Three decades of trying to change hockey culture

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Jordan Heath-Rawlings It may feel like over this past year, the country has woken up to the culture of sexual assault that has plagued the game it loves. But that’s only true on the surface. Long before a summer of hockey scandal and government hearings and doubling down finally ended, with Hockey Canada’s CEO and board resigning in disgrace, there was plenty of reporting on exactly what was wrong with the game, exactly who it hurt, and how and what wasn’t done about it. It’s just that not many people, particularly those in power, wanted to consider that it was a different world back then. And although a lot has changed in the past few decades, this summer proved that some things have not. So today we will go back to the 1990s, when alarm bells began to ring, when it became clear that something was very, very wrong with hockey culture. Then we’ll try to figure out why it took so long to get to where we are right now and where Canada’s relationship to hockey might go tomorrow. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Laura Robinson is a Canadian sports journalist and author who has reported on sexual abuse as well as racial and sexual discrimination in Canadian sports. She is one of the first journalists to cover sexual assault in Canadian junior hockey and is the author of the 1998 book crossing the Violence and Sexual Assault in Canada’s National Sport. Hello, Laura.

Laura Robinson Hello.

Jordan I want to start just by asking you, I’d love to hear your reaction to the past week’s string of resignations at Hockey Canada. You’ve covered this for so long. What did you feel as you watched leadership resign?

Laura Robinson Well, I did think finally, the leadership actually should have been replaced way back in the 90s, when not just my book, but the Fifth Estate. And I did a documentary then called On Thin Ice that clearly showed a very serious, terrible culture, actually, in junior hockey. And no one said anything then. That was in 96, so I’m glad they’re gone now. However, I don’t think anyone should feel that just because a board has resigned that we’ve addressed the big problems within junior hockey.

Jordan I’m glad you mentioned the late 90s for a lot of our listeners, was a long time ago. Can you maybe describe the reception that you’re reporting with CBC and the book got when they were released? This was the peak of Canada’s dominance at the world. Juniors and Hockey Canada as a whole.

Laura Robinson Yeah, well, I would say I entrenched myself on the blacklist of people not to invite to any sport event. I still was, you know, I mean, there were a lot of academics out there who knew that my work was very good and very thorough. So, yeah, I certainly wasn’t the keynote speaker in hockey, but I was speaking a lot at universities at that time. But it seems like, you know, Canada has amnesia because it was on the Fifth Estate, and that’s not a small TV show, right? That’s a very well respected, internationally well respected TV show. And I remember when the first story aired, Don Cherry got on and said, mom, dad, your son is completely safe in junior hockey. And then in about a week after he said that, the coach of the Swiss Current Broncos, Graham James, was arrested for countless amounts of sexual assault of the players. But I was down in Swiss Current in January 1993, way before that story broke, because I had been told from a good source that two of the players had gang raped a learning disabled girl and got away with it down there. And it turned out to be true, I would say alleged to have gang rape her. It was a terrible, horrendous situation there. So I really had to, at that time, in 93, decide, was this cultural in junior hockey? So I started putting the word out to people in other junior hockey towns, and, you know, there were no end to the amount of cases that I was sent, and that included a lot of really heinous hazings and initiations of the rookie players, too.

Jordan So, as you mentioned, the Fifth Estate is a huge program in Canada. It’s internationally respected. You wrote an entire book that addressed this problem directly when all of that began to happen, and the Graham James incident was incredibly public. Like, that’s not some thing that’s been covered up from years ago. Like, that was a national story for days. Did you expect that the culture might begin at least to change back then?

Laura Robinson I really hoped. But I have been in sport a long time. I was on the national cycling team. My winter sport was cross-country skiing. And so I know about the amount of abuse and cover up of abuse in sport. Right. When I raced cycling in the 1970s, I was just a teenager. And, boy, it was absolutely normalized that a 40 year old man would have as his quotation marks, girlfriend, a 16 or 17 year old girl. And no one seemed to think that was wrong. I did, and obviously my parents did. But I could see way back when I was a teenager that there was something really, really wrong with Canadian sport. And I knew then that I was going to be a journalist. And I knew that probably the first big story I was going to tackle was sexual abuse in sport. And I did that one with the fifth estate. Two in 1993, we looked at a high school rowing team, a provincial swim team, and a national volleyball team for women. The swim team and the rowing team were girls, not women. And that story was a huge documentary, too, with the Fifth Estate and Sport Canada the Minister of Sport, they did nothing. Three years later, the Fifth Estate and I do a very similar story about hockey, except that it’s very much also about the players being alleged gang assaulters. Sport, Canada. The Minister of Sport do nothing. So I think we also need to have we need a federal inquiry. And I actually think that Sport Canada, which is the funding agency for all of these organizations and gave Hockey Canada all kinds of money for Junior Hockey World Championships to be held in Canada after Sport Canada knew about the alleged gang sexual assaults, they need to be held to account as well. That’s Canadian taxpayer money that was funneled to Junior Hockey World Championships after Sport Canada knew about these allegations. 1.5 million back then.

Jordan How is it possible for the government or Sport Canada to do nothing in the face of these allegations again? You know, I was young back then, but I do remember them being headline news at the time.

Laura Robinson They absolutely were headline news. The Internet didn’t play the role that it plays now. I mean, I got all of these stories by sitting in hockey arenas across Canada and connecting with people there. I didn’t get them because people contacted me through the Internet, right? So I remember I had £110 of hard copy files when I was writing the book. So it wasn’t as easy for people to continue to tell these stories without the Internet as a serious force at that time. The other thing is that they simply ignored it, just as you could see. Did you see how Hockey Canada basically ignored up to including last week when the interim chair, Andrea Skinners, gave them an A at the Heritage Committee? They just ignore everyone, and they think that will go away. And what happened in hockey, though, is very important because they used the sexual abuse of the Swift Current Bronco players, including Sheldon Kennedy, in a very I feel a very homophobic way, as if Graham James somehow had wandered into hockey. Homosexual male wanders into hockey and uses hockey to prey upon hockey players, right? And hockey will come to the rescue now of all those children. But that’s not how it was. Graham James is from hockey. He didn’t invade hockey. He grew up in hockey. Hockey gave him man of the Year in 1989, which was the same year that the alleged gang rape of this young woman in Swift Current happened. You know, he is a product of hockey. So they changed the narrative as if they were going to protect this sacred ground from homosexual predators. It was extremely homophobic.

Jordan I don’t want to stay too long on the culture back then because I think it’s really important to discuss how it has and hasn’t evolved since then. So I want to ask you about the pace of change you’ve seen since the mid 90s or the late 90s when your book came out. Did you see it sort of happened gradually or suddenly over the time? How much has it changed and was it a linear progression?

Laura Robinson It didn’t change at all. It hasn’t changed at all. It didn’t change at all. 2018 is only four years ago. It’s not as if a light went off amongst junior hockey players that said, oh, well, none of us are going to go to a bar, make sure a young woman gets super drunk, lure her back to the hotel room and give the key to seven other guys. They didn’t suddenly figure out that that was wrong. I’m sure that we will have more alleged victims come forward with their stories once they feel that there is a place, a safe place, to tell their stories. So, no, it didn’t change. The initiations kept going. You can see that Daniel Carcillo, who played for the Sarnia Sting and went on to play for Chicago and won the Stanley Cup, et cetera, that class action lawsuit that he’s leading, and you read that class action suit and see the heinous violence, sexual violence that the players were subjected to over and over and that the coaches never intervened or even they took part.

Jordan I mean, that happened in the 2000s, right? So it didn’t change.

Laura Robinson I think it will change, mainly because a lot of young men will just say, I don’t want to be part of that. And we have to remember that if there were eight guys in that hotel room in London and there were 22 guys on that national team, then the majority of them weren’t there. And there may have been a couple of guys who weren’t on the team, on the national team, but were from a junior team. So most of the players don’t participate in these alleged very serious crimes. However, everyone keeps the secret, right?

Jordan When you say it hasn’t changed at all, but you’re hopeful that it will change now, what’s possible now that wasn’t before?

Laura Robinson Well, first of all, there’s going to be a level of transparency, right? So we’re not going to have this privileged organization that treats itself to dinners that cost in the thousands of dollars and treats itself to gold rings every time the juniors win. I’d like to know if they got gold rings when the senior women won the Olympics. And we’re not going to have these secret I believe we’re not going to have secret trust funds, and that’s going to have to be really, really investigated. But then I think there’s a lot of people who were waiting for things to change and unfortunately, they were not agents of change themselves. They didn’t say, this is not acceptable. I know what’s going on in this junior inc. I know who is covering for these guys. It is going to end and I’m going to do something about it. They didn’t say that right. But I think what a lot of people have said is, finally, we don’t have to pretend that these junior hockey teams are young gods. They’re not young gods. They know how to put a piece of rubber in a net really. Well.

Jordan When these scandals started to break earlier this year, and specifically the two big sexual assault cases involving junior players, what did you expect would happen? Did it feel to you like this was all coming to a head? And how does it differ? How does what you expect to differ from what actually happened?

Laura Robinson Well, I’ve learned not to expect anything out of Canadian sport, to be honest. I think anyone who expects people in sport in Canada to actually do the right thing will be disappointed. They will do whatever they can to cover it up and to not take blame. And we saw that at Heritage Committee from those who represented Sport Canada back in July. I mean, you get the funding agency and the agency responsible for ensuring good governance in Hockey Canada, saying that they noted that there was an alleged gang rape in London, Ontario. They noted it. That’s it, yes. So don’t expect anything from these people except that they cover their own asses. That’s my experience as an athlete, as a national team athlete, as a Canadian champion athlete, and as an investigative journalist. And then in terms of what I think will happen, as I said earlier, if victims feel that an environment has been created where they can now come forward and tell their story, we are going to hear an awful lot of stories. Whether it’s from rookie players who were horribly sexually assaulted in the so called team bonding initiations, or young girls and young women who alleged sexual assault, gang sexual assault by the players. They’re going to start to come out, and it’s a long journey. I’ve interviewed sexual assault survivors, really since I started covering sexual assault in sport, which I did my first article for the Toronto Star in 1992 on that.

Jordan So it’s a story that doesn’t end. What do you think is different now about the public outcry surrounding this reporting? Because there have been times in the past where these incidents made headlines. And to your point, Hockey Canada and other sports bodies managed to just kind of ignore it and it faded away. Is this time different? And what is it about the public’s willingness to engage that could create that space you’re talking about?

Laura Robinson Well, I think it’s the Me Too movement, to be honest. Me Too has made such an incredible impact worldwide. When you have these incredibly powerful men like Harvey Weinstein now in jail and you have so many other men who thought they were untouchable all their lives now up on multiple charges. That has really changed the landscape for victims. And I think we’re going to find that there are way more victims in sport than anyone ever imagined. And that this landscape that we’re creating. I have to say, I really like the way that Minister [Pascale] St-Onge has responded to this. I’ve gone through a lot of sport ministers in my life. When my piece came out in the Toronto Star about the sexual assault of female athletes, when the Fifth Estate piece in 93 about sexual assault of female athletes, and then on to the Ice in 96 and my book in 98, every single minister of sport ignored all of it. She has said, this is my job. My job is to create a safe place, whether you’re an athlete or whether you’re a member of the public who happened to believe the myth that is the branding of the junior players. Right? They’re just the sweetest guys ever, and why don’t you go to a bar and have a drink with one of them? It’s almost like, oh, she won the lottery when these guys choose them. So I feel that our Minister of Sport has really committed herself to this and I’m really looking forward to what else she will do in her capacity. And I have to say, I’m very pleased with the Heritage Committee here. We have a very nonpartisan approach to the problem. It didn’t matter what party those individual MPs were from, they were like a team at the hearings for Hockey Canada.

Jordan I’m glad to hear that you’re optimistic about the government’s response. I want to ask you about the corporate response. I am honestly not sure how to look at the exodus of Hockey Canada sponsors. These are some of the biggest companies in the country, in the world, if you include Nike. Are you optimistic that major companies sort of see which way the wind is blowing and they will now stand up for change? Or is it cynical that it had to come to this before they pulled their money? Well, it’s definitely cynical because although, if you think back in the end of June, scotiabank, I believe, pulled out and then I don’t know if it was Tim Hortons, but two more pulled out. Like they said, they paused, right?

Laura Robinson So they, you know, they had some guts pulling out as quickly as they did. I don’t want to rely on corporate sponsors when we’re talking about things that are actually potentially criminal acts, right. Whether it’s a criminal act of sexual assault or if the money that has been used at Hockey Canada has contravened trust law or other laws. You want to rely on the RCMP, for instance, to investigate any fraud, possible misuse of trust money, etc. For so I think it’s good that they’re not being part of this. It’s a lot different than it used to be. And I guess we’ll just have to see going forward. I have to say, what I really, really like about all the sponsors is that they’ve pretty much all of them have said, we will continue to fund women’s hockey, youth hockey, para hockey. And I think one of the most important points about that is that in the hosting money that Sport Canada gave Hockey Canada between 2018 when Sport Canada was aware of these gang sexual assault allegations. To now. They gave one 5 million to host junior men’s international events. And they gave 700,000 only for all hosting of international events for girls and women. Whether they were. You. 16 or they were a 32 year old woman playing on the Olympic team. Those teams in total got less than half of what Sport Canada gave Hockey Canada for Junior Men s events after they knew about these allegations. So I’m very pleased to see that so many sponsors are specifically funding women and para hockey and children.

Jordan Lastly, I want to ask you about the future both of hockey culture and about the game’s place in our mythology. Earlier this summer, we had journalist Michael Grange to discuss what, if anything, might change about the ritual, the mythology around the World Junior Tournament. This is a time when hockey parents gather with their kids. And to your point, look up at these guys as young gods. Do you think that that tourney can never again be the kind of feel good holiday ritual it is, or does it need to start over?

Laura Robinson I hope it starts over. I don’t like the fact that they’ve positioned it the day after Christmas and before the New Year, because if you read my book, Crossing the Line, you’ll see that I do talk about them as young gods. And I talk about the way in which Canada over the years has transferred our worship, basically, of the promise of a young male from the church to the arena. But the problem is that it’s still worshipping young males. It’s still patriarchal. Men are in charge, and it’s still hierarchical. So girls who are in that arena, they’re the last people that hockey care about. You know, when I was in those arenas watching who was left at the end of a junior hockey game and why that was so risky for girls to still be there. So we need to address the deeply entrenched way in which for thousands of years, we worship what young men symbolize because we’re still a patriarchal country and world. You know, these guys have an awful lot on their shoulders too. You’re carrying swift currents or you’re carrying Sue St. Marie or Lethbridge out of a deep, dark winter. And so we need to look at how these young men are marketed as saviors, basically, and how they start to believe that. And, you know, why are they so important? Like. What is it about hockey and I think we also have to look at what is it about violence in hockey that makes them understand and makes a lot of people who watch understand that masculinity is defined through power and violence in a lot of junior games. And not surprisingly. They get awarded when they start to fight. Everyone gets out of their seat. Everyone is applauding. And the guy skates off like a little nine year old to the penalty box. Basically. And then as if those lessons are somehow left at the rink. And that the understanding that masculinity is so tied into power and violence in their minds that that wouldn’t also be manifested in how they understand themselves sexually. I think it’s extremely important to see how many of these assaults are gang sexual assaults. The sexual relationship is not with the woman they hate, the woman they call these young women who have the great misfortune of being caught in this web. They call them dirties. And I talked to the guys about this. I said, why don’t you just get like a blow up doll because you guys are performing for each other. You’re not having this is not good sex for women. And, you know, I said in the book, if you want to have good sex, find someone else who actually cares about a woman’s body, who cares about intimacy with women. All red flags should go up when more guys start coming into the room. So we have to look at how they understand sexuality and understand their bodies and the bodies of women. And as far as I’m concerned, they hate women’s bodies.

Jordan The last thing I want to ask you about is what should happen next here? The whole leadership at Hockey Canada is gone. There are police investigations that are happening right now. We’ve talked about the sponsors who have backed out and say something has to change before they can come back in. What comes next? Whose court is the ball in or whose ice is the puck on?

Laura Robinson Well, I actually think the ball has gone back to Hockey Canada. Now when we see that the Premiers in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have sort of said, oh, well, now that you’ve resigned, we can hold the junior worlds again, really? As if that has anything to do I mean, Halifax was the site of the second allegation the video of all of these guys doing sexually degrading things to an unconscious female. Why aren’t those two premiers saying, we are going to respect the rights of women, the equality of women, and we’re just not going to support this right now. That’s how we are reacting to this. So I think the ball is back with Hockey Canada in that respect. And I’m disappointed with both of those Premiers, but I’m not surprised, by the way. But I think that the Heritage Committee is extremely important because there’s all kinds of other investigations that need to go on at that committee, as I said about Sport Canada. How is it that Sport Canada managed to know about this and do nothing except continue to support junior hockey? And then we need to look at sport in general. We have a crisis in sport. It is a toxic culture. I’ve interviewed so many athletes about what has gone on in their sport. The reason I became a sport journalist, actually, is because I saw what was going on in my sport. I love cycling. I ride my bike every day I possibly can still. But I saw such abuse of female athletes by men in power in my sport that it was normalized. And it turned out my sport was no different than any other sport. So we need to have that federal inquiry, and it needs to have the kind of teeth that the Heritage Committee has, which means subpoena people, subpoena documents. Really, seriously. Finally, decades too late. But better late than never. Investigate what’s really going on in sport in Canada.

Jordan Laura, thank you so much for this. And thank you for your decades of work on this file.

Laura Robinson Oh, you’re welcome.

Jordan Laura Robinson, author of Crossing the Line violence and Sexual Assault in Canada’s. National Sport. That was the big story. For more head to the bigstorypodcast CA. You can find there the Michael Grange interview I spoke about with Laura. You can also talk to us on Twitter at the bigstory FPN. You can email us hello at Thebigstorypodcast CA, and you can phone us and leave a voicemail 416-935-5935. You can get The Big Story wherever you get podcasts if it lets you. Please leave a rating. Leave us a review. Tell us what you think. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.