Joe Juneau's Frigid Adventure

Saturday was Hockey Day in Canada, the marathon CBC broadcast featuring several NHL games and hockey stories from across the country.

Depending on your perspective, the annual show is either a heart-rending celebration of the game and its grass roots, or an overwrought propaganda campaign for the Hockey Night in Canada brand name and the mythology of small-town Canada.

Even Hockey Night toastmaster Ron Maclean admits that he grows weary of the "sweet and sugary isn't-this-game-wonderful stuff" that sets the tone for the event.

But the saving grace of Hockey Day is the authenticity of its raw material: The ordinary folks are genuine and towns like in Winkler, Manitoba appear in all their chilly glory.

Hockey Day has its agenda – you won’t hear much about the brawls that erupt with depressing regularity at youth hockey games across the country, for example – but the feel-good stories are legitimate.

One of this year’s reports followed former NHL forward Joe Juneau to the town of Kuujjuaq (population. 2,000) in Canada’s north. Two years ago, Juneau passed through on a camping trip, and saw that the town had an under-utilized rink and little organized hockey. This season, he’s moved his family to Kuujjuaq for the winter so he can run the minor hockey program fulltime.

“Giving back to the game” doesn’t get much more real than that.

To see the report from Kuujjuaq, go to the On Demand video player at the HNIC website, and follow the links to Hockey Day in Canada 2008.

Photo: Joe Juneau in 1995 (Robert Laberge /Allsport/Getty Images)