1 “Reclaim” is splendidly chosen, as it not only refers to the recovery of ownership but also means “to recall from wrong or improper conduct” (to borrow from Merriam-Webster’s definition, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reclaim).

2 As Michael Messner succinctly puts it, “For most people, ‘the sportsworld’ is an escape from the pressures and problems of everyday life” (1992, 9). At times Draper “wished there was nothing else to think about but hockey” (Johnston 1998, 127).

3 Of course, Donald also absented himself in order to be “free from the marriage bed” (Johnston 1998, 207) after finally having produced a male heir.

4 The Aeneid is a central reference in this novel. Michael Buma points out the “Virgilian descent into the underworld of Reg Ryan’s funeral home” that occurs “during the novel’s dream-sequence climax” (Buma 2012, 240). This dream causes Draper to remember his missing week. Equally important is that Aeneas, like Donald, was a reluctant preserver of a line: “though sick with heavy cares, / he counterfeits hope in his face; his pain / is held within, hidden” (Virgil 1971, Book I, 290–92).

5 Their type of joking fits the rather caustic “superiority theory” of humour—the idea that humour is essentially “malice and abuse towards people marked as deficient” (Carroll 2014, 8).

6 Draper, an intolerant child, will presumably outgrow his belief that Red Wings and Black Hawks and Bruins are not “human beings” (73). Intolerant Aunt Phil, Sister Louise, and Father Seymour, however, seem beyond hope.

7 For a compact examination of The Divine Ryans and hockey tensions within Canada, see Buma (2012, 114–15).

8 The Nazi parallel reappears when Draper’s mom asks him, “Would you lak to join zee Reseestance? [. . .] Eeet wahl be danjerous but vary exciting, mon ami” (Johnston 1998, 165). Living with Aunt Phil is like living in Nazi-occupied France.

9 There is poetic justice: when Draper is losing his bout badly, Reginald suggests that Seymour stop the fight. Seymour refuses, only to see how his half-orphan nephew “got down on [his] hands and knees and grabbed [the opponent] by the leg” (147).