Packed between the laminated dining seat and table it was affixed to, both painted the humble beiges of the Tim Horton’s ethos, I couldn’t help but remember being a child inside McDonald’s instead. In the time since my childhood, the fast food dining chair had changed little. As far as I could tell, the Tim Horton’s chairs now and the McDonald’s chairs then differed in just two ways. First, the McDonald’s chairs were painfully red. Second, McDonald’s chairs could swivel. The impressive metal heft of the chairs meant that if you rotated them to either extreme and let go, the chair would violently return, overcorrecting the median and continuing in the opposite direction with a terrifying woosh before penduluming back and forth and back to ultimately settle into resting position. Even now, as the fixity of a Tim Horton’s chair forced me like a fat snake to bend and fit the sharp edges between seat and table, I could not help but mentally return to that swivel and the one other thought that dragged along with it. I imagined myself standing behind the bright red chair, two hands grabbing the arcing frame along the top of its back. I thought about twisting that seat to one extreme, bending down such that my forehead hovered just above the level of the seat’s back and letting go. I’d allow the first full swing to pass me by. I’d let time slow as the back of the chair paused at its antipole from the first swivel and began to accelerate back. And I’d lower my head and close my eyes, letting the full weight of the chair catch me with its rounded bar directly in the temple.

I could feel the split seconds right now. A residue of grease and handsweat on my clammy palms, the chunky and pleasing woosh of the first swing off to the right, casting a handful of wind across my face in its wake. Bending forward that little bit more and watching the waffle printed contour of the seat below, warped to fit a pair of invisible thighs. The metallic rumble as the chair slows, stops, then starts again, accelerating back for me. The most sensitive receptors in the skin of my forehead, the Pacianian corpuscles, signalling their contact with warm, sticky metal before a free nerve ending can get a chance to sense pain. A preface to the incoming weight of heavy and fast steel in the preconscious interval as the entire Tim Horton’s erupts in screams and applause and chants, countless hands suddenly clap onto my shoulders and snap me back.

Now, my sister’s grabbing both of my shoulders from behind and shaking me back and forth, “you won! You did it! I mean, I knew you’d do it!”

It still felt good to win. The flames of civic pride still brought warmth. The air in the restaurant heated up in revelry. I joined in the shouting and flashed a wide grin to everyone who was looking for it. Inside, the space between the donut counter and dining seating was packed, standing room mostly. Everyone bundled in winter gear. A symphony of high frequency Gortex on Gortex as arms brushed and clapped and hugged. Our town name, a man in a suit, and a military pilot flashed across the three menu screens behind the counter, a jarring departure from the price list, chocolate chip muffin, and Tim Horton’s coffee mug that were usually displayed. Outside, the latecomers were bundled up in the squall, each piece of window occupied by the tented hands over peering eyes. From inside, I smiled and waved at the shadows beneath each pair of gloves.

We won. Again.

Kraft Hockeyville

“Hello and thanks, Dan.

Steve Urkel, the loveable nerd of television fame, once asked, ‘Does anybody want some cheese?’ This year, I think he got his answer.

I’m Tracy Smitty on location here in the small town of Wingham, Ontario, newly crowned this year’s Kraft Hockeyville. I’m joined by Dennis Samson, affectionately known as Mayor McCheez. Thank you for joining us, Mayor.”

“Thanks for coming out, Tracy. No one calls me that.”

“Over the next hour's programming slot, Mayor McCheez is going to take us on a whirlwind tour of Wingham, revealing the secret tips, tricks, and tactics that secured this year’s Kraft Hockeyville crown. Isn’t that right, Mayor?”

“That’s right, Tracy.”

“Before we head out, perhaps you could tell us more about your motivations to vie so openly for the title of Hockeyville.”

“Sure, Tracy. At the time, I was just Citizen Dennis Samson. Fresh-faced, pie-eyed, 30 pounds less. A couple years earlier I had acquired a piece of paper, dealt uncaringly by the fraudulent hand of civilization, that said I was all done with high school. But I wasn’t. So, I stayed on, volunteering as a student in some of my favourite classes: applied Law, physical education, and the creative writing portion of Mr. Merdi’s grade 11 English class. I came to call these years the Great Shift, for whereas the basic tenets of law, the airy heft of the dodgeball, and the romantic tragedies of William Shakespeare had not changed, the circumstances around them in my life had.

First off, my friends were gone. They had taken their diplomas at face value and continued life outward from Wingham, enrolling in internships or shift work. They had leaked out of town into the greater county or, even beyond that, neighbouring counties. Colleges, universities. Even the few that stayed had changed in their own ways, accruing children and low level criminal offences. In their place came two generations of newer, younger students. With each bonus semester, I fell further and further out of touch. These kids had new electronic phones with different keyboard arrangements. They said funnier, shorter versions of words I knew. They brought computers to class. They couldn’t write in cursive. They didn’t think farting in Mrs. Narci’s room when she was on break was funny. They thought it was mentally and physically irresponsible to hang out in the small clearing among the ten trees beside the upper soccer field to smoke cigarettes in between all of my classes. They didn’t care or think it was cool that Big Brian Hamlin flipped his Honda Accord over the lower track two years earlier on a dare even though he died doing it. They said FoodValu didn’t sell organic. They said the cream used at Tim Horton’s was mostly plastic and it came in a gross plastic bag. Though not to my face, I increasingly suspected that they thought of me as a failure. Each year, they grew more and more eager to leave. And among it all, I treaded academic water, watching the youthful foundation, the very future of a town I love, begin to crack and dissolve.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Mayor, does this have anything to do with Kraft Hockeyville or--”

“--it has everything to do with Hockeyville, Tracy. At the end of my extended high school tenure, I had not only seen the problems, but decided on the solution. I would fix Wingham. I would help reinvent the town I love into a place with a future. Somewhere with opportunity for everyone and reasons to stay. But what could I do?”

“You could run for mayor?”

“I would run for mayor.”

“I know what you just said, Mayor, but honestly that doesn’t clarify much about Kraft Ho--”

“--I’m not done, Tracy. My mayoral chances were already slim. In many’s estimation, this would be perhaps the toughest mayoral race to win yet. I was up against Hook Jenkins, a Korean war peacekeeping veteran who benefitted from his appeal to national pride and ran on a platform of changing the garbage day to Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays. Furthermore, both Hook and I were also running against Dr. Mario M. Andretti, a retired podiatrist originally from Goderich who ran largely on a platform exploiting celebrity name recognition of the famous Italian-American fastcar driver. How would I set myself apart from these titans of municipal politics?”

“How would you set yourself apart from these titans of municipal politics?”

“Great question, Tracy. Jenkins and Andretti operated in what I like to call ‘the bun’, a stuffy, antiquated collection of norms and regulations constraining the powers of town hall. They were more than happy to accept a place in the long line of victims of the gradual erosion of local power, now having reached the point in which mayorship represented little more than figurehead status and picking what day of the week garbage collection happens. Do you know how much money we had in the Wingham town treasury?”

“Believe it or not, Mayor, I do not know how much money you had in the Wingham town treasury.”

“350 dollars! How could any mayor reinvent Wingham with a largesse of only 350 Canadian dollars?”

“They c--”

“--please, Tracy, that was clearly rhetorical. They couldn’t. So, I would think outside the 350 dollar bun. My approach to mayorship would not thrive in the financial desert of town politics. Right off the top, I began my campaign using the slogan, ‘Money Isn’t Everything.’ It was a hit, people loved it. You see, at the time, most people thought money was everything and were pleasantly surprised to learn that it wasn’t. I ran on a platform of community empowerment that would completely sidestep the necessity of money. Instead of falling back on 350 dollars in hard cash, I would turn directly to the citizens and galvanize our efforts into programs through which we alone would revitalize our small, dying town. We could repaint the street signs. We could fill the potholes. We would do something about that aluminum slide in Riverside Park that burns children on sunny days. Or, at least, that was what I had hoped...”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“...aren’t you going to ask me what happened next?”

“Oh, sorry, I thought that was another rhetorical statement.”

“Question, you mean. I don’t think statements can be rhetorical.”

“Wait, why not? Are you sure?”

“...no.”

“Regardless, I didn’t know you were transitioning to something else. I guess I kind of stopped listening because you still haven’t really talked at all about Kra--”

“--Ah, yes, another great question anyone would ask, Tracy. ‘What happened next?’ Well, it turns out the combination of an aging population and youth flight left my volunteer force wanting for muscle. Though, I want to point out, we didn’t lack vigor. Several retirees showed up to volunteer for my campaign events but, in the face of seasonal Carpal Tunnel and large chunks of molded plastic replacing chalky bones, I was forced to curb my expectations. For example, Herr Lady Daffodil ran community knitting circles to help create hats and scarves for the stop signs and small trees throughout town (for when they got cold). The Lion’s Club offered workshops on Bridge strategy and lessons in hand-dancing, pioneered by retired Cpt. Sgt. Hank Dennins as a means of self-expression and catharsis after losing his legs.

Before you ask, no, we don’t know how.”

“...”

“...finally, Mr. Smate offered a series of public lectures on his favourite ‘large rocks’ in and around the community, including whether or not they are igneous and hands-on tutorials on his favourite ways to sit on each. Despite our efforts, all of these public community projects market-tested as intensely ‘uncool’ and ‘lame’ in my law class. They tested even worse when juxtaposed with my earlier promises to service local hiking trails, maintain roadways, and reconstruct the road barrier between the gravel shoulder and Maitland Park near the site of the infamous Schwinn bicycle massacre, who’s haunting presence continues to linger intangibly in the air around the now largely unused greenspace. I needed to change my approach. And that was when I saw it.”

“...o-oh my god, please, please tell me you’re finally going to mention Hockeyville.”

“Calm down, Tracy, I’m building lore here. I was forced to look for new ideas elsewhere. So I looked where we all look when we are in need of inspiration. In the spaces. Between songs, between tv shows, between new pairs of pants, between work and home, between you and a breakfast sandwich at Tim’s...”

“...I don’t follow, Mayor.”

“Advertisements, Tracy. Small packages of hope, solution, reconciliation, help, future. And that was when I learned about Kraft Hockeyville. The majesty, the warm promise, the thoughtful $100 000 dollar community grant, the trophy--I think there is a trophy. Laid out in the short space of a 20 second advertisement on CKNX morning radio was my answer. A new avenue through which lesser community energies could be funneled, invested if you will, to bring about huge monetary gains capable of rupturing the feeble purse-strings of every treasury in Huron County. Monetary gains that could fill potholes, save cyclists, and at least put a warning sign up by the metal slide. This explains my second, modified campaign slogan, ‘Money isn’t Nothing,’ which after additional market-testing ultimately became, ‘Money isn’t Nothing, Kraft Hockeyville’. Though publicly throwing my hat in the Hockeyville ring felt rejuvenating, yet again the odds were stacked against me from the get-go.”

“How so?”

“Well, for one thing, Wingham was already listed among the top 50 towns selected for the first ever Kraft Hockeyville in 2006. Critics would say that we already had our chance. Second, there’s, uh... well, there’s the whole hockey thing.”

“Ah, yes, yes! This brings me to the question you must always get. How exactly did Wingham manage to win Kraft Hockeyville with no active hockey team for the past 5 years?”

“Well, first off, I’d like to take a moment to commemorate the loss of the Wingham Ironmen and the Listowel Wranglers, the coaches, the fans, the concession clerks, and stowaways unfortunate enough to have attended that year’s Southwestern Ontario Regional Semifinals when the entire Knights of Columbus Community Centre sank deep into the sloshy grip of the swampland it had been thoughtlessly built upon years earlier.”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“Now, that all being said, I would also like to take a moment to highlight a line of thinking propagated among local wildlife specialists, some of who believe that, should the sunken community centre have access to underground cavern systems or other trapped pockets of air perforating the vast underground, perhaps our brave Ironmen live on somewhere below. Consistent with this belief, Emma Wilson dug up a loose cache of hockey pucks and Cracker Jacks not far beyond the edge of town nearest the sinkhole. Furthermore, historical accounts of snackbar and kitchen inventory at the time of sinking suggest that the teams could have sustained themselves to this very day should they have appropriately rationed the waffle fries. Interestingly, other academics suggest that the hermetic sealing of the community centre by layers of saturated silt may have also completely preserved the bodies of all inside and though, following this belief they would no longer be breathing, they may still look relatively normal. Following this model, it is hypothesized that, should a loved one look upon their Ironman’s pristine worldly remains, perhaps they might be convinced, even just momentarily, that they are still alive. Someday, I hope I can provide our citizens with these answers.”

“...”

“Oh yes, sorry. Well I think that perhaps the cynic’s answer is asking how Kraft could face the public relations disaster should they deny us, who have suffered such a great loss simply for love of the hockey game, a championship. Conversely, the double cynic if you will, would point out that we’re talking about four years post-loss, here. GoFundMe campaigns had come and gone, statues erected, the Pope visited. Frankly, I was a little concerned over the perception of ethical double dipping. That’s the rub, as Shakespeare would call it. Fortunately, inspiration would strike again.”

“And what did it inspire this time, Mayor?”

“That there was still space for us to fight fair. By thinking again outside the bun. Imagine the logo for Kraft Hockeyville. In a big, neat, angular, cursive font. Powerful red, thoughtful red, ‘Hockeyville’. The big prize, the renown, everyone focused on it. But that’s not the whole picture, is it? What are we forgetting? The NHL logo, sure, the players association logo, sure, the black and white clipart town yadda yadda yadda, sure. Look higher. Hidden up above all in plain sight. Encircled by the same smart, supportive red, outline the royal blue you know and love. It’s not called Hockeyville. Check Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. I have. It’s called Kraft Hockeyville. Let our competitors fester on the antiquated notion that Kraft Hockeyville can be won by just finding out who can convince more of their citizens to shake expensive sticks or to most flatly freeze water or to accrue shattered teeth. We would respect history. What existed before 2006? Not the bottom half of that logo, that’s what. As we travel across town today, you will see our commitment to a new way to win and some of the unexpected fruit it has borne.”

Cut.

“And this is where it all began. Where we realized that we wouldn’t need to reinvent hockey in Wingham.”

“It’s… stunning. So bright. I almost need sunglasses!”

“Right?”

“Could you tell us how it came about, Mayor?”

“To kick off my newly minted corporate strategy to mayorship, I wanted to make a statement. Something bright, glitzy, bespoke, yet still screaming, ‘Kraft’. And, to me, there’s only one thing that screams Kraft...”

“...”

“...”

“...Kraft Dinner?”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself! The impossibly bright orange of powderized cheez with a ‘z’, I legally have to clarify that here aloud, mass produced in a that recognizable white packet, metallic lining on the inside--like its space food! You say chicken soup for the soul? We say stuff it, Kraft Dinner for the soul. And if you’re that tied to soup, just add more milk next time.”

“So you converted the entire park to--?”

“--no no no. At first, I overcomplicated the concept and underproduced the result. I thought there could still be a middle ground that balanced both Kraft and hockey, reining in my unorthodox approach to the competition. I bent and nailed plywood boards into a rink shape and began a multi-pronged outreach campaign--posters, phone calls, canvassing, the works--asking the citizens of Wingham to delve deep into their pantries, hunting out the blues and yellows of their KD reserve. I asked you to rip off the cardboard top and weasel your hand past dry shells, spirals, or classic tubes to retrieve the powder packets. Then, meet me at Riverside park.”

“A Kraft Dinner cheez laden ice rink? Genius...”

“It would’ve been, Tracy, had it worked. We huddled around that elongate oval, the staticky ripping of packet paper filling the air before the dry dusting of cheez was dumped one serving at a time on that fateful December morning. I still remember watching the slow creep of the cloudy orange fog outward from the rink between our legs. The town fire brigade delivered water until saturation. We even stirred the cheezwater with hockey sticks, naturally. The fool would say it was simply a shallow pool of cheez and water, but, Tracy, we saw so much more. A flawless expanse of cheesy orange-yellow, radiant and perfect. Its brightness was second only to the sparks of civic accomplishment reflected in each citizen’s eye. We immediately recognized that we were onto something. Slowly, reluctantly, one by one we left the rink to freeze overnight.”

“What went wrong? I mean it clearly didn--”

“Please, Tracy, let me tell the story. It did freeze. Well, kind of. It turns out when you add salt to water you make it much harder to freeze well. Freeze completely. I’ll never forget the heavy weight of failure that crushed down on me that morning when three children snapped most of the growth plates in one foot or the other after their skate blades caught a particularly unfrozen chunk of ‘ice’--I’m using quotes there. To this day, I am still making amends for little Dan, Robby, and Robin--every year, I offer to pay for both pairs of differently sized shoes so that they have one that fits each foot.”

“...and what happened to the rink?”

“Well, I made a couple attempts to salvage the project. Now aware of the outrageous salt content of cheez powder, I offered to sprinkle the unfrozen cheezwater on the iciest roads in town, but the pleasing bright oranges of Kraft Dinner immediately washed out among the browns and blacks of car exhaust. I tried taking the most frozen parts of the rink and shaving them down for a delicious wintry treat. Tangy and initially irresistible, it soon became increasingly resistible as more and more field mice were found drowned and floating in the rinkpool by park maintenance staff. Left with little else to do, I just waited.”

“You just... waited? You didn’t clean it up or dismantle it?”

“I don’t know what to say, Tracy, despite every mistake I had made, citizens were still happy. They were still proud. I didn’t want to change that. People were still making an almost daily effort to walk through the park, stopping to look over the expanse of orange. I liked to imagine what they must be thinking as they squinted out over the cheezwater. I guessed that most were hoping to spot the tiny particles of powder that once lay hidden in the bowels of their very own kitchen intermingled among the rest. I knew I did good, but I didn’t know why.

Then, it got warm. The few vaguely shaped bergs of ice melted and the whole time the preservatives in the cheez powder continued to maintain that rich, bright orange. And one morning, Ruth Baden took her kids down to swim in it. We told her about the health inspector’s report. She said he could go, ‘sit on it’. Other kids joined in--both in wading in the pool and also in telling County Inspector Reyes to ‘sit on it’. A useless rink made for a perfect pond.”

“But it’s so much bigger than a rink now...”

“Well, Tracy, the rink was shallow and small. There was barely enough room for the kids, let alone the grown-ups that wanted a chance to soak. The lines grew long and moved slow. About a week after opening the pool to adults, Gerd Harrison, dehydrated and sunburnt, collapsed against the rink, shattering the particle board beneath his limp body as the whole pool of cheezwater rushed past him downhill into the Maitland River. The crowd was devastated. I had been on lifeguard duty and from my high chair I could watch the entire deluge of orange as it splashed into the murky river. While everyone was hopelessly distracted by Mr. Harrison, I caught a different sight. For a brief moment, the Maitland bloomed orange around the shore. But only for a second before the murky browns upstream came down to wash it away. I knew what I would have to do next.”

“If I may ask, what happened to Mr. Harrison?”

“He didn’t make it, Tracy. Nobody thought to administer CPR until it was too late. It isn’t called Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Harrison Beach for nothing.”

“...so you dammed up the Maitland River?”

“We dammed up the Maitland. A pond big enough for us all, and mere feet away! We birmed up- and downstream to isolate our own length of pristine, murky, standing water. The birms themselves are constructed from a composite of rocks, sticks, and, you’ll like this one, wetted cardboard from all of the boxes of KD that were purchased to replenish our powdered cheez supply. The whole town pitched in, motivated by both a wish to return to the days of wading in bright orange and by the loss of Mr. Harrison, who we believe would have wanted it this way.”

“Rest in peace, Mr. Harrison.”

“Thank you, Tracy. Rest in peace, Mr. Harrison.

By processing through the new town collection of Kraft Dinner we were able to construct the pond you see before you today. 400 metres of dangerously cheezy, and I will again highlight that I am using a ‘z’ on the cheez here as to not infringe on similarly motto’d products, river. Interestingly, the combination of damming out the upstream sources of agricultural run-off and supersaturation with the suite of chemical emulsifiers, stabilizers, and synthesizers in the cheez powder has left the water in a permanently sterilized state. Someone from Western University came and told us that. It’s safe to drink, even!”

“Earlier you called it a beach. When did that final transformation happen?”

“Very insightful, Tracy. Perhaps you may also be wondering how we were able to dam up the river when my volunteer workforce, if you recall, so severely lacked physicality.”

“Oh..yeah, I do recall and I was going to ask that, Mayor.”

“Doubly insightful, then, Tracy. To solve this labour issue, I introduced the Sorter Internship Network at the high school, grade school, and pre-school level. Through this municipally sanctioned program, students of all ages have a chance to gain hands-on work experience by volunteering a portion of their classtime to instead break down and sort the components of Kraft Dinner boxes. Box, pasta, and powder. It was only through this work program that I was able to accrue the vast stores of all three components to realize Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Harrison Beach. Reciprocally, and more importantly, students received realistic concepts of work and career expectations to guide their future academic performance. Across the education board, we saw academic improvement in almost all grade averages. We attribute these increases to what we termed Sorter Fear, a phobia about a lifelong career in repetitive and menial labour. I have to admit that no academic improvement was found for French literacy as that was the class most voluntarily skipped to sort Kraft Dinner boxes. Faced with a now constant influx of components, I quickly directed the use of the boxes in the birms and cheez powder in the water, yet I was left with a growing cache of pasta. What could I do with all that pasta?”

“Maybe, you could feed the community with it?”

“Oh god, Tracy, Jesus Christ. Have you ever tried to eat Kraft Dinner pasta without the cheez powder?”

“Well, no, I guess I ha--”

“Dogshit. It tastes like dogshit, Tracy. I know, I know, I’m not allowed to say dogshit on the TV but I’m not going to lie to the nation, Tracy. Absolute dogshit. It would be violent and inhumane to force even the hungriest to eat it. No. Eugh. I’m shivering right now because I’m thinking of it. Ah. Yuck. Can you see me, look at my arm, shivering. Why did you bring it up? No. God…

Think about it. Pasta, spirals, tubes. Shells. And where do you find shells, Tracy?”

“On the beach?”

“Yes. We dumped all of the orphaned noodles along the shores of the Maitland to create our own beach. Pasta sand, if you will. Not only did this approach provide a sort of holism, in which we, as a people, feel the natural satisfaction in using all parts of the Kraft Dinner, but it also solved an aesthetic issue. Before we had a beach, townsfolk feared that a dammed up section of river full of cheez water appeared ‘trashy’. For some reason, the abutting of reeds and grass and dirt with the edge of the water felt backwater and too rural. I will concede, there’s something unmistakably cosmopolitan about the smooth soft transition of sand between land and water. With pasta sand, we had brought big-town living to Wingham with a final finesse. And with that, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Harrison Beach was born.”

“I can’t wait to feel the sand between my toes! Shall we go for a walk while you tell me about more of Wingham’s Kraft secrets, Mayor?”

“Let’s, Tracy.”

Cut.

“We’re on location at Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Harrison Beach with Mayor McCheez of Wingham, Ontario, the latest winner of this year’s Kraft Hockeyville competition.”

“How’s the beach, Tracy?”

“I’m not going to lie, Mayor, it really, really hurts on my feet--is that blood?”

“Well, Tracy, there’s a gradient. Back here at the furthest reaches of the beach none of the pasta has absorbed any of the water and so it remains dry and brittle, but is also the most structurally sound. We call this stretch the Gravel Bar. Though sharp and uncomfortable to you or me, this is actually a favourite for local visiting Mennonites from the town’s hinterland, who find the unmistakable homey feel of small rocks in the shards of shelf-stable pasta. In general, we recommend all newcomers walk transverse across the beach, from brittle to soggy, to find the foot-feel they like best before continuing.”

“Ahh, I see. Let’s just....ow, ow, ow…...oh god gross no no too far... and back and...ahh, that’s perfect, Mayor.”

“You have excellent taste, Tracy. Now let’s continue down the beach.”

“Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Harrison Beach was your first success, and I can see why, but it wasn’t your only success. What other local developments ensured that the hotly contested mayorship and the title of Kraft Hockeyville would end up in your hands, Mayor?”

“Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Harrison Beach supercharged my mayoral campaign and growing body of supporters. We could see an unerring path to the Hockeyville crown along our shell-laden shores. Completely unprompted, supporters rushed home and raided their pantries anew, sniffing out new skews marked with the Kraft logo to insist I incorporate into the town. Some of those developments came easily. When Grenda Homm showed up with the assortment of Kraft salad dressings, I quickly found an opportunity to introduce them as the primary source of water for the children’s splash pad in the western end of Riverside park, almost across town. Barring no significant waterline clogs, we run on a regular weekly circuit of Balsamic vinaigrette Monday through Wednesday leading into Thousand Island Thursdays and, of course, French Fridays. We did have to legally mandate that all kids wear goggles while on the splash pad until the results of some outstanding consumer research become published, but parents revel at the opportunity to bring leafy green mixes for a healthy snack that receives a perfectly even coat of flavour. Under growing pressure from the bachelor community and in tandem with the menu expansion at the Pizza Hut, we also introduced chicken wing Ranch Weekends on Friday and Sunday nights. I want to add that if you ever get to see Ranch Weekends, we never stipulated the cowboy hats, that was an entirely community-driven initiative.”

“Fascinating…”

“Then there was peanut butter. I don’t know how we missed it the whole time, hiding its Kraft logo right under our noses. For this solution, I turned to local industry in the very lifeblood of Wingham, the Westcast car manifold factory. Inspiration struck when a tour of the local grounds included ongoing environmental surveying work that revealed the greenspace around Westcast was slowly, but continuously, heating up. Academics concluded that it was primarily this ever-increasing heat that was killing not only the nearby forest, but also much of the fauna found collapsed in its thinning shade. This ran counter to prevailing local belief--we all figured it was the exhaust fumes from the foundry. Accordingly, government experts were called in to officially designate the growing region as the Dead Zone, which I always thought was just a Stephen King book or like a cellphone thing, you know?

Anyways, I saw it differently. When I heard, ‘heated ground’, I didn’t think of the shameful exploitation and resultant death of an ecosystem, I thought of the expensive blue waters of lagoons in Scandinavia, the warm tropicality of a Hawaiian spa, the national honour of Japanese hot springs. So I dug a pit and filled it with peanut butter. Before you judge, imagine the therapeutic and smooth tactility of peanut butter on skin. Mostly smooth, but attendants will provide heated buckets of crunchy on request for exfoliation and snacking purposes.”

“Yes, about Kraft Westcast Manifold Nut Pits, could you comment about the growing reports of severe body acne and an inability to sweat?”

“Simply symptoms of the body healing to its new experience. Contrary to traditional spa experiences, in which you soak to let the ‘bad’, I’m using quotes there, toxins osmose out of you into the bath, our ethos at Kraft Westcast Manifold Nut Pits is instead to think that there is nothing wrong with you. Instead, our peanut butter pits, brimming with arguably essential oils, preservatives, and a small percentage of your daily recommended niacin equivalent, infuse you with their nutrition. You leave with more than you came in with and perhaps your skin has a difficult time adjusting to that for a bit. As far as the science understands it, the cessation of sweating is possible when a perfect coat of peanut oil has fully encapsulated your body. Though some newspapers wrongfully dismiss this as an unhealthy blocking out sweat glands, tear ducts, and ear canals, we instead view it as a novel way to lock your freshness in.”

“Incredible. And you rode this success right into Town Hall?”

“Better than that, Town Hall and the Kraft Hockeyville Hall of Fame, Tracy. I think there is a Hall of Fame...”

“That brings me to an important question. What do you plan to do with the $100 000 community endowment?”

“Well, Tracy, the path I took to secure that money for my community was a long one, but my intentions to reinvent Wingham as a town with a future never wavered. Now, I did learn that my hands are tied on one front. Kraft stipulates that all the money must go towards a community hockey complex, so construction will come first. And already, I have saved significantly on surveying fees by building the new complex on top of, prepare yourself…”

“No, don’t tell me…”

“...the old sunken remains of the Knights of Columbus Community Centre! I know, I know, but hear me out. The site somehow remains fully validated under municipal construction code despite its history. In fact, and this will reassure you, surveyors believe the site is now more appropriate, benefitting from the structural support of the sunken complex roughly beneath it.

While construction is undertaken, I’ve hired a team of community leaders to teach the entire citizenry to skate.”

“Everyone in the town is learning to skate?”

“I wasn’t kidding about the restrictions on spending the Kraft community endowment. Almost all of our community redevelopment programs will have to take place on ice. One of the only proposals I managed to sneak elsewhere was converting half of the concession stand into a community soup kitchen, but even then we had to promise to stock those small individual packets of Combo pretzels in the pizza flavour and install a Slush Puppy machine.

The defensive third of the rink closest to the public ice entrance is reserved for health workshops and bingo nights targeting the oldest community members in desperate hope to reduce the number of crushed hips while skating. And the furthest third is reserved for local employment fairs and academic counselling for high school students. To oversee all operations, I’ve also gone ahead and hired a full officiating staff.”

“You’ve hired full-time referees?”

“If Kraft is listening, yes, absolutely. It may be complete coincidence that all double as certified social workers and rehabilitation counsellors and that community led sessions, we call them face-offs, could occur around center ice while individual meetings could be restricted to penalty boxes.

Beyond the immediate rink, I’ve also contracted plans for a collection of community gardens in the nearby greenspace.”

“Will Kraft allow it, Mayor?”

“Do not fret, Tracy, for I will point out here that each garden will be shaped like a hockey puck when you look down at it from the sky! Finally, the team hockey bus will begin servicing a regular town route as every one of our citizens is drafted to a local team.”

“An entire town of hockey players...”

“And believe it or not, despite our ambitious plans, by prioritizing local sourcing and accepting every volunteer we get, we still expect to have upwards of $10 000 in funds remaining.”

“And what will you do with the remaining money, Mayor? A cream cheese moat? A roofing project using Kraft shingles, hahaha, do you see what I did there?”

“No, Tracy, that would be wasteful. Some of the funds will be spent to begin exploratory excavation work into the true fate of the Wingham Ironmen as a source of closure for the bereaved.”

“Oh...and the rest?”

“The rest will be reinvested back into the community for the unthinkable.”

“The unthinkable?”

“Tracy, we’re going to try to win Kraft Hockeyville. Again.”

Cut.