The Class by Ken Dryden

First and foremost, it should be said that this is not a hockey book. It is a book written by one of hockey's most interesting people and best writers.

Ken Dryden has always been more than the sum of his résumés. Goaltending icon, Member of Parliament, cabinet minister, lawyer, thinker, and bestselling author — his books have long revealed his gift for stepping back from life and seeing the larger patterns beneath it. In The Class: A Memoir of a Place, a Time, and Us, Dryden turns that lens inward, but the result is far broader than a personal memoir. This is a thoughtful, often moving examination of how ordinary lives unfold within the currents of social change, and how the people we grow up beside quietly shape us.

The “class” of the title is Grade 9G at Etobicoke Collegiate Institute, the so-called “Selected Class” of 1960, a group of 35 students chosen for an advanced academic stream. Dryden reconnects with many of them more than sixty years later. He calls them, visits them, listens. The book emerges from these conversations — stories of theatre directors, engineers, teachers, homemakers, entrepreneurs, and people who lived quieter, more private lives. There are successes, frustrations, reinventions, and the everyday resilience that rarely makes headlines but forms the real fabric of a generation.

What elevates The Class is Dryden’s refusal to make himself the center. Though he is the most famous of the group, he positions himself simply as one of the 35, and often as the one who drifted away most completely. His curiosity about his classmates feels genuine, even urgent. The book becomes an inquiry into the forces that shape us: families trying to find their footing in postwar Canada, teachers who saw potential where the students themselves didn’t, suburban expectations, widening horizons, and the era’s quiet but sweeping cultural shifts.

Dryden writes with the same clarity and gentle intelligence familiar from The Game. The narrative moves between personal portrait and social history, showing how the classmates’ lives reflected broader national changes — the expansion of higher education, the rise of the middle class, and the evolving roles of women in work and family. He captures the poignancy of paths diverging: how people who once sat at adjacent desks can grow into entirely different worlds, yet share a common foundation that matters more with age.

Ultimately, The Class is a book about time — the time we had, the time we lost, and the time that remains. It’s a generous, humane work, and one of Dryden’s most quietly powerful. For readers who enjoy memoir, social history, or simply the remarkable stories of ordinary people, it is a deeply rewarding read.