You can live your life in a helmet - that we know for sure. But can you enjoy it?
I am a toque guy. I must have 15 of them.
Call me Canadian.
Now, we're not talking about that guy inside a steaming hot dance club, who is leaking sweat with a toque pulled down to his eyebrows. We haven't figured him out yet.
We're talking outdoor sports, where a toque has always - at least to me - stood for a sign of freedom.
When you're playing hockey in a toque, it is because you've stolen away from real life for an hour or two, leaving behind all the grown-up responsibilities to join the neighborhood kids for a little outdoor shinny.
It is a world without referees, ice fees or line combinations.
The minute I strap on my helmet and cage, it is because I've paid to play, and there are likely a bunch of other guys who truly care if they win or lose. It's still fun - just not as much fun.
So a toque means more on the hockey rink than simply keeping one's ears warm.
On the ski hill, I remain a member the non-helmeted, shrinking club that we are. Come spring, the toque goes - in favour of a ball cap.
Well, today, my type is once again under assault. That iconic Canadian headpiece - the common toque - is on the run. It's open season, because, of course, helmets are so much safer.
And it's all about safety now.
On the ski hill, the safety conscious are calling this week for a mandatory-helmet law, in the wake of the death of a high-profile actress - Natasha Richardson - on the slopes of Mont Tremblant.
Eventually, someone somewhere will suffer a serious head injury playing shinny in a ball cap. The call will come for mandatory helmets at the rink.
You can live your life in a helmet - that we know for sure. But can you enjoy it?
Will it feel the same when you're flying down the wing with the puck on your stick at the community outdoor rink? Or tipping over the edge of a ridge at Kicking Horse, where those first five turns are made with equal parts desperation, terror and ecstasy?
Sadly, non-skiers will likely shape this debate. Like - and we're assuming here - many of the emergency room doctors who have called on Quebec Minister of Education, Recreation and Sports Michelle Courchesne to make ski helmets mandatory in Quebec. Under public pressure, in the wake of a high profile and exceedingly abnormal death of Richardson, Canadian Press reports that the minister will consider the request in time for next ski season.
Hue and cry may yet shape the day. Unless those "advocates" get bored and move on to another cause before the minister knuckles under.
It is not unlike the debate on fighting in hockey, which is fuelled mostly by non-stakeholders in the National Hockey League game. How many of the anti-fighting lobbyists spend their hard-earned money to get into National Hockey League games? How may dedicate their lives to play or manage inside the NHL game?
How many would truly become a stakeholder - and make a tangible investment in the NHL game - if suddenly fighting were banned?
Very few. In fact, like the ski helmet debate, most are drive-by lobbyists.
When society at large is polled, the results say Canadians want fighting eliminated. When hockey fans are polled, the findings are polar opposite.
Doctors want mandatory helmets. The people inside the ski industry itself want nothing of the sort. Skiers themselves are free to make their own choice, but still, there are those who feel they should make the choice for us.
It is sad when a person dies. Tragic, to those who knew Don Sanderson or Richardson, who was skiing slowly on a teaching hill - a bunny hill - when she fell.
As always, "advocates" followed with statistics like this one: There were 14 skiing deaths in Quebec from 1990 to 2004 resulting from head injuries, and only two of those skiers were wearing helmets.
You have to hunt, however, to find this stat: You are twice as likely to die by lightning strike than be killed while skiing or snow-boarding.
That statistic is courtesy of an American body called the National Ski Areas Association, as is this one: More than half of the people involved in fatal accidents last season [in the U.S.] were wearing helmets at the time of the incident."
The truth is, more people don ski helmets each winter. Everyone's kids - mine included - are fitted with helmets that they will consider as much a part of their ski equipment as poles and boots as long as they live.
The toque will die a natural death, like the wooly mammoth. So let nature take its course.
