Paulatuk boy waiting for gift promised in 1999
Dawn Ostrem
Northern News Services
Paulatuk (May 07/01) - Aaron Ruben has heard it before, but this time the new skates he was promised two years ago at an old-timers hockey game are really on the way.
"We will look after that and make sure he gets his skates," Avi Sarkar of Xentel DM Inc., management company for the old-timers tour said when contacted last week by News/North.
Aaron,12, was first promised the skates in November, 1999 when the NHL oldtimers took to ice in Inuvik.
"We got there just in time to see my boy's name picked," his father Gilbert said. "We were happy for him because he would get new skates so we were waiting and weeks went by, then months went by, then years."
The Rubens asked a local minor hockey representative to look into the forgotten skates. Gilbert got a call nearly a year after the event. Xentel DM Inc. wanted Aaron's foot size. But the skates never came.
"When it was time for hockey that year he didn't want to play any more," Gilbert said. "He was disappointed, so he played soccer instead."
When the family moved to Paulatuk from Inuvik, Aaron played hockey with borrowed skates.
"It's not that he is angry," Gilbert said. "It's just that the people gave them to him and he's still expecting them."
When told that Aaron still had not received the promised skates the director of operations for Xentel in Calgary was quick to promise to make up for it.
"We will look after that and make sure he gets his skates," Sarkar said. "Tell that kid when we come back to Inuvik he will be happy ... He will be hanging around with the hockey players, on the bench and in the dressing room."
The Oldtimers Hockey Challenge will be in Inuvik on Nov. 9 during its 13th national tour across Canada.
"We make presentations to minor hockey associations in each city and each kid who needs some skates, we give them skates," Sarkar explained.
"We want kids to be happy, that's the reason we put these events on."
