“Perceptions” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

It’s called Canada’s National Game. But Canada’s National Shame would be a better title and a lot more honest. I’m referring to the sordid sex and sleazy payoff scandal that’s enveloped Hockey Canada the past few months and keeps growing every day.

Hockey Canada is the public face of junior hockey in this hockey-crazed country and it’s a twisted and distorted face for ugly reasons that we’re only beginning to find out and stunning in its country-wide scope.

To our dismay and horror, we’re being told that the real action in the CHL (Canadian Junior Hockey League) is not on the ice trying to beat the Russians, Americans and Finns, but off the ice after championship wins when someone, and we’ve yet to be told who, has organized sex orgies and mass fornication sessions for the “boys” – and most of them are boys between 16 and 20 – as a special treat for their feats on the unforgiving ice.

Like many, I initially had trouble believing this. To me, it sounded like a ghastly lie sprung out of the slime of social media and sprung on innocent hockey fans from coast to coast. But I was wrong – tragically wrong – as the ugly and salacious details began to trickle out.

Details of a woman identified in court documents as “EM” who said she was repeatedly assaulted sexually for hours by eight players of Canada’s 2017-2018 World Jr. National Team after a Hockey Canada sponsored gala victory celebration in London. The victim sued after being pressured not to go to the police but later dropped her suit when Hockey Canada paid her an undisclosed sum.

Since then, several similar incidents have been alleged across Canada with one woman raped while lying drunk and unconscious on a pool table by members of the 2003 Canadian National Junior Team.

These incidents were initially reported as allegations. But Hockey Canada has since admitted it set up two secretive funds to cover up numerous sexual assault suits against players and paid out as much as $8.9 million in claims.

Some of that money came from Canadian taxpayers through the federal government which subsidizes Hockey Canada. Does that make taxpayers accessories to rape? Several major Canadian companies seem to think so with companies like Tim Hortons, Canadian Tire, Imperial Esso, Nike and many others pulling their funding from Hockey Canada. Several provincial hockey associations say they may do the same and there’s even talk of cancelling this year’s World Junior hockey Tournament in Halifax.

Numerous politicians from all parties including Prime Minister Trudeau have condemned Hockey Canada and called on its board to resign en masse. But Hockey Canada is standing firm and refuses to budge though how long they can maintain their intransigent position is an open question. At press time Hockey Canada’s interim board chair Andrea Skinner had resigned.

But let’s get real here. To a greater or lesser degree, hockey has been an intransigent, if not abusive sport from day one, especially Canadian hockey.

The players physically abuse each other on the ice and they have difficulty turning off the adrenaline when they’re off their blades.

Don Cherry, the face of Canadian hockey for a generation, glorified fighting and abuse on the ice with his “rock ‘em, sock ‘em” hockey emulated by millions of Canadian hockey players from peewees to juniors and the NHL.

If you really want to go back in history, there was former Toronto Maple Leaf owner Conn Smythe’s famous adage, “If you can’t beat ‘em in the alley, you can’t beat ‘em on the ice.” In the great 1972 Super Series against the Russians, we resorted to violence to win by deliberately breaking the ankle of Russia’s star player before the final game. Yes, we won. But we also cheated, a fact Canadian fans don’t mention when they gush about our “great” victory.

I could go on, but I’ll only say this. Violence begets violence and hockey is a violent game. Token attempts are regularly made to reduce the violence, but they don’t go far because hockey fans love the violence and cheer more for a brutal fight than they do for a pretty goal.

I think many women would agree.

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who wishes more Canadians would be honest about our national game.

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