Prologue - Pure Gold

Now I know this story is probably going to sound really, well boring. Run of the mill stuff for most Canadian teenage girls. But the fact of the matter is I’m not a teenage girl anymore. (And I guess that some of the story may be a little exaggerated, give a girl a little creative license.) I have to tell this story the way it really happened… otherwise its just not as well, weird.

You see, I grew up in Red Deer, Alberta. It’s not really a special town, but like many towns scattered across Canada, it IS a hockey town. For those of you who don’t know the geography, Red Deer is about halfway between Edmonton and Calgary, large cities that each hosts a NHL franchise. It’s great for hockey fans, because you can cheer for either the Oilers or the Flames, but the town is pretty divided between Oil and Flames fans at key points in the season.

But when it comes to our team… the team that everyone cheers for, Oiler fans and Flames fans, we have the Rebels. Owned, operated, managed and coached by Brent Sutter. The man runs the team, and during the hockey season, the Rebels run the town.

And I don’t totally mean that in a good way. I love hockey as much (if not more) then the next Canadian, but as someone whose a little older then the guys on the team (and who grew up around a different group of them) I don’t always enjoy the fact that they have so much power.
See, I’m 23 years old. I grew up in Red Deer, went to high school in Red Deer (at the same high school as most of the hockey players who are my age… many of whom are in the NHL now), and then I went off to Calgary to go to University. I got my degree in Education so that I could become a teacher, and came home to teach.

In my second full year as a teacher I was used to having the Rebels boys in and out of my classroom, more often out then in, since apparently Social Studies is NOT an important class for future NHL players. I was young. I was hot. You’d think that would help keep SOME of those boys in my classroom… and it did sometimes, on days when I wore a short skirt or low cut top.
It was hard to be a young teacher in a place like Red Deer. Parents are such hypocrites. They’ll go out drinking, get drunk, and then rant and rail at the School Board when their 18 year old sees you out at a bar. By my second year, I was fairly used to dealing with the complaints... I always pointed out that I didn’t drink with kids I was teaching, and that my down time was my own.

That usually didn’t fly with everyone, but people were forced to accept it when after my first probationary year I was offered a permanent full time contract. It would be pretty damn hard for them to get rid of me now.

This year was going to be a special year for Red Deer Rebels fans though. Brent was going to be coaching the World Junior hockey team that was going to play in Grand Forks, North Dakota (which we all knew was going to become a part of Canada… at least for a couple of weeks at the end of December). Dion Phaneuf (a sweetheart if ever there was one… off the ice at least) was going to anchor the team on defense for the second straight year, and a few more of the boys had been invited to the summer evaluation camp.

Dion and I had met for the first time a few years before. But this story really isn’t about Dion and I. Dion and I were, are and will always be friends. No more. This story is about me and a 17-year-old for Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking. I’m 23. I’m a teacher. Something is wrong with this picture. Mainly the fact that this is both illegal and unprofessional. Well not actually illegal since 16 is the age of consent in most of Canada. Either way, a teacher and a 17-year-old is just wrong right?

Well the fact of the matter is, you all have dirty, dirty minds. The story is about a relationship between a 17-year-old and a 23-year-old teacher. But when I say relationship I don’t mean anything physical. It was a purely emotional and intellectual relationship… a friendship with a hint of something more.

This is the story of how we grew to care about each other as much as we do… and how we originally met on a cold snowy night in Winnipeg.