The Cup Makes a Visit

Legendary goalie and four-time Stanley Cup winner Ken Dryden asked to have a day with the Stanley Cup, and got his wish a couple years back.  In an excerpt from a new chapter in his re-released classic book The Game, he tells what he did with it.  One stop, the tiny town where his father was born and his cousins still farm the home place, Domain, Manitoba:

Hockey had been almost entirely an outdoor game until after the Second World War. Then, with money from the postwar boom, communities to be built and sacrifice to be commemorated, many hundreds of indoor "memorial" arenas were constructed across the country to honor those who had fought and died in the conflict. In 1967, many hundreds more "centennial" arenas went up to celebrate Canada's 100th birthday. It was these indoor arenas that turned hockey from a sport played as much on boots as on skates into a truly national game.
In rural areas, the construction of a rink also symbolized something more. In the postwar decades, new farm technology had allowed far fewer people to cultivate many more acres. Fewer towns were needed. Many wouldn't survive. Those that did got the jump on neighboring towns by making themselves less dispensable. They won the right to establish a school or a clinic; they put up a grain elevator, or built a rink. In 1976, the people of Domain decided they needed an arena of their own. The money would come from a municipal debenture. The arena cost $60,000 and took the community sixteen years to pay off. Shaped like a Quonset hut, the Domain Arena is made of galvanized tin and has a sand floor. With no brine pipes beneath it to create the ice, its hockey season depends on the weather, usually beginning by mid-December and lasting until late March.
Domain's population is less than seventy; 650 were in the rink. It could fit no more. Many kids, and adults, wore jerseys of their favorite NHL teams. Dave wore his Sabres jersey; I wore my Canadiens; Judy, Team Canada. Many others wore the jerseys of their local teams — Domain Kernels, Domain Pitura Seed, Domain Generals, Macdonald Lightning, Oak Bluff Bulls, Sanford Sabres. They came from nearby villages and hamlets — LaSalle, Sanford, Brunkild, Oak Bluff, Starbuck, Osborne, Ste. Agathe, and Rosenort. Others came back home to be with their families, from Winnipeg and from places more distant. Three generations, even four, were there.....
At one point in the evening, Monty Magarrell, the master of ceremonies, Jen's father-in-law, asked those who had helped out at the rink at any time during its history to stand. Astonishing those who had come back home to see the Cup, and astonishing each other as they looked around, most of the rink stood. A small town runs on volunteers. There's not enough money to hire others to do what needs to be done. There's too much to do. And now there are lots of nice new arenas. Even Winnipeg doesn't seem so far away. At times, the most fervent volunteers wonder why they do what they do. But if they stop, things break down, the challenge to live where they do grows, and their reason to stay diminishes. The Cup gave the people of Domain and area a need to get together to do what didn't seem possible. And in doing it, to remind themselves why they volunteer, why they live in Domain, why their rink matters; to feel proud and, as Jen Magarrell put it, for "bragging rights to boot!" Two years later, people still talk about "the night the Stanley Cup was in Domain."
When people not from Domain describe the village as being "in the middle of nowhere," Domainers seem a little offended, and more surprised, as if that never occurred to them. As if they are somewhere. The night was about the Cup, but, as it turned out, more than that it was about the spirit that wins the Cup. It was about Domain.

That is a really good description of many small towns and rural communities, even if it is in the land up north.  The Canadian hockey history is pretty interesting too.  There's also a bit about the rink's hand pushed "Manboni."