I saw the culprit the second I reached the kitchen doorway.
There was two-year-old Eric, looking angelic with his fair hair
and chubby cheeks, standing on a stool and leaning over the
stove with a wooden spoon clutched in his hand. He had taken all
of the element out of the electric stove and put them on top. He
was stirring all this metal with the wooden spoon and the spoon
was on fire! I nearly had a heartattack.
"What are you doing, Eric?"
"I'm cooking."

He was in constant motion as a child. You were always trying
to anticipate what he was going to do next. When you have your
second and third kids, you know. But with your first, you never
know what they've got in their bag of tricks. And Eric's bag was
certainly overflowing. Our doctor back in London used to say, "If
you can get him through his first three years without having his
stomach pumped, you deserve a medal."
One time, I was on the phone and Eric wanted my attention. He
soon found a way to get it. When I wasn't looking, he climbed onto
the chair in the dining room, grabbed hold of the curtains and tried
to swing across like Tarzan. I had to excuse myself from the phone
because the curtains were torn right off the dining-room wall
He was a real corker. He still is. That's his personality.
Taking him to the doctor's office was always an adventure. He
couldn't sit still for a second. He'd be looking at a book. Then
he'd be looking at the aquarium. And then he'd be talking to all
the ladies in the waiting room. He'd say, "What do you think's
the matter with her, Mom?" And then he'd have to check it out
himself.
Our doctor was a really jovial guy. Since I worked in Emer-
gency at Victoria Hospital, I had a good idea of who the best doc-
tors were, and I was convinced ours was at the top of the list. He
was a little on the chubby side, so Carl's nickname for him was
"Old Fat Butt." We were just kids ourselves then. After one
appointment, Carl said to me, "How's Old Fat Butt?". So on the
next visit, Eric trots in to see the doctor and he says, "Hi, Fat
Butt." The poor doctor pretended he didn't hear him. Carl and I
had a long talk about what we said in front of the kids after that. I
hope Dr. Keith Johnson can laugh at this now.

Eric was let loose on the world on Wednesday, February 28,
1973, at 8:10 PM. He was supposed to be a Valentine's Day baby,
but he was two weeks late. Eric was born at the hospital where I
worked, so they rolled out the red carpet for us. Our obstretrician
was a great guy, Dr. John Collins. I remamber Carl coming into
the delivery room just before Eric was born. He was wearing one
of those hospital scrub suits with a drawstring on the bottoms.
The delivery room had swinging doors. Carl came through the
doors and then he looked down because his underwear was
showing at the drawstring. As he glanced down, the swinging
doors were flung open by someone rushing through from the
other side, knocking Carl halfway across the room. Trying to
regain his composure, Carl said, "We may begin now."
Eric didn't cry, he just blinked in the light. I had been praying
for a girl; I wanted a girl so much, because I knew I'd have boys.
Carl comes from a family of all boys, so I was hoping our first
child would be a girl. Carl was hoping for a boy, but he didn't
dare say it out loud.
Eric was just a tiny, pink thing with dimples in his cheeks and
chin. He had light-brown hair and he was really wrinkled
because he was overdue. He weighed seven pounds, one and a
half ounces, and was twenty and a half inches long. My parents
were with us at the hospital. They had postponed their trip to
Florida until Eric was born. Carl was really excited, but my Mom
had some sobering words for the proud Papa: "You've got no
idea what a difference this kid's going to make in your life."
We chose the name Eric because we wanted a Scandinavian
name to match our last name. We were told Eric meant "kingly." I
wanted a name that you couldn't shorten because I'm famous for
shortening names. Eric's middle name is the same as Carl's, Bryan.

When Eric was a baby, even pushing him down the sidewalk
in his buggy proved challenging. He always grabbed the sides of
the buggy and stood up and held on to the hood so he could see
out. He had to see where he was going. I'd spend my whole time
turning him around and laying him down. Eric still doesn't like
lying down.
The first time he walked was at my friend Donna Stewart's
farmhouse outside of Chatham. He was seven and a half months
old, but had really sturdy legs for a little guy. Donna had a Fisher-
Price "popcorn popper" that her kids used to push around. Eric
was holding onto the couch and pushing the toy with his other
hand. Soon, he didn't realize he wasn't holding the couch any more
because he was concentrating so hard. He wasn't thinking about
what he was doing. He forgot he wasn't supposed to be letting go
of the couch. Donna came into the room and screamed, "The
baby's walking!" Eric looked at her with a shocked look on his face,
thought something was wrong and sat right down. About ten days
later, Eric tried again, and he was off and running shortly after that.

Most babies at that stage would be safe in a playpen if you
wanted to leave the room, but not Eric. We heard something
moving in the house one night and thought somebody might
have broken in. We thought, Uh-oh, what's happening?" And
there was this shuffling fool entering our room in his yellow
Dr. Dentons. He was so short you could hardly see him over the
matress. I said, "Carl, I think he's out of the crib." He had stacked
all his teddies up and climbed over the side. He had this huge
canopy crib, but he still got out.

He would get up every morning at five-thirty in the morning. On
the odd day, he would sleep until seven. I was praying some days
he would sleep until nine, but he never did. He was a good
sleeper. But when he was up, he was up. And we were all up.
Our babysitter in London, Susan Eynon, found the best
method to keep Eric occupied was to put him in the bathtub with
all his toys, because then he couldn't get away. He was happy to
do that. He still loves baths, but now, instead of playing with toys,
he reads. That's his ritual. They all fight for the tubs in our house.

I tried to keep Eric in nighties and booties and make him look
like a baby, but he didn't act like one. One of my neighbours from
London said to me once that she couldn't remember him ever
being a baby. That really upset me - I wanted him to be a baby.
You just knew he was going to be big. When he was three
years old he had tremendous hands and tremendous feet. By the
time he was seven and a half he had hands the size of an adult.
We used to take photocopies of them. His uncle Paul said he was
just like a puppy with big paws.

Eric got his first set of stitches long before he set foot on a
hockey rink. He was standing at the back door when his shoes
slipped on a wooden ledge and he went crashing down. I just
died. He was only eleven months and he had to get stitches over
his left eye. His second set of stitches came shortly after that when
we were at my friend's house and he flipped over the runners of
her rocking chair while he was whipping around. You have to
remember, he had the motor skills to do all these things but he
didn't have the brains.

Toys held little attraction for Eric as a kid. He had a Fisher-
Price phone and a xylophone and he liked those, but his favorite
pastime was to sit on the floor and bang on pots and pans and
cans of food.
He had good fine-motor skills and liked to hook rugs. He
could sew really well. In grade 7, he had to make place mats for
home economics. They only had to make four for the class, so I
made two more on my own to complete the set. Although I hate
to admit it, his were better than mine. His sister Robin got a rug-
hooking kit for Christmas last year and she wasn't too keen about
it, but Eric could hardly wait for her to open the box.

Eric's birthdays were another matter entirely - he was just awful.
He would get so excited and his ultra-competetive nature would
shine through, turning the jelly-bean hunts into a war. I remember
on his fifth birthday I spanked him and put him to bed right at his
party. Some of the kids had found more jelly beans than he had and
he couldn't handle it. The next year we stressed cooperative games,
but I still used to shudder on the day of his birthday party.
When he played sports, Eric liked to play with the older kids.
When he played with his own peer group, he would be very
upset with their level of play. The hardest year for Eric was when
he was in kindergarten and the kids that he played with were in
Grade 1. They were in school all day and he was only in school a
half-day. Once he entered Grade 1, he was fine, because then he
could play with everyone. He had a couple of friends but he has
never been a real social butterfly. He's a little more quieter than that,
really. Even now, he still prefers a casual situation; he doesn't like
to be on display. He just likes to sit in the kitchen and chat, eat
and watch TV.

He always liked to play with his cousin Brian because Brian is
five years older and Eric could play road hockey with him and his
friends. One of Brian's friends once hit Eric in the face with his
stick because he didn't like the idea that this little kid was better
than him at hockey. Eric was so competetive that a lot of times he
would step on people's toes. Sometimes he knew he was doing it,
but he didn't care. He was going to get what he wanted and what
he was focused on. I'd say it was a two-way thing. Part of it was
that people felt threatened by Eric, and part of it was that Eric
really meant to threaten them.
He was never part of the "in" crowd, and I think that drove
him to achieve so that people would respect him. He didn't have
the most friends at school, but he would try to gain the approval
of his peers by showing them he could play ball better or get a
higher mark on the tests. I think his attitude was they might
not like him, but they had to respect him.

Eric is really in to rules. Even when he was little, that was the
routine we kept him on. He knew what the rules were and he
followed them. He didn't have outer limits, so we tried to make
outer limits for him. If he knew the rules and he lived within the
rules, then everything was cool. But if he stepped out, well then...
It was clear to Eric that if I said something, I meant it. If he
didn't comly, there were serious repercussions---SERIOUS.
Sometimes when his friends were over, I had totell them not to do
something, and Eric would say, "And she means it. So if you do it,
you know there'll be trouble." Because Eric was so hard to handle,
he had to know, then and there, it was not going to work. I would
say, "Eric, stop doing that. I told you not to three times. You're get-
ting spanked." After his spanking, Eric would announce that it
didn't hurt, but we noticed that he never did it again.

Eric was initially thrilled when his brother Brett arrived on the
scene. It was just three months shy of his third birthday. When we
arrived home with the baby, we gave Eric a little Viewmaster and
told him it was from his new brother. Whenever we took pictures
of the baby, he would get out his little Viewmaster and he'd be
clicking away, too. As soon as Brett gave Eric his present, Eric
immediately gave him his own prized blanket.

But there was still an adjustment period he had to go through
with baby brother around now, cutting in on the limelight. One
day Carl's mom, Marg, who was helping me out at home with the
two kids, had baked a chocolate cake. We were sitting upstairs in
our sunroom while Eric kept himself busy in the kitchen. A little
too busy. He got his hands on a spatula and decided to start serv-
ing up the cake. He flipped it all over the ceiling and the walls---
the entire kitchen was covered in chocolate cake. We didn't yell,
we just looked at it. Carl's mom said, "I don't think he's really
accepted the baby yet." Eric loved Brett, but he didn't like the
idea of losing his unique position in our home.

Eric was keen about skating right away. When he was one and
a half, we got him a pair of bobskates. They had little straps. It
would be freezing cold in London and his bobskates would be
falling of his boots all the time, so we bought some hockey laces
and wrapped them around the skates so that they would stay on
for the duration of the afternoon. With the bobskates being 88
cents on sale, I think the laces cost more than the skates. He was
just thrilled with skating. He was basically walking around, but
he thought he was awesome.
I signed him up for skating lessons before he was five and
then house league hockey when he was six and a half years old,
hoping it would keep him occupied for a bit and use up some of
his boundless energy. A lot of his friends were joining and he
wanted to play with the other kids. Carl said he would be too big
for hockey, but I said, "I don't care. He's driving me crazy." I
didn't realize it was going to be the best thing to happen to him. It
gave him something to focus on. All his energy could be chan-
neled into something that was positive.

One of the only things I remember about Eric's first year of
hockey is Carl carrying him into the arena with his skates on so
that we didn't have to leave for the rink until the last minute. I
used to take a little chair for Brett to stand on, as most London
arenas has terrific ice surfaces but no bleachers. Eric's motor
skills were good. He seemed to recognize how to change the
things he was doing wrong. He didn't shake the earth, let me tell
you. But he liked it, and that was all that counted.

On the ice at skating lessons, Eric was like a little firefly scoot-
ing all over the place. He was underaged for the group he was in.
The class was for five-year-olds and older, and he wouldn't turn
five for another six months. I'm sure the teacher knew it, but she
just got a kick out of him. He finished all four skating levels in
that program---which most kids enjoy until they're ten years
old---by the time he was five. The final class was on his fifth birth-
day. He was razzing his instructor, Betty and saying, "How old
do you think I am?" She knew he was young because of his atten-
tion span and lack of patience in waiting his turn. He would be
fooling around and not watching until finally she would say,
"Okay Eric, do it." He would get out there and start swirling
around, and it was all Betty could do not to burst out laughing.

Bonnie was the one who really got him into these programs
and took him there. At the time, I was work, work, work. Hockey
wasn't high on my list of things for the kids to get involved with. I
felt at the time that hockey didn't fit well with schooling, and to
me, the way hockey was being run at that time wasn't all that
desirable. In my mind, I thought that basketball or perhaps foot-
ball might be sports where you could play, have the fun of being
involved on a team and be successful at school. My feeling was
that sometimes if you get too big physically in hockey and
your skill level doesn't keep pace with your growth, then you
could get slotted in as an enforcer. In actual fact, perhaps I made
that conclussion because I didn't cut the mustard as a hockey
player. I had what they call "stone hands." If I got twenty points a
season, it was something. It seemed odd because when I played
basketball I could control the ball and make all kinds of passes.
But I could never do it in hockey. Maybe I didn't practice enough.

When Bonnie enrolled Eric in the Red Circle house league, I
made rounds with him and our neighbor, Ted Ralph, and his
son Edward to pick up the equipment they would need. Bonnie
equipped us with the local Shopper's News and she'd circled all the
ads for used equipment. There were some garage sales and there
were equipment exchanges run by the local association
and one at a shoe-repair shop. We had already paid two dollars
for his first pair of real skates and, fortunately, there were a lot of
bargains to be had on equipment, since he would no doubt be
outgrowing it all quite soon.
Eric and Edward would go to each of the houses. Edward
would get his first choice at one house and Eric would get first choice
at the next. It was all antique. The shoulder pads looked like little
football ones. None of the stuff matched. I'm not even sure if the
shin pads were a complete set. I don't think it cost much more
than twelve dollars for the first set of equipment. We bought Eric
a really good new helmet, and we also got him new socks and a
sweater in Montreal Canadiens' colors, because that's what he
liked. He wouldn't take the helmet off; he kept it on all day long.
He even wore it while he was riding his bike. The only time he
took it off was when he ate. The rest of the time he pranced
around in his hockey equipment. He was really keen for it.

I offered to help coach his team that first year with the Red
Circle Minor Hockey Association. There were three lines, and all
you had to do was change them when the buzzer went. There
wasn't a whole lot to it. I knew a little more about it than some
of the other parents at the time. I thought, "Well, you've got to
put something into the system if you're going to get somthing
out of it." It got going on a very low-key basis and it was a lot of
fun. We held a barbeque at our house at the end of the season,
and one of the families brought a cake shaped like an ice rink,
complete with the players.
As soon as Eric got home from each game, he'd get out in the
backyard rink and go skating again for hours. He would mentally
replay the game on the ice in the backyard. He loved it.

I made Eric's first backyard rink when he was nearly three. I
had always made rinks when I was a kid myself, which was
tough in Chatham because the winter would only be cold enough
for a rink for maybe two weeks at a time. Very often, the ice
wasn't good enough to skate on, so we would play road hockey
on it. Still, Paul and I followed the theory that you got better sur-
face if you used hot water. We'd hook up the hose downstairs in
the furnace room and just empty the hot-water tank. The steam
would just be spewing off. I don't have any idea if it did work
better, but we always insisted on using the hot water, much to my
mother's dismay.
They used to let us into the Senior A hockey games for free in
Chatham if we helped out with resurfacing the ice between peri-
ods, so I picked up a little experience that way too. They didn't
have a Zamboni back then, so all the kids lined up in a row with
shovels to form a human Zamboni and went around the entire ice
surface. We also took turns pulling the barrel filled with hot water
that was used to flood the ice - we certainly earned the price of
admission.
Hockey Night in Canada was a big deal in the Lindros house-
hold - it was quite the family occasion. My brother Paul and I
would have to sit through The Lawrence Welk Show with Grandma
before the hockey game came on. We would dance with her while
Lawrence Welk performed those grand old favorites, and
Grandma loved it. Afterwards, she'd sit there and turn a blind
eye while we devoured more than half gallon of ice cream while
watching the hockey game. It was sort of a pact.
We also had night hockey on our backyard rink in Chatham.
Well, sort of. There was a big row of windows across the back of
the house, so we would go up in the second story of our home
and flip on every light to try to light the rink. Paul and I weren't
very energy-conscious, that's for sure. The lights weren't really
effective though. You could only see shadows, but I think it was
part of the fun.
One of the beauties of hockey is that kids get exposed to a real
cross-section of Canadians. It breaks down the pockets we live in
in the bigger cities. If you come from a well-to-do family, that
means nothing when you're on the ice. You can't hide in hockey. I
think hockey really provides an opportunity to have a sense of
the Canadian mosaic. It gives kids a chance to appreciate the
family environment some of their teammates come from, because
very often you end up having a sleepover or traveling to tourna-
ments together. I think it helps the kids to see qualities in others,
both positive and negative. The vehicle in this case is hockey, but
the vehicle could just as easily be being a member of a band or the
Boy Scouts.
When Eric first started to play hockey, I had a tendency to
start bombarding him with pointers immediately after a game. I
went from having absolutely no interest in hockey at all to. once it
was a go, it being a project where I just went nuts. Bonnie noticed
Eric was really happy when he came out of the arena, but after
our little chat on the way home he would turn very serious and
start thinking about the things he could improve on. It didn't
seem as much fun for him at that point. Bon suggested that
we take two cars to the rink - and that I travel solo. She was dead
on. I quickly got the message.
It took me a while to learn that the best thing to do after a
game is to identify a couple of good things that they did and give
them a pat on the back. You don't really get into analyzing "Why
didn't you do this?" and "Why didn't you do that?"
After the backyard rink melted, we would sometimes get up
early to go to Victoria Park in London for a little shinny. It was an
outdoor public rink and you weren't supposed to be out there
with sticks, but we would be out there at 6:30 AM when nobody
else was around, so I don't think anyone really minded. You
would get some good exercise, go home and have a nice break-
fast, and away you would go to work. You felt great. I'm not sure
who enjoyed that more, Eric or myself.

Eric was always into hockey, even when he was still in dia-
pers. I remember his first Christmas, we were all at my
mother's place opening our presents. My son Brian, who was five
at the time, got a little hockey stick as one of his gifts, but he
buried it behind the Christmas tree in the basement rec room
because he didn't like it. Well, that was all Eric needed to see. He
climbed behind the tree, grabbed the hockey stick and ran - he
didn't stumble or stagger - he RAN all through the base-
ment with this stick like he'd died and gone to heaven. He was
less then ten months old at the time.
As a toddler, Eric was constantly tearing around and banging
into things. He would end up with black eyes and stiches, but it
never slowed him down. It reached the point where if you were
arranging a family portrait you had to work it in between Eric's
assorted cuts and bruises. He didn't worry about hurting himself,
though. He was always going full tilt.
My sister Bonnie was also quite a handful as a youngster. So
after Eric came along and gave her all she could handle - and
sometimes more - we would tell her, "Well, you deserve it." But
there were some days when Bonnie was near tears and saying
"What am I doing wrong? Why is this kid always a handful?"
Some kids are easier than others, and he was not easy. To keep
him from getting into trouble, she had to give him so many activi-
ties. He was one of those kids who just pressed you all the time.

My son and Eric became buddies when they played on the
same hockey team one year in London. They were nine years
old. It was Eric's first year of competitive hockey. Eric was over at
our place a lot, and even after they moved to Toronto he usually
came to stay with us for a week or two every summer. We had a
pool at our apartment, and when they were downstairs doing
their lengths, you always knew that if somebody did 100, Eric
would have to do 130.
Eric doesn't know his own limitations. As far as he's con-
cerned, he doesn't have any. He has what you call a lot of gears.
He always seems to be able to notch it up another level when his
team needs him. Eric is the type of boy who would die at the end
of a race, giving every last ounce trying to win.
He had a lot of character even as a kid. I'll never forget what he
did at the London minor hockey banquet at the end of that season
he and Mark played together. The boys had been defensive part-
ners. Bonnie had nicknamed Eric "Loosey Goosey" and Mark was
"Steady Eddie." Bonnie gave Eric his nickname because the
minute the puck was dropped he was nowhere near the playing
defense. He ran the whole ice. Poor Mark had to guard the nest.
He was Mr. Save-the-Bacon. Well, on awards day, Eric scooped up
just about everything, including the trophy for leading scorer.
What really stands out in my mind is that he got up in front of an
auditorium full of adults and kids and said, "I just can't accept this
by myself, because without Mark being back there to take care of
the fort, I couldn't have got all these goals and assists." He
said, Mark, you've got to come up here and share this with me."
For a ten-year-old kid to stand up there and say that was
really something special. To be honest with you, whether Mark
had been there on defense or not would not have made one
iota of difference. The bottom line was that Eric was recogniz-
ing Mark. I don't know very many people who would share a
trophy with somebody else, even as adults.
You could always expect the unexpected from Eric. You
would never, ever really know - and I don't think even Eric
knows - what he's really capable of.