AFTER PLAYING ORGANIZED hockey for almost 20 years, I had pretty much given up on the sport. The knucklehead culture had ruined what was once an abiding passion. I was tired of playing against tough guys with too much to prove, tired of homophobic taunts and the god-awful trap style of play. And as a Torontonian, it didn’t help that a certain local franchise rarely vindicated whatever enthusiasm I had shown for it.

I didn’t lace up for three years. Then a winter cottage invite came along, with a suggestion to bring skates. Going a little stir crazy one afternoon, I ventured out to join a pick-up match on the frozen lake.

I didn’t know a single person but that outing reminded me what hockey could be: free-flowing, improvised, creative. I felt that heart-seizing-then-quickening gush of cold air in the lungs, the sudden simpatico achieved with perfect strangers. Call it my Damascus moment — pond hockey brought me back to hockey. I’ve been at it ever since, playing 100 organized games a year, winter and summer. But it’s the handful of shinny games I play outdoors each winter that mean the most.

The struggling mill town of Plaster Rock, N.B., may seem the unlikely crucible for this revival, but it was there that the World Pond Hockey Championship (WPHC) was first staged in 2002. When locals were brainstorming how to raise money for a new indoor arena, the concept came together over a couple rounds of beer. Since the tournament was launched, it has grown from a regional affair drawing 40 squads from the Maritimes and Maine to the world’s foremost shinny spectacle, with competitors from every province, the United States and 15 countries — a 120-team invasion that maxes out the area’s lodgings.

Danny Braun, president of the WPHC, admits nostalgia is part of the appeal for players, whose age averages between 35 and 40. “Most would’ve played their earliest hockey outside at some point, whether on a pond, a river or even just road hockey,” he says. “The tournament takes that hockey purist in us back to our childhood.”

The WPHC got its biggest boost in the winter of 2004-05, the NHL lockout year. “Media coverage really exploded,” Braun says, and The New York Times profiled it on the front page. With NHL tickets more expensive than ever and organized minor hockey pricing itself beyond the reach of many Canadian families, it’s telling that awareness of the WPHC took its biggest leap when enthusiasm for pro hockey was at an all-time low.

It didn’t take long for other small communities across Canada to launch their own tourneys. There’s already an American pond hockey championship in Minnesota and this year inaugural events are scheduled for Switzerland, Sweden and Finland.

The 2010 WPHC coincides with the opening weekend of the Olympics. Considering the excitement and preternaturally high expectations surrounding Canada’s men’s and women’s hockey teams, there will likely be an added buzz on Plaster Rock’s outdoor pads. While Braun points out that the scheduling was determined by Mother Nature alone, he jokes about pond hockey overshadowing the Olympians. “We hope we don’t steal their crowds too much.”

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EARLY MORNING. Algonquin Provincial Park. Crisp air hits your face and blasts the sleep out of your system. The insides of your gloves become damp and you struggle to hold the bar linking you to a sled and 24 sprinting feet. Your muscles stiffen and brace for the bend up ahead … and you tumble as the sled lurches into the turn.

John Langford chuckles, thinking about the countless times he’s seen it happen. “The first left-hand turn,” he says, “everybody wipes out.”

Langford has been running dogsledding tours for more than a decade. His company, Voyageur Quest, is one of several that operate out of Algonquin, about three hours northeast of Toronto.

A weekend trip begins with a crash course at 8:30 a.m., after which groups of eight to 10 are expected to retrieve and harness their own mixed-breed huskies before heading into the woods. The main misconception about dogsledding, according to Langford, is that it’s an easy ride.

“You’re not wearing fur coats and sipping peach schnapps while dogs glide you along like magic,” he says. “It’s really physical, and when working with animals, they don’t always do what you say.”

Between maintaining control of six excitable dogs running at up to 25 kilometres an hour, pushing and braking the wooden sled in which a fellow rider sits and keeping your own feet firmly planted, a day of mushmushing makes for a demanding but exhilarating experience.

“No one sees the scenery for the first hour,” says Langford. “But when the dogs are finally doing exactly what you want and it’s quiet, that is magical.”

Visitors can sign up for day trips or multiday excursions that also offer snowshoeing, hiking and skiing. To recuperate, they can either spend the night in a simple stoveheated tent or retreat to the luxury of a furnished log cabin. Prices vary between operators, but day trips usually begin at around $200 and include training and lunch.

For more information, please go to www.voyageurquest.com, www.wildernessadventures.ca or www.outwardbound.ca.

— Deborah Mensah-Bonsu

BETWEEN CLIMATE change-induced ice storms, backbreaking sessions with the snow shovel and — new this year! — the spectre of H1N1, winter in Montréal can stomp your spirit in many ways. But tucked into the Laurentians, a one-hour drive from the city, there’s a place to breathe and put the wonder back into winter.

Weekend retreats at the Sivananda Ashram yoga camp in Val-Morin, Que., fill your days with meditation and yoga classes, and leave with you with ample downtime to explore the area on skis and snowshoes. “It’s like having a three-week holiday in two days,” says Padmavati, the ashram’s director. “You can go into a yoga class feeling terrible, and at the end of it, you feel like you can run a marathon.”

That sense of well-being comes from both the yoga and the setting: 140 hectares of forested quiet, with no cellphones or crackberries allowed. “There’s also little traffic,” says Padmavati. “It’s unbelievable.”

While the ashram has a wood-fired sauna and serves up two vegetarian meals a day, don’t be fooled — this is no luxury resort, a fact driven home by the monastic, pre-dawn wake-up call.

Retreats are held all winter and the ashram’s “Country Christmas” runs from December 22 to January 2, drawing visitors from around the world. “We have Iraqis and Iranians and Americans, or Palestinians and Israelis, sitting next to each other,” Padmavati says. “People who are at war with each other are actually sharing and eating and singing together.” Which is much more peaceful than being stuck in Montréal traffic together.

For more information, please go to www.sivananda.org/camp.

— Liana B. Baker