Ken Dryden looks to the classroom to establish Canada’s future lineup

Ken Dryden, the former Montreal Canadiens goalie known as much for his hockey ability as his erudite outlook, will teach a course in Canadian studies at the University of Calgary and McGill University later this year.

Dryden’s course, Making the Future, will be taught via video link simultaneously to students at Calgary and McGill. He will split his time between both campuses. The course, which will include guest lecturers, focuses on issues Dryden believes are germane to the future of Canada — such as health care, politics, religion, family — and how students can best approach them in the years to come.

“You will play a part, in some way, in Canada’s future,” Dryden said in a story that appeared on the University of Calgary’s website. “So why not play a significant role and help shape that future? The question is, are you just a passenger, or can you be a driver?”

Dryden, 65, won six Stanley Cups as a hockey player and was named to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1983. He was a Toronto-area MP from 2004 to 2011, serving as the minister of social development under Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin from 2004 to 2006.

In 1983, Dryden published ‘The Game,’ a behind-the-scenes look at his tenure with the Canadiens that also included other meditations on hockey. The book stands as a seminal work about the sport. A passage from it was quoted by Marcel Aubut, the president of the Canadian Olympic Committee, during his rambling speech at the introduction of the Canadian men’s Olympic hockey team on Tuesday morning.

Dryden, who received a bachelor of arts from Cornell University in upstate New York in 1969, has written on other matters, including books on education (In School, 1995) and nationalism (Becoming Canada, 2010). It was the latter that fostered his recent teaching interest, which he turned to after losing his seat in the 2011 election.

For the past two years, Dryden has been teaching the course at McGill, where he earned his law degree in 1974.