Wabush, Labrador, Canada. A small mining town nestled in the cold and desolate woodland of northern Canada. Seven months of the year this isolated town in the middle of nowhere is covered in a deep and cold blanket of snow. Darkness comes early, and with the wind chill, temperatures can reach -70 degrees Celsius. But there is a place I go where the temperature is a lot warmer. Tucked away in the basement of the local recreation center is a little room I like to call the Dungeon. Some people call it “the Weight Room” and others call it a gym, but to me, it’s a dungeon.
It was originally built back in the early 1980s by old veteran powerlifters. One in particular went on to win a gold medal in international competition. Almost every piece of exercise equipment was made by hand in the nearby iron ore mines. Welded and made of cold steel, almost every piece of equipment you see in this “gym” was built from scratch. It’s filled with chalk-filled barbells, dumbbells, squat racks, and lifting platforms. There’s no chrome or fancy machines, and there’s just one broken exercise bike tucked away in the corner. As for music, there’s no surround sound system here playing Ryan Seacrest’s Top 40 Countdown. Just an old stereo that mostly caters to heavy metal music. Perfect.
Entering the recreation center, I reach the bottom of the stairs. As I enter through the old, squeaky door, I drop down a little ramp onto the floor, which is concrete with rubber matting. Even the rubber matting covering the floor is made of old conveyor belts salvaged from the local mines. The low ceiling with condensation dripping from overhead pipes and bad lighting would give anyone the feeling of claustrophobia. The horrifying screams, the sound of cold steel, and the smell of sweat momentarily give me a chill like a cold winter’s day. But at the same time, a fire begins to burn inside that is making my blood boil in anticipation of wrapping my hands around hundreds of pounds of cold steel. My heart immediately begins to race, knowing that before I leave, I’ll endure a physical torture familiar with any dungeon.
The homemade, paint-chipped dumbbells don’t all go up in 5-lb increments. After your 60s, you have 67s, 73s, 80s, 82s, 97s, and 100-pounders. Unfortunately, this is where the rack ends. But you have to be creative, and there are still plenty of plates to make any bar bend.
I have trained in gyms all over Canada, and I wouldn’t trade this gym for a Gold’s Gym in Venice. I practically grew up in this gym. I have been training there for 15 years. I was first introduced to lifting weights at 12-years-old. My father, who was in his late thirties at the time, started training at our local weight room. No, it wasn’t a “gym.” It was a weight room in the basement of our small town’s recreation center.
I started to train consistently at age 16. As time went by, the veteran lifters at the local gym really noticed that I stood out above anyone my age, not just for my physique but also for my sincere dedication and love for training. I would get up bright and early while on summer vacation to be at the gym to train with my father (who had trained for over 20 years). I loved the challenge of pumping iron and the camaraderie that existed between the regular lifters at the gym. I loved learning from the old school lifters, such as a former Mr. Barbados and an international gold medal winner in powerlifting. It was like our own version of Pumping Iron, the bodybuilding documentary that made Arnold famous.
I will always cherish those memories of getting up early in the morning when all my friends were sleeping or at hockey practice and spending that time in the gym with my father. As for all the guys I knew who grew up playing hockey and listening to their hockey dads scream at them for an hour, hardly any continue to play today. The time together in the gym taught me life long
lessons about work ethic, goal setting, failure, and many more. I only hope that I can instill the same values in my children and show them the vital importance that exercise plays in living a long and healthy life. I sincerely hope that this will inspire you to do the same.