: Glenn Pelletier

There was a time when the start of a new NHL season elevated my heart rate and led to me to devour the sports pages of the papers and the season preview editions of the major hockey publications with eager anticipation of opening night.

A time when I sat around for hours with other ball-cap wearing dudes over a box of beer and a few pizzas and made my much-thought out picks at the annual hockey pool gathering. A time when I cut out the NHL schedule from the Toronto Star and taped it on the fridge….circling all the Habs games. A time when I could yak ad nauseum with the guy two keyboards down from me at work about whether the Bruins’ defense was any match for the vaunted Flying Frenchmen.

And there was a time when the Stevie Downie hit on an Ottawa Senators’ player this week would have launched me into a tirade one way or the other, defending or attacking him depending on how much of a Downie and/or Flyers and/or Senators fan I was. (For the record, I am a Montreal Canadiens fan).

But like so many fans who still love the game, but who have grown weary at the time-consuming prospect of following the travails of all 30 NHL teams….or who simply don’t have it in them to care if a 20-year old, extremely well-paid pro hockey player gets 3 games or 30 for the big hit……I simply reacted to the Downie thing with a lukewarm…..”whatever.”

Now when Sittler slashed Lafleur in ‘78….I mean come on……that was vicious….uncalled for…..unprovoked…..can you believe it…..why the nerve….cuz like Lafleur rules, man!

Ah the passion of youth.

How fitting that on the final weekend of summer, with autumn hours away, that our beloved Kitchener Rangers take to the ice for the season opener at the Aud. Now at last, we know that the crisp days of fall, and the cold nights of winter are just around the corner.

I first came to Kitchener in August of ‘81, just in time to acquaint myself with the Kitchener Rangers of ‘81-82′, who featured such names as Bellows, Stevens, MacInnis, Larmer, Dave Shaw and Wendell Young…all future NHLers. That team went on to win the Memorial Cup.

Needless to say, I am a proud member of Rangers Nation.

We have seen some tremendous talent and great hockey at the Aud over the years and I look forward to watching more for years to come.

The Kitchener Rangers organization is the class of the league and we are very fortunate as fans to have the team in the very capable hands of Peter DeBoer and Steve Spott, with Steve Bienkowski running the business.

If you haven’t got on board yet, I encourage you to take in a game. It’s great entertainment and great value for the money. And if you can’t make it to the game you can always listen to the one-and-only Don Cameron and Gary Doyle home and away on 570 news.

Go Rangers Go!

I have lived in Kitchener for over 26 years and during that time was a frequent visitor to the old farmer’s market on Scott Street across from Market Square. I am also a frequent visitor to the new market. Same stuff. A couple blocks over. Same highly anticipated routine - up early on a beautiful spring, summer or autumn morning and out the door to be part of that great community of like-minded individuals who truly relish the market experience and make it part of their Saturday morning routine. Grab a coffee from the shops and restaurants area upstairs, toss a loonie to the cute little kid playing his cello or the old guy strumming his two or three chords. Nudge my way along the vendors’ stalls in the fruit and vegetable area….back to the car (conveniently parked in the market garage), drop off the stuff and back again for more. When my shopping is done and I’ve finished talking to the three or four people I invariably bump into, I head upstairs for breakfast at one of the many available deli spots and relax with a newspaper or two (purchased from the guy on the ground level.)

And to think, somebody figured ordering groceries over the phone was going to take off.

For those of you old enough to remember, you may recall a television commercial from the late 1970’s in which a long-retired Maurice Richard shills for a men’s hair-colouring product called Grecian Formula. So gradual and subtle was its ability to remove the grey from the Rocket’s hair, that he claimed Mrs. Richard didn’t even know he was using it.

I wonder if Richard was merely enticed by the endorsement money, or whether he actually wanted to colour his hair.

I wonder, because I have been predominantly grey for the past few years and vowed during that time that I would never try to cover it up. However, nearly two weeks ago, I went from salt-and-pepper to brown in one amazing application!

Lest you think though that I was in the throes of a mid-life crisis and was intending to try to turn back the clock, allow me to explain my motivation. I was asked by the director of a stage production to colour my hair for a part I was about to play. I could either accept the offer and the money that came with it or stick to my vow to never lose the grey, and not only pass up the opportunity for the role, but lose the accompanying pay packet. So I went brunette.

My only concern now is that the stage role I merely filled in for may become more regular and that I may have to stay this colour for some time. On the other hand, I’ve come clean with my friends and co-workers about why I “went brown” and reassuringly, they actually have more important things to worry about than the colour of my hair. I suppose I’m also somewhat relieved that I still have hair to colour!

I offer up this angling hotspot at the risk of causing a stampede of wader-wearing fishers furiously fighting for access to my gold mine of a fishing mecca, but share it I must. (Actually, romping through the mosquito-infested brush en route to my favourite local fishing hole, and swooshing one’s way up the river whilst dodging the occasional snapping turtle is an acquired taste - one that is not likely to bring out the masses - so I offer it up willingly.)

And so it was, that in the early morning hours of Labour Day Monday, I was greeted at my driveway by my friend and neighbour George Turoczi, for the latest in our frequent visits to the Speed River, for a couple of hours of good old-fashioned man-fun. Off in the mini-van (a rusty old pick-up would have been far more appropriate), wearing the mandatory ball cap and ratty old t-shirt, on our way to where the smallmouth lay. Down highway 8 to Sportsworld Drive, right along Maple Grove Road to just past the water treatment plant where the bike path crosses the roadway. Pull over, slide into our waders, grab our rods and scuffle along to the footpath that leads to paradise.

Once you’re wading along the river and have left the occasional baby-boomer jogging/walking couple and the roadway behind you, just stop and look around and you can fool yourself into believing you’re in northern Ontario or the backwoods of Haliburton County. We keep wading along until we get to a nice patch of deep, cool water and eagerly cast our surface plugs into the spot where we just know the most entertaining of fresh-water fish lay. By the way, one must use a surface lure in these waters, for apart from the occasional deep spot, the river is generally quite shallow and weedy. And if you are going to employ a surface plug, they don’t come any more enticing for bass than the “Tiny Torpedo.” Best darn bass lure I have ever used, rivalled only by a live crayfish or frog in its ability to distract a bass from whatever it might be doing.

Three casts in, debating whether I should spark up one of the cheap cigars in my damp pocket and SPLURSH! “Fish on”, I scream to my buddy George with all the enthusiasm of someone who had latched onto his first marlin. Instantly, I felt a huge tug as the thing scrambled to escape its treble-hooked dilemma. This thing is big. Anyone who has fished a bit knows the feeling in your hands and arms when you have a fish of some proportion on the end of your line. “This thing’s big George!”, I bark. Watching a gleaming, sparkling, healthy-looking smallmouth bass break water twenty feet away from you attached to your line is one of life’s nano-seconds of pleasure. Gotta keep it from moving downstream behind me, or I would have to fight against the current to bring him in. Inch by inch, crank by crank on my age-old Mitchell 300 and this feisty fish is within site, a few feet away now, lunging for its life. A couple more cranks, keeping tension on the line, I reach down when it goes still and go for its gaping mouth, pausing in anticipation, wondering if my hand will reach it before it makes one final body-shake and either spits out the lure, or embeds it in my eager hand. I lunge at the lunged-out lunker and……got him! I hoist the thing out of the water, into the beaming sun as the last droplets of its lifeblood drip off the shiny thick body of a two-pound, foot-long smallmouth bass. I’m guesstimating on the weight and length, but let me tell you, as smallmouth bass in the Speed River go, this fish was big.

In a different decade (i.e. the one in which I played out my childhood casting for largemouth bass with my then-trusty Hula Popper on Buckhorn Lake) I would have made damn sure that fish was brought home for all to see. Instead, a quick photo by George on his cellphone camera (now that would have ruined “A River Runs Through It”) to confirm my tall tale and I released my catch back into the cool water, where it slapped the surface with a quick jerk of its body, as if to say “*&%#@ you!”

A few more casts, a few more smaller fish, and then the dreaded look down at my watch with the realization that the day’s obligations were now calling. “Ready to go, George?”, I asked. He nodded, but his face said “Not really.”