  In a thorough paper Kuchar has examined the canonical reduction of the most
general action functional describing the geometrodynamics of the maximally
extended Schwarzschild geometry. This reduction yields the true degrees of
freedom for (vacuum) spherically symmetric general relativity. The essential
technical ingredient in Kuchar's analysis is a canonical transformation to a
certain chart on the gravitational phase space which features the Schwarzschild
mass parameter $M_{S}$, expressed in terms of what are essentially
Arnowitt-Deser-Misner variables, as a canonical coordinate. In this paper we
discuss the geometric interpretation of Kuchar's canonical transformation in
terms of the theory of quasilocal energy-momentum in general relativity given
by Brown and York. We find Kuchar's transformation to be a ``sphere-dependent
boost to the rest frame," where the ``rest frame'' is defined by vanishing
quasilocal momentum. Furthermore, our formalism is general enough to cover the
case of (vacuum) two-dimensional dilaton gravity. Therefore, besides reviewing
Kucha\v{r}'s original work for Schwarzschild black holes from the framework of
hyperbolic geometry, we present new results concerning the canonical reduction
of Witten-black-hole geometrodynamics.
