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When winning is everything corruption follows
“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner
Op-Ed Commentary
In a few short weeks, Canadian junior hockey players will be playing in a tournament to determine the best junior hockey team in the world and Canada will ice a strong team as usual.
Good thing the tournament is about hockey prowess because if it was about character, integrity and morality Canada would finish dead last.
What else can you say after a summer of sordid revelations about how Canadian juniors “play” off the ice? Namely like a bunch of drunken, sex-crazed adolescents at a bush party where both the liquor and female pulchritude flow for free. Oh, it’s fun for the boys. But for the female victims it’s nothing short of a tragedy. And if you think for one second the boys did this entirely on their own without any assistance from above you win this year’s Hockey Canada award for self-deception.
No wonder the entire Hockey Canada Board resigned after admitting since 1989 it paid out $8.9 million in sexual abuse claims by 21 female complainants who attended post-tournament parties where they were raped or otherwise assaulted numerous times by unnamed players. Money for the legal settlements came in part from player registration fees paid by their parents as well as taxpayer funds paid by the federal government to Hockey Canada.
Despite this outrageous situation, former Hockey Canada CEO Scott Smith initially ignored calls for his resignation but finally threw in the towel along with the rest of his board Oct. 11. This was followed by an open letter to the federal government from an international group of academics and researchers that said “sexual violence, misogyny, toxic masculinity, homophobia and bullying was common in all sports but hockey culture in particular.”
You can say that again.
Now that Hockey Canada admits it paid out almost $9 million to buy the silence of numerous young women sexually abused by its players some serious questions need to be raised. How many Hockey Canada executives knew about this appalling situation and did nothing? After the first sexual assault case, why didn’t they clamp down on the situation instead of condoning it by paying hush money to the victims?
Was the glory of winning the junior hockey tournament so great it was worth acting like a bunch of dirty old men and looking the other way while the players abused numerous young Canadian women? The only mistake they made was being in the thrall of a bunch of immature sport jocks led by adults who should have known better. How do you expect the players to behave ethically when the board in charge of them appear to have no ethics beyond winning?
That’s why the Canadian hockey culture has become so toxic.
Millions of ethically challenged Canadians are quite willing to look the other way when it comes to hockey. In our supposed “National Game” –- I prefer to call it our “National Shame – it’s anything goes. Whether it’s the Stanley Cup or the World Junior Tournament, the only thing that counts is winning. “Rock ‘em Sock ‘em” Don Cherry regularly mocked the “Euros” and made xenophobic comments about other ethnic groups and Canadian fans loved him for it. In 1972, a Team Canada player knocked the best Russian player out of the series with a vicious ankle chop and Canadians cheered from coast to coast.
Winning is the Holy Grail of Canadian hockey. And despite the furor now over the junior scandal, I have little confidence that anything is going to change in the future. Too many Canadian moms and dads have dollar signs in their eyes at the prospect of their progeny making it to the NHL. Instead, they’re content to overlook the demeaning behavior their boys participate in that soils their character.
This is no way to raise kids or run a country. But then again, for Canadian hockey fans, it appears to be all about winning and nothing else. And that’s a shame.
– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who will not be watching the juniors this year.
