When I heard of the 260 page book about the hockey stick, I must admit to being a bit skeptical. How could an author carry the reader's attention for that long about a single piece of hockey equipment? That was the task facing Bruce Dowbiggin, and he handled it masterfully. Dowbiggin is a very accomplished columnist and beat writer with several book titles on his resume, but none of them rank as high on my list of favorites as 2001's The Stick: A history, a celebration, an elegy . Buy The Book: Amazon.ca | chapters.indigo.ca | Amazon.com Dowbiggin opens by exploring the hockey stick's origins among the Mi'kmaq indians of Nova Scotia. He moves on to the mass produced wooden weapons to the evolution to graphite and composite sticks that have rendered the wooden hockey stick extinct, at least at serious levels of play. That is all expected, and dutifully chronicled but in a way that is far more interesting than you would expect. He brings in narratives, often first hand,...