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th ei fp .c a Th e IF P -H al to n H ill s | T hu rs da y, S ep te m be r 27 ,2 01 8 | 34 Cell: 416-996-9338 jay@hilltoptreecare.ca www.hilltoptreecare.ca It's Lonely at the Top! PRESENTED BY TICKETS ON SALE NOW! Nov. 23rd, 24th, 29th, 30th, Dec. 1st at 8pm Nov. 24th, 25th, Dec. 1st, 2nd at 2pm John Elliott Theatre Box Office: 9 Church St., Georgetown Phone: 905-877-3700 PRESENTED BY B B E E A A And The S uT T yEAu T He worked on-site at sev- en Winter Olympic men's hockey tournaments, trav- elled to Europe several times with a number of Burlington youth rep hockey teams and now has a new book out about all those experiences - not bad for a boy from the lit- tle town of Acton. Denis Gibbons, former sports editor of the George- town Independent and Acton Free Press, one-time writer and editor with The Hockey News, and international hockey expert and aficiona- do, is the author of the new book Hockey: My Door to Eu- rope. The 240-page publication details the many high-level hockey excursions Gibbons has taken since the 1970s, as either a researcher for Amer- ican broadcast TV men's hockey crews at Olympic Games or, in the case of fol- lowing travelling youth hock- ey squads, as a reporter/pho- tographer and sometimes language interpreter. Hockey: My Door to Eu- rope is the first solo book for Gibbons. He was one of 14 au- thors of the massive hockey encyclopedia Kings of the Ice: A History of World Hockey. The 1,023-page tome came out in 2002. In his latest literary en- deavour, Gibbons touches on many aspects of European hockey and its players, some of the more memorable games he's seen in person, the difficult lives of some of the European players he's covered or known, and the fi- nancial and personal hard- ships some of them endured. He also talks about some of the many funny and some- times harrowing situations he's found himself in while immersing himself in the in- ternational hockey scene. The book also provides Gibbons' eyewitness ac- counts and his viewpoint of significant hockey and politi- cal events that transpired while he was in Europe. Among the more memo- rable events were: his scary detainment by the Czecho- slovak secret police in 1983 during his trip with the Bur- lington Cougars AAA midget team; the nuclear plant ex- plosion in Chornobyl, in the Soviet Union, while he was attending the 1986 World Championships in Moscow; the defection of Soviet hock- ey star Alexander Mogilny following the 1989 World Championships in Stock- holm, Sweden; and the upris- ing in Kyiv, Ukraine during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, leading to Rus- sia's controversial annex- ation of Crimea. Gibbons's book offers an- ecdotes about his times as a researcher with U.S. broad- casters, at the 1988 Winter Games in Calgary (for ABC), his first Olympic assign- ment, at the 1992, '94 and '98 Winter Games in France, Norway and Japan, respec- tively, for CBS and the 2002, 2010 and 2014 Games in Salt Lake City, Vancouver and So- chi for NBC. Missing on that list is the 2006 Winter Games in Torino (Turin), Italy. Gibbons had a heart ailment prior to the Games yet still planned to go overseas, but his wife Chris and the family doctor con- vinced him it was not wise so he didn't. He ended up having a tri- ple bypass operation. Gibbons said the long days in the broadcast booth and running around Olym- pic venues tracking down people and information is too difficult for him to do now. "Mike Emrick and I made a pact after the Sochi Olym- pics that it would (each) be our last ... I'm just too old for the 12-hour days," he said of the deal he and NBC's Olym- pic hockey and NHL national play-by-play man agreed to after the 2014 Winter Games. However, Gibbons was in- volved in this year's Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, although not in person. He was hired by NBC to do his usual men's hockey tourney research from the comfort of his home in Bur- lington. "My job (was) to get as much information to the an- nouncers as quickly as possi- ble." His Olympic, junior championship and world hockey championship as- signments have seen him work alongside famed TV broadcasters like Emrick, Al Michaels and Gord Miller as well as game analysts like ex- NHLers Ken Dryden, Ed Olc- zyk and John Davidson. During his globe-trotting days, Gibbons regularly ven- tured behind the Iron Cur- tain, the name given to the symbolic boundary dividing Europe into Soviet Union- controlled (Communist) and Western (non-Communist) countries from the end of the Second World War in 1945 un- til around 1991, the latter not long after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union into Rus- sia and many separate, smaller countries. Gibbons says he worked on Hockey: My Door to Eu- rope off and on for almost four years poring over notes he had kept since the '88 Olympics. "My (original) idea was to illustrate the hockey and the (Olympic) Games between 1988 and 2018 but then you grow and learn more about the living conditions and the customs and language of oth- er people of other nations. "As you travel, the hockey (aspect) becomes less impor- tant and the people become more important," he ob- served. The book can be bought directly from Gibbons by calling 905-632-6101. The hardcover book retails for $32 while the softcover is $25. COMMUNITY FORMER IFP SPORTS EDITOR'S BOOK HIGHLIGHTS OLYMPIC, INTERNATIONAL HOCKEY EXPERIENCES TIM WHITNELL twhitnell@metroland.com Denis Gibbons at the 2014 Olympics in Russia, and with hockey analyst Don Cherry. Denis Gibbons/photos