I wish I cared about hockey as much as I cared about scented candles.
My favourite scent is a suburban hockey arena. They all smell the same. I still dream of poutine and hotdogs from the canteen. The cold air. The sour locker rooms. Ugh. I never played. I tagged along with my family because my brother showed a lot of potential for being a great player, but by the time he got to junior high he was more interested in joining a local gang, and one day he never picked up a stick again.
The idea of loving hockey is more interesting to me than hockey itself. It seems fun, but it’s so boring. I don’t even think the players are that attractive. I’ve never been a puck bunny, but I think it would be funny if I was. Brendan from this season of the Bachelorette plays hockey, and his ABC bio includes this tidbit: “Brendan really does not like vegetables,” which seems pretty on-the-nose for a boring Canadian boy with a face like that.
Sometimes I think, “I feel like a reality show about hockey wives would be great!” and then I remember that there actually was a reality show about hockey wives in Canada that nobody watched and everyone forgot about.
Maripier Morin, Quebecoise darling and Hockey Wife alumni, was accused of sexually harassing Safia Nolin, who is talented but her most memorable quality is when she wore grungy jeans and flannel to the ASDIQ gala while everyone else wore gowns. I do not like her and I do not think subverting the dress code is interesting. Safia alleged that Maripier, who was shitfaced, sat down beside her at a party of Quebec’s hottest local celebs, leaned over, and bit her thigh. Then Safia wrote an open letter about the incident her Story leading to Maripier’s temporary cancellation.
This was at the height of Quebec’s early pandemic Instagram-driven music industry #MeToo movement. Other people alleged that Maripier was a “mean girl” and had a reputation for being a bitch, and in the time since she’s made two public statements and then wiped her Instagram feed. To make everything worse, everything unravelled on the tail end of her awkwardly public and hyper-local divorce from hockey husband Brandon Prust, who later made an Instagram story that suggested she “conned him” out of a decent chunk of money.
Personally I don’t think he signed a prenup. All is fair in love and divorce.
In 2019, post-divorce but pre-biting-Safia-on-the-thigh-in-public controversy (granted, it had actually already happened: Safia was sitting on it until the right time), Maripier told a blogger that her favourite home scent was eucalyptus. In a blog post titled “Happiness according to Maripier Morin,” she cites “lighting candles in my house” as one of her three essentials for overall happiness.
“I can spend $150 on a candle without batting an eyelash. I’m obsessed with the ones by Montrealer Ruby Brown. She trained at a parfumerie in Paris and then launched her brand. She’s extraordinary. I’m the kind of person who loves masculine scents, and she created one that smells like tobacco and leather. It’s fabulous.”
I’ve never smelled Ruby Brown’s candles, but I’m suspicious of local products. I’ve had a lot of horrible experiences with artisanal candles made from shitty essential oils and wax that burns like plastic. I also hate novelty candles that are scented for your horoscope, birthday, hometown, state, etc. They never smell like anything and the bet they’re placing is too specific. Pure marketing. It’s fucking ugly.
I’m not a scent expert (a scexpert), nor do I have strong preferences about the composition of candles – but I’m also not a risk-taker. I want my scents to be reliable and luxurious. That’s why nothing on this list is particularly unique. Consider it a safe place to jump into the hot wax.
When I was 19, one of my mom’s clients gifted her a $200 gift card to Bath and Bodyworks. She can’t tolerate smells so she offloaded it to me, and I furnished my apartment with classic B&B scents like “Flannel,” “Sweater Weather,” and “Mahogany Teakwood,” which was a dead ringer for whatever they used to make the Abercrombie store smell like that. Except they always gave me migraines. I’m pretty sure they’re made of the cheapest material possible. Probably GMO pig fat. I don’t know.
So here is my philosophy with scented candles: They’re only nice when you know they’re nice. On the lower end of the candle price scale, I’m a fan of Voluspa. Their Baltic Amber scent smells like the sound of Heartbeats by Jose Gonzales. Their candles are the aromas that sponsored my early 20s. They make good gifts.
One of my favourite scents of all time was Hibiscus Teakwood by Capri Blue, sold at Anthropologie. It was discontinued in 2014 and it took me years to realize it smelled similar to Black Orchid by Tom Ford, which at the time, made me think of a wealthy androgynous woman enrobed in dark furs, but now seems kind of sour.
My boyfriend is partial to Nest scents for the apartment, interspersed with Diptyque candles that he never burns. My favourite Diptyque candle is Mimosa, a nauseating floral scent that inspired me to decide that Mimosa is also my favourite flower, which I’ve insisted on for years, except I don’t really like it that much.
Diptyque is great – it’s reliable, it’s familiar – but it’s just not necessary. I would rather be gifted Diptyque candles than buy them myself. If I see somebody with a giant Diptyque candle then I assume they’re not very interesting. You don’t need it to fill a bucket, and giant candles often burn unevenly. It doesn’t demonstrate good candle knowledge.
If you’re a recovering minimalist, I’d suggest Malin + Goetz, because the packaging is kind of Scandinavian looking and the scents are unique. Dark Rum is a classic. I would not, however, necessarily recommend their skincare, because it’s weird to me that a brand popularized by their candles would also do skincare. Like, pick a lane, because I really don’t know how to trust anymore.
Jo Malone makes beautiful, insanely priced scents that should be gifted, not bought for the self, because you could waste your money on something else equally lovely and not combustible. They remind me of the golden age of YouTube hauls when Fleur de Force would pull out a candle from a Christmas sock amidst sponcon and matte lipsticks. Because scents are frequently nostalgic, I can think of no better brand to be evocative of over-consumption and excess.
My last candle suggestion would be from Byredo. I would go for Apocalyptic because it smells like a fever dream and it reminds me of the movie Apocalypto, which was also about over-consumption and excess and dying civilization.
As for hockey, if I ever attended a game, I would get up from my seat and wander around as much as I possibly can. I wish I could enjoy it. I’m just not that kind of girl.
My condolences to the Habs.
Notable mentions that I wouldn’t buy myself but would accept as gifts:
Le Labo, Margiela’s Replika line, Aesop (I once purchased a knockoff Aesop and was so embarrassed by it because people would ask, “is that Aesop?” and I had to say, “no, it’s from a brand called ‘KROPP’,” and they’d say, “I’ve never heard of that,” and I would say, “I don’t know why I bought it. I blacked out at ZONE.”)