Hockey’s Cold War Ices a Country : NHL strike: Fans across Canada go through withdrawal in spring of players’ discontent.

Canada without hockey? In April? At Stanley Cup time? Ain’t fair, eh?

Aldo Isidori leaned back in his seat at Toronto’s uptown Sports Cafe, a sort of wall-to-wall television arcade for sports junkies, and tried to sort it out.

“I’ll tell you what it’s like,” he said. “Canada without hockey is like Canada without snow.”

The NHL players’ strike has devastated Canadians from Vancouver to Halifax. The first walkout by the Boys of Winter in the 75-year history of the league is a blow that could change the face of the country.

Who knows! Without “Hockey Night in Canada,” a Saturday night television ritual, the population may surge nine months from now.

“What’s the Vatican without catechism?” asked John Bourne, a wildlife specialist with the Alberta Department of Agriculture. “Out here, hockey is the heart and soul of the country. It keeps us going from October until April.”

In Quebec City, where some French Canadians even take out bank loans to buy season tickets for the woeful Nordiques, depression is a threat, according to Dr. Benoit Beaulieu, a professor of literature at Laval University.

“If there is no hockey, widespread moroseness may set in,” he said. “They must have their hockey.”

The Stanley Cup playoffs are more than merely a rite of spring in Canada. About 75% of the NHL’s 560 players are Canadian. The game is a way of life. Hockey in many respects is life.

“It is not possible to imagine what Canadian life would be like without hockey,” wrote Doug Beardsley in his 1987 book “Country on Ice.”

“Even the most jaded fans know that the game means something more than the pure pleasure of identifying with their favorite athlete or team,” Beardsley said. “When they are there, in the Montreal Forum or Maple Leaf Gardens or the Northlands Coliseum, for a few hours each week, they enter into a mythical world beyond their day-to-day reality. Hockey began here, in the mythic. As a result, what can be said mythically about the game applies to us, our culture, our country.”

Mike Fox, a middle-aged high school French teacher in the Ontario community of Levack has played hockey all his life.

“I think for us, the importance of hockey is the fact that it’s a game that enabled us to endure winter,” Fox said. “It made winter fun.

“There are probably going to be a lot more people going out for walks now that spring is here.

“I think sales of tennis balls and golf balls will increase. Maybe some fathers will get out and play road hockey with their kids.”

Prime Minister Brian Mulroney may even find it easier to keep his mind on politics, though given his druthers he would probably rather watch the Montreal Canadiens.

“Those of us who were raised on playoff hockey are going to be disappointed if we can’t see the teams on the tube,” the prime minister said.

In the back booth, Isidori, a 25-year-old deliveryman, said, “(Hockey) is the only sport we really have as Canadians.

“When the Stanley Cup is on, there is a sign over Toronto: ‘Do not disturb for seven weeks.’ ”