By Daniel Nugent-Bowman (The Athletic)
HALIBURTON, Ont. — The wind whirls past Jay Woodcroft’s head as he grabs the brim of his grey ballcap. He smiles and advises his co-pilot to do the same. One hand clenched on the steering wheel as he readjusts, Woodcroft overlooks Grass Lake on the most picturesque summer day.
This isn’t really the hold-onto-your-hat kind of afternoon, but the wind always seems more forceful when zipping across the water in a motorboat. So, Woodcroft, at the controls at the starboard side of his sparkling blue fishing boat with a 150-horsepower outboard motor, couldn’t care less. There’s hardly another vessel around on this late July weekday. He’s at peace. This is where he’s happiest.
“This is the best place in the world,” he says.
There’s a reason Woodcroft and his wife, Jaclynn, choose this place when they were looking for a summer home to call their own in 2010. Woodcroft grew up in Don Mills, Ont., now amalgamated with Toronto, so Ontario cottage country was always a desired location to spend downtime in the offseason. They looked around the region in places like Muskoka and Parry Sound. But it was Haliburton that offered the perfect combination of great fishing and privacy and relaxation to create memories for their now-8-year-old twin girls.
It also presented the ideal mixture of detachment from and focus on hockey.
“The big thing is that going to Halliburton is a mindset for me,” Woodcroft says. “It means that it’s time to refresh and renew. And it’s a time to review. It’s a review time for the year that occurred and to try to find ways to get better.”
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