Todd Devonshire knew he wanted to be an author. He just didn't have the topic. While living in Japan, it came to him.
One night he was late for class and didn't have a chance to eat supper. He made the mistake of telling his classmates he was so hungry he could eat a horse.
The reference was lost in translation and the group went to a restaurant where Devonshire was served actual horse meat.
"So they said, 'what would you like to eat?' And I said, 'honestly, if I could have anything right now, I'd love nothing more than a rink burger,'" Devonshire recalled.
"I told them some stories about that and what the rink burger meant, and the next day I said, 'OK, there's the world trying to tell me something,' and I started writing. A year later, I came back home and I had about 400 pages written."
Devonshire was at the Estevan Public Library on Saturday to read from his book, Rink Burgers, which was published in September 2012.
Anyone who has spent significant time in a rink knows the appeal of the rink burger, Devonshire said.
"It's one of those cultural things that's so engrained to us. As soon as I said it, I said, 'that's it, that's the title of the book,' because it works as kind of a symbolism throughout the book."
Devonshire said the book is about his life growing up in Big River, "playing hockey and the life lessons that came along."
He said hockey has become such an integral part of the fabric of Saskatchewan "because it's something to do in the cold weather," recalling his days playing on the pond in Big River.
"All of us kids, we would just go down with a pair of skates and a stick and we didn't care about anything else. The only timekeeper we had was the sun. When the sun was up, we'd go play and when the sun was down, well, 'Hey Dad, could you bring the snowmobile down here to shine some lights, we've gotta finish this up.' I think maybe a little bit of that is lost today."
Rink Burgers is about more than the game itself.
"I think just the camaraderie and the real lessons that we learn. There's a lot of good times and good friendships developed. A little bit about loyalty and sticking with it through good times and through bad," Devonshire said.
"We had a terrible tragedy when I was 10. We were coming home from a hockey game and our team was involved in a car accident and people lost their lives. All of us leaned on each other a little harder that time and being hockey (players) didn't matter now, just being human, we obviously formed a bond. It's one of the tougher chapters I had to write, but it was one of the more important ones, too, because you talk about hockey and the fun stuff, but that was a real experience that I still think about today when dealing with adversity, how we all pulled together."
On the book's two-year anniversary, Devonshire said there has been "a fantastic reaction" to Rink Burgers.
"The whole province has just really embraced it. It is so beyond my wildest dreams."
