When Nathan MacKinnon returned to his old stomping grounds at Cole Harbour Place on Friday to speak to kids attending a hockey camp in his hometown, he received a hero’s welcome.
“It was fun and exciting,” says 10-year-old camper Rosie Tanner, who plays hockey for the Metro East Inferno during the school year. “He told us about hockey and how he played for the Colorado Avalanche.”
For her and the other boys and girls — all ages 5-12 — enrolled at the fifth annual Cole Harbour Hockey School, the 29-year-old MacKinnon needed no introduction.
In the last two decades, Cole Harbour, a suburban community in the Halifax Regional Municipality, has developed a reputation as a hockey haven. It’s home to MacKinnon and Sidney Crosby, two of the brightest stars on Team Canada and in the NHL.
The kids at camp, the oldest born in 2013, have never known a world where that wasn’t the case.
To them, both players are proof that you can grow up in Cole Harbour and go on to be one of the best hockey players in the world.
“I think it’s great motivation for the young kids in our community that everyone wants to be the next one … but it’s always hard,” said Jon Greenwood, the camp’s director and lead instructor. “We’ll be lucky if we ever have another one.”
Greenwood, who also grew up in Cole Harbour, coached MacKinnon in peewees, around the same age as the oldest kids at the camp.
“It’s hard to say at that age, ‘Oh this is going to be an NHL superstar,’ but we certainly knew the tools were there, and most importantly … the drive and competitiveness were there to continue,” said Greenwood. “He’s never stopped surprising us.”
The camp launched with 94 players in 2021 and has since grown to accommodate 160 kids. It now regularly fills up when registration launches each year, said Greenwood.
For campers, it’s a week to learn new skills and meet friends, on and off the ice.
Tough act to follow
Tanner, who plays defence, and likes “stopping people from scoring or going on breakaways,” said she enjoyed getting to train on dry land, work on her shooting, and practise her shooting skills.
Her favourite things about the week were “learning new things about hockey and making new friends.”
But her mother admits the camp can set a high bar for others to follow.
“When she went the very first time, the week after she had Mitch’s Soccer Camp, and she goes … ‘Do you think Messi is going to be there?'” said Hanneke Tanner-van Gelderen.
You don’t, after all, get to meet your heroes at every summer camp.
Greenwood said MacKinnon will usually drop by the school if he’s in town, but there’s no guarantees.
If he does make it, as he did this year, it’s a nice surprise.
“Everybody left with a nice group picture and an autographed picture of him,” he said. “It’s a pretty exciting finish for the week.”
