Jeff Meldrum was sorting out the landslide of sporting equipment in the basement of his Chelsea, Que., Home two weeks ago when he met him again – a single abandoned hockey skate. A left without a right.
The black Reebok 10D size skate had been there for years, but Meldrum and his family were preparing to move to a smaller house in July, so this time there would be no last minute forgiveness.
“Okay friend, it’s time for you to go,” said Meldrum as he tossed the orphaned shoe onto the discard pile.
The last time he remembers having a couple was one day about seven years ago when the family went skating in the local arena. Meldrum’s son, Owen, then four, fell on the ice and opened his chin.
The family climbed off the track, frantically slipped their skates into a travel bag and rushed into the parking lot to take Owen to Wakefield Memorial Hospital for the points.
Meldrum, 47, suspects that somewhere along the way he has lost his right skate.
The remaining left skateboard had survived previous “wardrobe changes” in subsequent years, including a previous move in 2015.
“I couldn’t throw myself away because it was brand new. I only used it two or three times,” explained Meldrum.
So there he sat in the basement, collecting dust as the skating seasons came and went. When Meldrum needed skates, he borrowed a pair from a friend.
“What I was really afraid of was, the day I kick him out, I’ll find the other one,” he said.
At about the same time that Meldrum was deciding to part ways with his weird skate, Élyse Piquette was making a remarkably similar decision.
Piquette, who lives on Highway 105, in Chelsea, about 10 kilometers from Meldrum’s home, was cleaning up the mess from her garage when she discovered a single skate, a black-sized Reebok 10D in near-new condition. A right without a left.
Piquette had stumbled upon the skate seven years ago as she walked along the shoulder of Chemin de la Rivière, where she lived.
“It’s an expensive skate,” he recalls thinking. Realizing that someone must have lost it by accident, he picked it up and took it home.
For four weeks, Piquette paid for an advertisement in the lost and found section of his local newspaper, hoping that the owner would come forward and claim the right skate. When nobody did, he tried Kijiji. Still nothing.
Like Meldrum, something made Piquette cling to the single shoe, even when he moved house. And like Meldrum, he finally decided that seven years was long enough. It was time to get rid of it.
He left the skate hanging on the lanyard from a sign at the bottom of the driveway, next to some hubcaps and a firefighting poker set that he had also pulled out of his garage. You never know what some people will stop and take.
“People have chosen everything except [the skate]”Said Piquette.
After all, who would have any use for just one skate right?
Meldrum and Owen, now eleven years old and with a faint scar on his chin, were driving down the chemin de la Rivière last Monday when Meldrum spotted him: a familiar-looking black hockey skate hanging from a sign at the end of the driveway someone’s.
“I told to [Owen] kidding, “Hey, we should turn around, maybe it’s my skate,” recalls Meldrum. As he said the words, he realized that was exactly what he had to do.
Meldrum turned the car around and stopped in front of Piquette’s driveway. Here it is: a black 10D Reebok skate in almost new condition. A right.
There was no doubt in Meldrum’s mind that this was the missing companion of the left shoe that he had just decided to throw away. But how did it end here, at the end of a stranger’s driveway? Had he left it on the roof of the family car that day? Had he forgotten it in the arena, where someone had picked it up just to throw it away?
He will never know what happened, but he knows it was a remarkable coincidence that he was at the head of Piquette’s house that day.
“This is pretty lucky how it turned out,” chuckled Meldrum, who said he was planning to deliver a cake to Piquette as a gesture of thanks. “I have hope, and when I think something will happen, it often does.”
“It’s amazing!” Piquette said when he heard the story. “This is just the happiest ending possible for this!”
