Riposte: Verbal Fencing in the Locker Room

The banter in the Beaverbrooks locker room, highlighted by Benoit's good-natured attack on Ambrose Bishop's lack of foot speed and the subsequent riposte—Bishop changing the subject— made Seamus J. O'Sheehan forget his scoring slump.

 

Ambrose Bishop: The Towering Tartar

Opponents who dared to drop the gloves with Ambrose Bishop, the towering Beaverbrooks tartar, often regretted their decisions.

"O Canada" and the Orphic Dimitri

Dimitri Kotsopoulos, the only Greek Canadian on the Beaverbrooks, would often sing "O Canada" before home games. His orphic voice, so low and commanding, offset his lack of goal-scoring prowess.

Belauded: Much Ado About Mediocrity

The belauded St. Andrews Beaverbrooks, resting on the laurels of early-season success, have lost six straight games and now coast toward mediocrity in the Atlantic Hockey League.

Dundrearies and Duh Playoffs

Benoit, the team captain and comedian, stood on his dressing room chair and issued his annual mandate: "Men, we need to play more like a team—no one here padding your stats, eh?—so we will all complement our playoff beards with dundrearies.

"Dungarees?" a rookie, unaccustomed to Benoit's French accent, asked.

"Non, you oaf," Benoit replied and then glanced at his best friend, a smirking Seamus J. O'Sheehan. "DUNN-drear--ease," Benoit repeated as he drew imaginary lines from his large ears to his jaw bones. "We let our side-uh-burns grow wild, eh?"

The Cantatrice and Her Captivating Performance

Nathalie’s performance in the public square that late-spring evening–her unwavering mezzo-soprano voice, a hint of French Canadian accent when she spoke to the audience, those big brown eyes and her chestnut hair—so captivated me that I fell in love with the cantatrice.

A Triumvirate of Terms

While I was unplugged and on vacation in New Brunswick, PEI and the Magdalen Islands, I missed the challenge of infusing my vocabulary with an Internet-generated word-of-the day. I did, however, bolster my Atlantic Canada vernacular by reading Wayne Johnson's, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.

A triumvirate of terms I plucked from Johnson's novel about Newfoundland's first premier, Joe Smallwood, and the history of this colony/country/province:

syllogism: a crafty argument
dory: short, flat-bottomed boat with high flaring sides
confederation: alliance

Tempers flared, like the sides of dories, as politicians and all manner of pundits cast their syllogisms in favor and against Newfoundland's proposed confederaton with Canada.

Wordnik: Estivation

While the classic New Englander might find a summer vacation on Cape Cod idyllic, I prefer the less-populated paradise of St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, NB for my estivation.