Hockey's Hoar Frost

In meteorology, sublimation occurs when water vapor in the atmosphere converts instantly into a crystalline solid, by-passing the liquid state. Hoar frost is the result, icy particles that first cling to and then cloak trees and other living things in its opaque and brittle shell. The features of all frosted growth is obscured, with only a stark outline visible, until the crystals are dissolved by the sun's heat.

In the inevitable Indian summer of our glorious Canadian autumns, there are regular sequences of warm days and cold nights that produce hoar frost. In most instances, shaking a tree limb or brushing the stalks of low ice caked plants sends the shattered frost in thin jagged sheets harmlessly to the ground. In a rare case, when the hoar frost is thick and its adhesion acute, the living thing will fracture, torn from its trunk by the weight and the grip of the icy mantle.

There is a peculiar Canadian symmetry between these frosty evenings and the start of our hockey season. Youths are trundled out of the doors of their homes before dawn, heading to the rink for a practice, or arriving home late at night from an out of town mid week game, the crunch of the frost underfoot.

David Frost was arrested last week on a series of sexual exploitation charges in Napanee, Ontario. The former junior hockey coach, National Hockey League player agent, and target of a failed murder plot has been in the eye of a media hurricane powered by equal measures of outrage and titillation. The national sports press have predictably rehashed the bizarre and sexually tinged relationship between Frost and his former protege and latter day would be killer, Mike Danton.

Selena Roberts edged far closer to the real issue at the heart of the David Frost case in her excellent New York Times column of August 27 (Differentiating Between Coach and Predator, www.nytimes.com/sports). Roberts smoothly directed her analysis to a fundamental truth - Frost is not a one off, isolated Svengali of sport. His ilk are everywhere. Like hoar frost, when the atmosphere is conducive, the manipulative forces in sport will cling to living things, distorting their true appearance and rendering contact dangerous.

Ms. Roberts commentary can be taken one step further. Hockey still rules the Canadian sporting consciousness, although changing demographics that have largely resulted from our immigration patterns of the past 30 years have reduced hockey's rule from that of sole despot to more of a chairman of the Party.

David Frost is a creation of the Canadian hockey environment. The hand wringing of hockey officialdom over Frost was both too late and irrelevant. So long as there are parents who are prepared to put their faith in the words of purported mentors who promise to take their boy to the promised land of the elite rep team roster spot, a Junior A club, the minor leagues, or the Holy Grail that is the NHL, there will be a frost forming in the atmosphere.