Across the pond hockey

Ed de Bruin wasn’t interested in hockey when he was young. As a kid from a small town in England, hockey wasn’t the sport that dominated his childhood. He didn’t have NHL dreams, play shinny on the local pond, or sit with his dad and watch Hockey Night In Canada.

But, he was bored. And sometimes that’s all it takes to find your passion.

Fast forward nearly 25 years, and Ed’s in the heart of hockey country, here in Lethbridge Alberta, organizing the local roller hockey league and coaching his son’s ice hockey team. Today, with a family, a full-time job and an active volunteer schedule, he doesn’t have a lot of time to be bored.

It’s a long way to get from England to Lethbridge, but for Ed, volunteering helped bridge that divide.

It was 1990 and Ed was living in Farnborough, England, a city much the size of Lethbridge. Like many small-town kids, he and his friends were bored. Not ‘there’s nothing on Netflix’ bored, or I’ve scrolled my whole social media feed bored, but a pre-internet bored that's gone extinct.

“I was a teenager and we kind of just wanted something to do,” Ed said. “So I volunteered for St. John’s Ambulance with my friends. Part of our responsibilities was to provide first aid at ice hockey games.”

It wasn’t quite love at first sight when Ed went to the game, but after years as the first aid attendant, it started to get under his skin. Of course, Farnborough’s not Canada, so there weren’t a lot of rinks for Ed and his buddies to mess around on. There were, however, tennis courts. So, like many Canadian kids, Ed and his friends started playing street hockey on tennis courts.

At 19, just a few years after they had started playing pickup games, they were ready for more.

“We decided at some point that we might want to put a roller hockey team together and that's kind of where it started,” Ed said.

At this point, Ed was just a shy engineering undergrad student, with no experience that prepared him for the hours of volunteer work it took to put together an official team. All he had was 7 friends and a dream to play roller hockey for real.

But a team meant he had to have 12 players, with official jerseys and a coach, and some funding and so on and so on. That meant there was a long road ahead of them. Fast forward through many long evenings and a lot of logistics, and Ed finally had his team.

That was great for a year, but then he noticed not everyone was included in this new team.

“There was a bunch of kids that were playing with us, so I thought why don't we try and get a junior team going?” Ed said. “I thought I might like to coach and these kids needed some direction and someone to kind of take the lead and get it going, so I did.”

Once again into the breach, Ed gathered up players, wrangled together parents to manage and found more sponsors.

Now he was playing roller hockey on a team he and his friends had formed and coaching younger kids on a team he had formed.

But, he was just getting started.

With a successful team under his belt, Ed started working with the local organization, then the regional organization.

And suddenly, it was so much more than just a game with friends.

“On the coaching side, you know, I was pretty confident in what I was doing, because I knew hockey and I knew what I was trying to do,” Ed said. “But when it got more into being a chair of a local association where we had 30 teams and I was having to stand up at AGMs and meetings and talk about stuff, that was a skill that I didn't have before. Being kind of forced to have to do it and getting more comfortable with it really grew that skill.”.

As he got more involved, Ed continued to work his way up through the organization, until he was leading the U12 Great Britain Roller Hockey team.

Then in 2003, Ed got to take his U12 national roller hockey team on the road to an international competition in the home of hockey, Canada.

Over 8 hours as they made the jump across the pond, the team went from the land of football and cricket to a country that made a religion of hockey.

“That was cool for the kids,” Ed said. “Just to be in a hockey country where hockey is one of the main sports rather than like a minority sport like it is in the UK. Their eyes were open just going to hockey stores like United Cycle in Edmonton and or somewhere like that where there's hockey gear everywhere.”

But of course, that had its positives as well as its negatives.

In their first game, England got beat by Team West (Canada) 15-1. Though, later on in the tournament, the team had levelled up and almost beat Toronto, losing by just a hair in the third period.

But perhaps best (and most Canadian) of all, the team got a pep talk from Canada’s hockey dad, Walter Gretzky.

“He was very much speaking about being thankful to your parents, thankful to your coaches, respect the referees,” Ed said. “It was all about being a good teammate and a good son or daughter, rather than the Xs and Os of hockey, which was pretty cool.”

Ed led the team for 4 years, heading back to Canada a couple of times and coaching a few kids who would go pro later on in their careers. Then as the organization he had helped build started to take on its own life, he stepped back to take a breather and focus on where he wanted to take his life.

With more time to himself, Ed decided he needed a change, so in 2009 he jumped on a plane to Alberta to take Education at the University of Lethbridge.

Ironically, after Ed moved to Canada, he didn’t play hockey or volunteer for 6 years. His studies took priority, then a woman who would become his wife, then came a career at the University, a baby boy and a baby girl.

When life calmed back down, Ed’s mind returned to hockey.

“I hadn't even thought about playing hockey since I moved to Canada,” Ed said. “Then I was like well you know I should do something so I Googled roller hockey in Lethbridge and came up with a Facebook post.

Another transplant (from Vancouver this time), Dave had set up a league for adults, so Ed joined in on their weekly roller hockey games. Then, they decided to let the kids in on the fun.

“Dave asked me whether I'd be interested in trying to lead it, and I said yeah sure,” Ed said. “So, we just started the whole cycle again basically. There was a strong sense of deja vu.”

Just in time for COVID, Ed got a few junior games up and running, only to get shut down. But, once everything settled down again, he was right back at it, pushing to build a real league.

Every year since, participation has nearly doubled, bringing in both ice hockey kids who want to sharpen their skills and those who’ve never really handled a puck before.

Now that the league is up and running, Ed and Dave have been joined by volunteer board members, freeing Ed up to focus on playing. Or at least it would have, but Ed’s son is in hockey this year and his team needed a coach.

So, of course, Ed signed up for time behind the bench. Some things just never change.