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We as Canadians do this thing
where if we don't talk about it,
we don't have to take ownership of the fact
that some of the more negative things have happened.
A lot of that history just gets lost.
That's why it becomes really important
to tell those stories.
If we really wanna look at where we are now,
you wanna get a real understanding
of the progress that's been made,
and the progress that's still yet to be made.
Then you have to look at the journey that got us here.
When I first got introduced to hockey,
I would have been probably around the age of...
three, three-and-a-half
was when I started skating.
My dad being from Jamaica, my mom being from Montserrat,
um, they wanted us to still see ourselves as Canadian.
So everybody had to know how to skate in our family.
So when I was about three years old,
my dad brought me to the pond and taught me how to skate.
And I remember him teaching me how to skate
because it was the most unique thing I'd ever done.
He had emigrated from Trinidad and Tobago
when he was just very young
and never got the opportunity to play hockey.
And when I was born and came along,
he introduced me.
My dad used to bring me ice skating.
Public Skates, downtown Montreal.
Um, you know, we'd go there.
We start once a week, twice a week,
and then next thing you know, I just love skating.
I just love being fast out there
and, uh, just fell in love with it.
I was five years old
when I first saw the game of ice hockey,
and I kept seeing how fast the game was
and how physical they were
and the smell of the ice.
Once I found it, it clicked,
and I never wanted to give it up.
Some of my first memories are just walking around the house in my skates.
Finally, I was able to go to some learn-to-skate programs
and-- and get on to a couple outdoor rinks.
And-- and that's really where I-- I fell in love with the game.
A lot of us in the game are most comfortable
- on this ice right here.
It's my truest self.
And I-- and I can express that through my game.
It's an escape.
Deep down inside, there was just that burning desire
to-- to play hockey and to--
and to be the best hockey player I could be.
I played because I loved the sport
and, and still do.
So I started playing, um, by the norms pretty late.
Um, just before turning ten years old.
Uh, I moved to Canada at-- at eight.
There's hockey everywhere, so...
I think the-- the culture and the environment got me into it.
I wanted to give it a try because it was almost like
I was kind of getting left behind.
All my buddies were going to play hockey
and I was going home, you know.
But as soon as I got into the game,
the barriers started stacking up.
It was the financial barriers of how expensive it is.
I had to buy skates from a garage sale,
they were leather skates,
and this is like, not that long ago.
So you can imagine what-- what the looks that I got
when I was wearing leather skates,
and I'm looking to my left and to my right
and my equipment looks different.
So you kind of become insecure.
And then you realize that you're the only person of color.
Everywhere I went, I just felt a little bit off.
It was either appearance, the language that I spoke.
Financially, was really tough to find a spot to, like,
really fit in and call home.
I was just constantly running into a wall at-- at every turn.
How's that?
Fuck.
You gonna try and get on the ice?
I...
I can't do a single leg squat, like,
well, how much am I gonna do on the ice?
Like, all my other 12 surgeries,
I was, like, excited to get back on the ice.
I'm, like, intimidated with this one.
Contract your knee.
Man, I had 13 surgeries
before I turned 30 years old.
I don't know if I'm gonna be able to walk up the stairs
in five, six, seven years
because of what I've given to the game of hockey.
How's this one here?
It's better. It's getting better.
I got a cup of tea at the National Hockey League level
and nobody can ever take that away from me.
But weighing the pros and cons now
of what I've done to my body, what I've done to myself,
and I still wasn't able to have a long career,
um, or any-- any career for that matter.
Then they paint this picture of you as being somebody
that's difficult to deal with
because I won't get along to get along
when I know I'm being mistreated.
The culture is-- is so ingrained in our minds
that whatever happens, we gotta put our head down
and shut our mouth and not speak on any type of issues
and just do your job
is-- is what's wrong with our game.
Akim Aliu claims that Flames head coach, Bill Peters,
directed racist language at him.
For the first time in NHL history,
the future of a coach is on the line
over a locker room incident.
A player Peters coached in the minors
is accusing him of using the N-word repeatedly.
He wasn't behind the bench for tonight's game
as the team investigates
explosive allegations of racism.
I think this was simple.
And the second the young man's claims were corroborated,
they should have fired him on the spot.
I can tell you this.
As far as I'm concerned, there's no tolerance
for not just coaches,
but players, management, anybody
to conduct themselves that way.
When Akim spoke out,
he was really one of the first people to do it.
And I knew that there was gonna be
a lot of questions around the game.
And I knew that people were also
gonna start coming to me.
That was really terrifying
because I didn't really wanna share anything.
This is a situation where you might have done something
two weeks ago, two years ago,
two decades ago.
You might have been joking around.
How far back are people going to go
and bring something up?
And is this a precedent setting move?
Why do you think he chose now
to come out and bring this to the forefront?
I don't think he wanted to get labeled as that guy.
As a Black hockey player, we tried so hard to blend in
and not create new waves.
There are definitely painful things
that have come up through my career.
When he stood up, it was scary,
but also empowering in the same breath.
This is the biggest story in a while
because there are repercussions
that we're gonna be talking about for quite a long time.
Having someone in the position that he was in
be brave enough to come forward and say that,
I think definitely set off, you know, a spark of people
coming forward and saying, "Well, this is what happened."
I don't think we'd ever seen anything like that before.
This is my silver medal from, uh,
the World Championship in 2016.
This here... This is from minor days.
I played for the Oshawa Lady Generals.
This was my first year playing competitive hockey.
I was number three to start off with, so...
What year this is... I would have been ten.
Yeah, ten.
I was always the biggest player on my team here.
My dad grew up in Scarborough and he played hockey.
Um, he really loved the game
and he wanted to put his kids in hockey.
I'm sure my dad will tell you, he kind of has a process when he walks into the rink,
um, in terms of finding other Black individuals
or knowing where to stand
or knowing what parents to talk to.
I told them a little bit about, like, how you have a process
- when you walk into the arena. - Oh.
- Yeah. My process is,
I go walk around the arena,
I look at all the pictures, and just to see
if there is any Black history within the arena.
And then,
and I see if there's any Black faces in the arena.
And, uh,
usually, it-- it's not there.
So, that's how I know
the, uh, environment that I'm in,
and I make sure I'm comfortable.
And when I'm comfortable, I make other people comfortable.
So that's my goal of how I deal with it.
But, um, yeah.
I just try not to make those things stress me out.
Because it's not, it makes me feel uncomfortable.
And I wanna make people feel comfortable.
Then we're gonna do that little, uh,
crossover squat, the T open squat.
Feet come together, internally rotate the hips,
open back in that 45 and drop into our squat...
The first racist instance
that I vividly remember,
um, I was around the age of 12,
and I was in the dressing room with my teammates.
We were all just kind of joking around, laughing.
And I stood up to make a joke.
And one of my teammates quickly replied,
"Shut up, you stupid..."
And proceeded to call me the N-word.
Um, and at that point in time, I was about 12,
so I didn't really know what to do.
Everybody kind of just stopped
and looked around the room.
My trainer just looked at me,
and I just immediately got up and ran out of the room.
Yep! Right. Right. Left.
After that, nothing really happened.
There was no accountability.
Left. Right.
That definitely led to me
kind of questioning my place in hockey.
Um, and, you know, whether these people were my friends
and whether they really wanted me there or not.
I had never realized that they viewed me differently
than they viewed themselves.
In the first few years after that happened,
probably until I was about 15 or 16,
I definitely tried to change myself.
Whether it was the clothes I was wearing
or the music I was listening to, in order to make friends,
and for my teammates to want me at their events
and want me to sleep over and, and wanna hang out with me.
I felt like I needed to change myself.
- You want juice or water? - I'll take a coconut water.
- Coconut water? Okay. - Yep.
When I started out, I'll be honest,
I couldn't barely even skate.
As most kids start out, we can't really skate that good.
But as a little kid, as my dad told me,
I just kept on getting up and kept on trying
to get out there trying to skate.
After that, I played one game
and I just fell in love with it,
like, just right in there.
And I looked at my dad, I told him, "I'm gonna be a goalie."
And I know his reaction was,
"Oh, no, I gotta pay all this expensive gear when he gets older."
But, uh, I think he's fine with it now.
I like being the goalie.
I like being the guy
who has to save the team in a way,
but everyone's one big team.
You know, we all help each other.
You know, you're not on an island by yourself.
You're on an island distant away from others,
but it's still connected in a way.
Kind of hit me a couple years back
when I got called the N-word in a Pee-Wee game.
I was 12.
Player came in, I stopped him on a breakaway.
He kind of went into me.
I give him, like, a goalie push as we call it,
you know, just to get-- get him off of me,
and he didn't like that.
So next face-off, the puck goes into the corner.
He kind of skates by and says, "F you, you nigger."
And right away, uh, that shook me.
That threw me way off and shook me.
When he told me what happened
and I said, "Are you okay?"
He said, "Dad, it made me feel I didn't belong."
And that kind of hit me hard.
And I said, "Well, you do belong."
Back off!
You do belong and you belong in the game.
Oh, yeah.
They were gonna talk to the coach of the other team.
Well, that was his father.
So you know what happened.
Didn't go anywhere.
Was supposed to be like a suspension for 45 days,
plus a written apology.
But the father said there will be no written apology.
And that kind of threw me.
What kind of message are you sending?
You should have insisted.
But it didn't happen.
We played that kid six times the following year.
Whoo!
Not once would he shake Mark's hand.
He would turn away.
Scott, how you doing?
- Good.
From the time I picked up a hockey stick,
which was probably about the age of five,
my goal was to play in the NHL.
You know, I was told by several people
that it would never happen,
but that's where my mindset was.
And, you know, I wasn't gonna let anything stop me.
Score any goals tonight?
Yeah, I got a hat trick.
Excellent. Excellent.
What did you like most about playing in the Air Canada Centre tonight?
Uh, getting my third goal.
To me, hockey was just something
that I could do and feel at peace.
...my first goal.
You know, be free and, you know,
not think about what is going on
in the outside world and just enjoy myself.
It's all I ever wanted to do.
It's like my art, my craft.
Even growing up,
people called me, you know, different racial epithets.
I was fortunate enough
to play with my best friends at a young age.
I had a core group of four guys that always had my back,
but at the same time,
I don't think they even really understood,
you know, how I felt.
But they always tried.
They always cared,
you know, and they always asked.
So, yeah, you feel isolated a lot.
But at the same time,
I was doing what I loved to do.
So I wasn't gonna let anyone, you know, tear me down.
I'm a child of the '60s.
So I grew up with, you know, two channels on TV and, uh,
Hockey Night in Canada was every Saturday night.
Saturday nights when I was watching Dave Keon
and Darryl Sittler, and the boys playing--
because I was a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, still am--
um, I wasn't seeing anybody that looked like me that was out there on the ice.
Over on the left side to Monahan,
over the line with Keon
and his pass was blocked by Seiling...
One afternoon, I'm driving home,
and I hear these two brothers, Darril and George Fosty,
talking about the history of the Colored Hockey League.
And I'm like, "Colored Hockey League"?
And so I listened intently. And then, of course,
like everybody else...
You know, to a large degree, we started asking questions.
"You know about the Colored Hockey League?
"When did this happen? Where would this..." You know?
And that's how I first connected
with-- with George and Darril.
Darril and myself, we were trying to put together a book
on Canadian military history.
And I said we should write a hockey history and he said,
"Well, how long do you think it would take us"?
So I said, "Well,
it would take us probably six months."
Not a hell of a lot history in hockey, right?
So we started to, uh, research the history of hockey.
And in the course of that, we found reference
to a hockey league out of Nova Scotia.
An all Black Hockey League.
CHL or Colored Hockey League.
What caught our attention was, we were reading one of the references to the CHL.
And they said one of the teams' names was Jubilee.
And it was named, uh, in honor of Queen Victoria's Jubilee.
And I looked at that and I thought,
"That-- that's not right. There's something wrong here."
We saw a reference that this was a church league.
And we found a Bible written pre-1900s.
We pulled up the Book of Habakkuk.
The Book of Habakkuk was the emancipator storybook.
When the emancipators went on to the plantations,
they said, "Behold, ye among the heathen."
They were talking to the slaves.
"I will work a work in your day, which you will not believe."
That was the underground railroad.
"We will give you your jubilee."
And sure enough, Jubilee meant "emancipation."
Eureka meant "I will see God."
Hammonds Plains team was named the Moss Backs.
Well, we know that when slaves fled north,
they used to touch the back of trees for moss,
because moss grows on the north side of trees,
the North Star going to Canada.
We suddenly realized we were looking at a coded hockey league.
We said, "Jesus, we've got a story here."
So we went up to Nova Scotia
to provincial archives, we went into the communities.
We got talking and we found out that,
uh, some of these families were, uh, family names
that we recognized from our research.
The Fosty brothers reached out to me
to see if I could remember
the, the teams and how the... Who the players were.
I told them I had not heard that before.
I said the only thing I know about Black people in hockey
is a picture that used to be on the old mantel piece at home.
We were kids, and I think
almost all of us have the same picture on the living room walls
of a group of guys with hockey sticks.
And that was the amount of information we had.
We were shocked and astonished and, uh,
even the fact that my father
played goalie for the--
for the Halifax hockey team in the 1930s, '40s.
Quite a surprise.
No, I'm feeling good today.
Black folks are largely absented.
Right? It's a verb. It's like an action.
We're absented from the national narrative.
The image of Canada relies on this allegorical Black Canada.
Canada as the last stop on the underground railroad.
Canada as this safe haven,
from the tyranny of American racism.
And then what, you know?
What happens to those people?
What are their stories?
What do they do, how do they live?
What is it like?
What is it like for Black people in Canada?
The stories have not made it into the mainstream.
You know, what we teach our children.
And so, we've had to write ourselves
into the national narrative of this country.
Pass! Pass!
When we were researching this history,
um, there was about 13 teams.
Some played one season, uh, others played for a decade.
One team was the Amherst Royals,
they played for about two or three years.
The Moss Backs, they played one season
that we were able to identify.
The Truro Victorias, they played for a decade or more.
The Eurekas played for at least a decade.
And you had the Africville Seasides
who were founded in 1894,
and played right up to the 1930s.
Come on, let's go! Let's go!
Over here, over here, over here!
At one point, there were 52 Black historic communities across this province.
Today, there's a handful, maybe, that are still really
active and vibrant.
At those times, we were really on the periphery.
Africville was really on the outskirts of the city.
Close enough because we might need you
to still be laborers and work,
or do lays work in our houses.
But far enough you weren't living with us.
Hockey was a big part
of the way of life in Africville, right.
And a lot of the men played on the Africville Seasides.
So, that tradition of hockey
and of us finding a way to play the game
continued straight through
into the '70s.
The whole community,
from the time you were born practically,
as long as you lived in the community, you skated.
It was normal.
And when you skated, there was always a hockey game
that was part of that.
Hockey, it didn't cost that much.
You give 'em a stick and a pair of skates.
Every kid played.
When I was growing up,
my life basically was the Black community.
I don't think they realized the importance
of what they were doing, and even what they were doing
when they passed it down to the next generation because
they didn't just pass down the skill of hockey
but how you lived your life.
And that's the most important thing that I take from it.
Players conducted themselves with such dignity
because that's the way they were raised.
How many kids here are from Nova Scotia?
Put up your hand. Or family from Nova Scotia?
Anybody know why we're called Seasides?
Anybody know the history behind the name? Go ahead.
Black people that played hockey.
The Black people that played hockey when?
Um...
- A long time ago. - Yes.
The Black people who played a long time ago.
They-- they couldn't play with white people
because, well, I have no clue about that.
That was... Okay. Okay. Let me try one more.
Why are we called Seasides? Huh?
There was a team in Nova Scotia
called the Africville Seasides.
Oh, give him a hand. Coach got it correct.
Coach, got it correct.
Right?
Guys... [stammers] So just...
Just a little bit of history, guys.
The very first year, it was 1895.
Africville Seasides, okay?
That's why we're here. That's why our name is called Seasides.
So, guys, that's a little bit of history.
We'll go into it in more detail later
when you get your team uniforms.
Okay. Who are we?
Seasides!
One more time. Who are we?
Seasides!
Bring it in. Bring it in, guys, that was beautiful. Bring it in.
Bring it in. Bring it in.
You see, for me, I was always into the Black hockey history.
My family is from Nova Scotia.
I was born here in Toronto.
Growing up in Canada, we played hockey
from the time that we could stand up.
We were on skates, we're Canadian-born.
Saturday night was hockey night.
We'd get around the TV,
we would watch it, we would play it.
We-- we'd go outside and play it all day,
until our hands were numb.
They would never convince me
that I couldn't be part of the game.
It was like, no, man, we're part of this game.
I'm Canadian, so it's my game. We could play hockey.
Like, no matter what happened, I just kept going.
No matter what incident we went through, we just kept going.
We just always tried to send the message
that we are part of this game, no matter what.
Let's go over there. I'm gonna show you how to tie these skates on tight.
Come on. Let's go over here. Come on. Okay, now watch.
Tight.
- Mm-hmm. - Tight.
Boom.
Now you look like a hockey player.
Now you're ready to go.
The helmet's hurting right here, correct?
Right? Right in here, right?
You got to keep working it. It'll get looser and looser.
Okay? But I need you to come back out there, man.
- All right? - Okay.
Don't let your mom make you miss weeks, man.
Okay? 'Cause I had to call her twice
to make sure you guys are here today. Okay?
No more missing weeks, man. 'Cause if you're ready to start playing games,
we can't miss no weeks. Okay?
I've always tried to tell the wider hockey community
that they're making this diversity thing too difficult.
I just went to the areas in the city to where people were just neglecting.
One thing that we found in talking to them
is nobody ever asked them
if they were interested in playing hockey.
So I-- I just started asking, and they said,
"Yeah, we're interested. We're interested."
And that's why we came up with Seasides.
Right away, that way. Right away.
We're at 85% of the children in the program are subsidized.
'Cause we know that it's really, really, really, really expensive.
So whatever it takes, whatever money that it costs,
whatever equipment that they need,
we're gonna follow all of our kids all the way up.
Do I think hockey is really ready
to welcome a diverse crowd with open arms?
No. Not 100%.
They're, they're-- Like I said, they're moving in the right direction,
but they're taking the long route.
We don't want the kids to get too comfortable and think
that there's still not racism in the game.
Hockey's done a really good job of disguising it.
The NHL has been talking about diversity since 1993.
They just don't know what to do with it.
They don't know what to do with it.
Still, today.
For me, this beautiful, rich,
and energetic country of ours
can become a model of the just society
in which every citizen
will enjoy his fundamental rights
and peoples of many cultures will live in harmony.
Talking about racism in Canada
really pushes at the-- the boundaries
of the Canadian imagination.
Like, what we-- what we think is possible in this country,
it goes to the core of who we think we are.
That's, you know, that's a hard pill to swallow.
The idea that racism exists here,
when Canadian multiculturalism,
Canadian-- Canadian tolerance,
Canadian benevolence, is so built into the--
our core understandings
of who we are as a country.
♪ A tapestry ♪
♪ Of color, shapes and sounds ♪
♪ We're a people bound together ♪
♪ By the visions we have found ♪
Every country needs a national identity.
For centuries, ours has been that we are not American.
We are descendants of the British,
whatever that means.
And America is where--
is where real racism happens.
It really goes against the core
of who we think we are, and that is so challenging.
That's such...
Such a momentous thing to have to overcome.
I was obsessed. I was in love with hockey.
Uh, first year Pro, I was in Rockford
with Chicago's farm team.
We were, um, getting ready for a pregame skate.
Guys were just doing the regular thing in the morning,
taping their sticks, having a coffee, chatting,
just getting ready for pregame skate.
I had my iPod going. I'll never forget, it was a Lil Wayne song.
The doors come flying open,
and Bill Peters comes flying in and...
runs up to the iPod and rips the aux cord out.
And he goes, "Whose shit is this?
Whose music is this?"
And I was just like, kinda,
"Like a-- it's me that's playing it."
And he goes,
"I'm tired of this nigger shit.
Get your nigger shit out of here. I don't want it--
I don't wanna hear it ever again."
And I kind of like...
Like, it makes my-- Like, I'm shaking right now.
Like, I was like...
I'm 20 years old, man, like...
And I was the youngest guy
in that-- in that dressing room.
And I'd lock eyes with one of the players,
and then they'd like, look away.
Then I'd look this way
and then they'd look-- they'd look away
because they were so uncomfortable,
they didn't know what to do.
And it was just dead silence.
And then I was like, "Well, what do I do now?"
Like, do I respond to him,
or do I suck it up because he controls my fate?
I'm this far away from getting to the National Hockey League,
and he holds all my cards.
I've worked my whole life.
Like, I grew up on welfare
to get to an inch from the National Hockey League.
And this is really tough for me to say
and eats me up inside, like...
In that position...
Y-yes, the right thing would have been to--
to call it out as what it is.
But I have to know
what the consequences to that are gonna be.
And...
it came to fruition because...
even after that incident, he wanted--
He didn't want me on the team
because he felt that I was
shunning him a little bit, disrespecting him.
And now, I'm walking on eggshells
after coach called me an N-word
and making sure that he's okay.
And I just, like, that's a lot to, like, wrap in your mind.
Like, I know what happened was wrong,
but there's nothing I can do about it.
And I've got to make sure that the guy
that did it to me is okay
so I can reach my dream.
I feel like sometimes I'm going in circles and stuff,
but it's just like, hard stuff to talk about.
You just gotta spit it out.
I think it happens right off the bat.
It's a reality that you're living.
Racism. And how deeply it's ingrained in the game.
My mom's Filipino and my dad's white.
She comes from a huge blended family.
Black, Asian, First Nations.
Growing up here you're the butt of every joke.
I think the ignorance of little kids
not knowing exactly like, what ethnicity I was,
you kind of just get the book thrown at you.
See what sticks and see what-- see what hurts me.
But I just...
I just knew all my family, like...
Uh, kind of everything hurt me.
So you're-- you're constantly
standing up for those people
and, and wanting to, you know,
represent them or, you know, not let anything slide, but...
It's a lot, it's hard work.
That's exhausting, you know, constantly doing that,
especially in hockey, with how frequent it is.
I know there was a time when I was younger,
like, at a teen tournament.
Um...
Guys would call me the N-word.
I was just...
It's fucked up, like, why are you saying this? I...
Don't call me it again.
It's done.
They're like, you know, "you're not Black. You're Filipino."
Like, why-- "why are you mad about that?"
It's-- it's not right.
They're like, "well we'll give you something to be mad about."
And then they start calling you like, "chink."
And... it's like, in that moment,
I just-- I just fought the guy.
I didn't...
It was like,
my first, like, probably real, real fight, like...
And I didn't win.
I was-- I was playing up.
I was-- I was a rookie on the team, so...
I got my shots in, but took a beating
and then went back to my room and...
like, just crying.
Just wondering, like, "Why am I even playing?"
Like, "Why am I playing hockey?"
It's not right...
Little kids shouldn't have to do that, you know.
I was like, like, 13 years old.
It's just bullshit.
Growing up, I was definitely the only,
uh, Black player on every team I played on.
I was a shy, timid kid,
didn't want really to speak out, ever.
When you start playing hockey at a young age,
you gotta act a certain way, you gotta dress a certain way.
You gotta talk a certain way.
You will never cause a scene, cause trouble,
um, you know, that's just a hockey mentality.
It's always been like that.
I was probably nine, ten years old,
we were in a tournament, some hockey tournament
in Montreal, and, um, you know,
we had played the semifinals that morning.
We had one big game
and then we had an afternoon finals,
and obviously as a kid, you know, playing the finals
or whatever tournament, you know, you're--
you're obviously excited, you're pumped.
I mean, you're-- you're a kid.
You're playing hockey
for the love of the game, right?
Before the game, for some reason,
there was, uh, opposing team's parents,
uh, in the hallway.
Two or three of them were, you know,
making monkey noises and calling me the N-bomb.
You know, at the time, I'm just like...
"Who's-- who's the adult right now?"
Like, who, who, like...
"What is going on?" Like, "This is not right."
And obviously, as a-- as a ten-year-old kid,
like, you don't know what to say, you don't know what to do.
My teammates behind me, you know, are seeing this,
like, they don't know what to do. They're--
They're in shock as well.
You hear stories about little kids, you know, quitting hockey.
But, you know, luckily for me
the love of my game, you know,
it was just, was so much deeper than that,
and, um, I just wanted to shut them up
by telling them, like, "Hey, like, I'm out here.
Yeah, I'm Black. I'm a hockey player.
And I'm gonna show you."
That's one of the interesting things about
the Colored Hockey League.
The innovation in terms of the sport.
What made this unique was,
because the league didn't have an official rule book,
they had adopted the white rules,
and, uh, had a looseness
in their interpretation of these rules.
At that time,
players could not lift their sticks
off the ice.
Eddie Martin, like many other Blacks at that time,
played baseball in the summers.
And so during the course of a game in 1903,
he ended up breaking in on the goaltender
and decided to raise that stick waist high
and fire a shot.
The teams and the officials
got into arguing about that,
though, eventually, it was resolved.
And, uh, Eddie had pioneered
what would become the slap shot.
Come on, go, go, go, go.
Come on! Your stick was way up there.
And it wasn't until 25 years after
when Frank "Bun" Cook of the New York Rangers,
he introduced it, as well as Andy Bathgate.
But ultimately, it was the Golden Jet,
Bobby Hull, who popularized the slap shot.
Going through the defense, getting set,
he may pass or shoot, he drives one, scores!
Back in 1895,
another rule was that the goalie had to stand in the net.
But those rules were thrown out in, uh, Colored Hockey League.
The talk about some of it being somewhat unorthodox
compared to the white leagues for instance,
the goaltender being able to go down on the ice to stop a shot,
something that was unheard of at that time.
But Henry Franklyn, who was a goaltender
with the Dartmouth team,
you read in the articles
how he went down to block a shot.
That style of goaltending
uh, predated the NHL.
Great save! Played it on the left wing.
People like Glen Hall, back in the '50s and '60s,
Tony Esposito in the '60s and '70s.
...by Tony Esposito.
He faked three men.
Not only was Franklin innovative in that regard,
he would wander outside of his net
to play the puck,
and pass it to the forwards.
Uh, he sort of set the standard,
and it wouldn't be until the late '50s,
Jacques Plante copied that style.
New York Rangers shoot the puck in,
Plante came way out of the net and he's gonna hold it.
So that style of goaltending
changed the face of hockey.
Look at the writings in the Acadian Recorder
and you see it there written by the reporters
that those innovations began in the Colored Hockey League.
When you read about what the reporters were saying
of the style of play, of the speed of the play,
the innovations that-- that were there,
um, you start to realize the fact
that this league had gave a lot to the sport.
And, and, and, you know,
the NHL and hockey as we know it today
has really never looked back to claim any of it.
Yeah!
Okay. This is one--
this is one of my little cubby holes.
And I have some prized possessions in here.
These are my father's...
hockey cards.
Some of the originals.
I can get it open. Here we go.
Yeah, this is...
This is one of the original hockey cards.
Uh, two of the originals, the little one.
And, uh...
these are a couple of the others that have come out since.
My treasures.
Amazing.
To me, this was a gift.
Because I have my father's real feelings on tape.
Herb Carnegie was the best Black player
never to play in the NHL.
I think he's the best Black hockey person
who is not in the Hall of Fame.
Herb played in various leagues in Canada.
Played with distinction.
He was a center, a setup man.
Played on a famous all-Black line called the Black Aces.
His brother, Ossie Carnegie and Manny McIntyre
were the linemates.
And they were a prolific line.
You do?
So, uh, anyway, now I get on the train.
I come to Montreal and then from Montreal...
I had met Herbie Carnegie
in Sherbrooke, uh, with the Quebec Aces.
Herb was by far the better of the three players.
Should have been in the National Hockey League,
uh, before me.
Um, had all the skills and the ability to play.
Uh, just unfortunate circumstances, you know,
kept him from, you know, from being chosen.
Conn Smythe, the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs,
saw him playing at Maple Leaf Gardens.
And by all accounts, Conn Smythe was impressed,
but not so impressed that he wanted to make history
by signing the first Black player.
Instead, Conn Smythe
was widely quoted by journalists as saying,
"I'd give any man $10,000,
who could turn Herb Carnegie white."
Now, I got that statement when I was 18.
How would you feel?
I'd feel awful.
I can't forget it.
Because he cut my knees off.
He broke my legs.
It's horrible.
So I don't want people to go through that.
My father said when he was told this,
he decided that he would just try even harder.
He actually said, "I played every game
like a scout was watching me and that they would see me.
They'd actually see me and recognized my talent."
In 1948, Herb finally got an offer
to go to the New York Rangers training camp
in upstate New York.
Have a chance to make the team.
My father and mother were on pins and needles.
And it's like, "Oh, I finally have my chance.
A chance that I've been waiting for."
And he played well.
And they told him so.
And the offer is half of what he was earning.
The Rangers' first two offers to Herb Carnegie
were lowball offers.
After another few days of impressing the Rangers at training camp,
and impressing the front office,
they made him another lowball offer.
So he turned it down.
It's as if they may have found Herb Carnegie, uppity,
if you wanna use a racial stereotype.
"You, you didn't take the offer we-- we gave you.
Who do you think you are?"
And as a result, the Rangers never made him another offer.
Herb Carnegie never played in the NHL.
Which is because, you know,
because he-- of his color, you know.
They just weren't ready for a Black hockey player.
My father was never the person
who put his name forward
to be in the NHL Hockey Hall of Fame.
There have been many attempts through the years
where people came to us and said,
"We believe he should be in there."
But, of course, he was never an NHL-er,
so they kind of threw that out there.
But they do have other categories,
like builder.
He was someone whose contributions
make the sport of hockey better.
In his post hockey days,
he started a school, the famous Aces School.
If it was not the first such school,
it was one of the first, and it taught hockey skills
as well as sportsmanship, handling yourself with class
and dignity and grace, producing better citizens.
And even that was not looked upon
as worthy of induction into the Hall of Fame.
It's a shame that avid hockey fans
don't know the name "Herb Carnegie."
It's a shame that his contributions as a player
has been overlooked by so many people.
You know what I feel like right now?
It's like mental. I'm scared.
- To... to drown. - Yeah, okay.
But you're in water. Worst case scenario, you fall over.
Dealing with all this shit on the ice and off the ice.
These racial incidents.
I don't even talk about the mental side of things.
How many sleepless nights, man?
Sleeping pills just to try to get to sleep.
I was in a dark hole for a while.
And that was an altering point.
Not in my hockey career, my life.
My mindset changed from that.
So how was it?
It hurts, man.
But it's okay?
- Yeah, it's just-- it's just weak, and... - Right.
- ...still getting that sharp pain, but... - You've got to get stronger.
You got to start pushing all day.
That's when I started feeling
a type of way about the game of hockey
and the stakeholders in the game of hockey
and the power brokers in this game.
The world right now has had this incredible attack
with social injustice.
And now we're sort of grappling with, uh...
Yes, but the infrastructure or the institutions
or everything that was...
What does it mean for that
if we move forward here?
With that comes a lot of fear.
And you're seeing us kind of move through that, uh,
period of fear uncomfortably.
There are certain things
that are very specific to hockey
that you just don't get elsewhere.
And a big part of that
is the insular nature of the sport.
No one player is greater than the team.
That's what's been preached in hockey for so long.
They always say No one's above the team,
which, I believe in that. No one is above the team.
You're supposed to work together. That's how you win.
That's how a team game is played.
But at the same time, I think players are trained
to do what is told of you
and not question, kind of, the system.
With hockey, you have a lot of great values
or a lot of great ideals.
Playing together, having this one goal,
it's good in itself.
But with hockey, it kind of takes it to the extreme.
You should listen to your coach,
but that doesn't mean that you don't say anything ever, right?
I wanted to let people know
what was happening at times.
But if I wanted to excel in my career,
I had to keep my mouth shut and just move forward.
You don't wanna draw that attention to yourself.
It creates this culture that's very cyclical,
and it's very hard to break that cycle.
What?
How's it going, Akim?
How you doing, buddy? What's going on?
- Nothing much. How about yourself? - What are you, 17 now?
No, I'm 16.
Turning 17 in June.
Man, you're a, a leader at, at such a young age.
I wasn't doing what you're doing at that age.
It's, uh... it's inspiring.
Obviously, just wanted to check in.
Um, see how things are going.
Where you're at with Hockey PEI,
and obviously, I know you reached out
to Hockey Canada as well.
Well, the five spectators from Friday night,
they have been suspended, 25 games.
While Saturday night incident at the hotel,
it's still under investigation.
We haven't heard anything much
and from what they sent my dad from emails,
it's been copy and paste of the same thing,
that when we keep checking up.
They're keep saying the same thing
that it's still under investigation.
In November of 2021,
it was a early bird tournament in PEI.
There was some-- these five boys,
sixteen, 17-year-olds, chirping.
These spectators were kind of throwing, you know,
"You suck, goalie," and all this stuff,
but, like, trying to get in my head.
And after I got scored on, they said, like,
"You fucking suck, nigger!
You fucking nigger." All this.
But I just had to, like, stay focused into the game.
They continued every time I skated by. They'd be like,
"You shouldn't be playing fucking hockey, you nigger!"
Mark called the refs over
and told them what was happening.
They didn't wanna deal with it.
Those boys should have been removed from the rink.
But they weren't.
We hit the hotel later.
The team that we were playing against on Friday night,
a couple of their players were on the same floor as us,
and they were in the hallways.
Some guys called-- some guys called me
just "fucking nigger."
And one told me, "Shut up, nigger!"
You know? And I came out with a couple other players.
They all... They heard them that night.
Some guys heard them call me a monkey and all this.
Do you feel that enough is being done?
Or do you think that there could be more that-- that could be done?
Well, at first Hockey PEI,
they didn't have the resources for this.
And they admitted it
and they had to get help from Hockey Canada.
But...
Overall, it's just...
It's just a little difficult to deal with them.
Why they took this long to handle anything
4to give those players the disciplinary action,
and how long this second incident's
taking to be investigated?
After that, you said, "Dad, I just wanna go home.
I've never been called so many racial slurs
until I came here to play.
And I did nothing to these kids.
All I did was play hockey."
Let's say Mark was playing the game, got in a fight.
Next day, he's gone for five games.
No doubt. He's gone.
But you do a racial incident,
we're almost five months with Hockey PEI
on the second incident.
And, you know, the second, the third...
First one took three months.
We should have answers.
A few parents, the Black father and...
They said, "Wayne, I'm glad it was you.
That pushed this forward." He said, "If it was me,
"it would have been brushed aside."
And that shouldn't be.
There's no rules set in place for how to deal with this stuff.
It seems that hockey is so far behind
and when these occurrences happen of racism,
they don't really know what to do.
Um, I know it's a--
It's a really tough space to be in,
- um, so honestly... - I know.
...we appreciate you.
I... We appreciate your family.
I don't even think you realize how many kids you're gonna help.
And, honestly, everybody that's of color in hockey
that's trying to just feel welcome in the game.
And, and it's a huge thank you to you.
So I appreciate you, boss.
I appreciate the call.
Of course, okay. See you, Mark.
See ya.
Say hi to your dad for me.
- Oh, no problem. See ya. - All right. Take it easy.
Spook! Spook! Spook!
The chant of "Spook! Spook!"
Just one epithet
from a poisonous garden of racial slurs
flung at Val James
when he plays hockey in Salem, Virginia.
We frequently talk about exclusion, right?
Being locked out of the halls of power,
being locked out of the rooms where decisions are happening
and that, that is true.
That is one function of racism.
But racism can also be a function
of predatory inclusion, right?
We are included in ways
that end up being quite harmful to us.
And we never think about
what happens to people of color,
what happens to Black people after they are integrated
into these predominantly white spaces.
These predominantly white spaces,
which never wanted us.
Hey, price for fighting a nigger!
What is that like, to be the only Black player on a hockey rink?
I bet it's awful.
Throughout my career, I've always felt as though
I've had to let go of a piece of my Blackness to fit in.
My time at Yale was very difficult
just because I definitely expected my team to be more woke
and, you know, more educated in that sense.
Being able to be my 100% authentic self involved them,
you know, not necessarily being able to relate to me.
And by my second year of college,
I was done code-switching.
I was done setting aside my Blackness.
I'm a very driven individual,
and I don't like quitting things,
so I really just wanted to continue.
But at the same time, I quite often played
with hate in my heart and I played angry.
And I probably played angry up until this past year.
I never played with another Black player
up until my senior year at Yale.
And I realized the importance of me having a friend
and having somebody to look to in the dressing room.
With the Toronto Six signing Angela James and Mark Joslin
to be our coaches, for myself, I was just overjoyed.
♪ Oh, Canada ♪
♪ We stand on guard ♪
♪ For thee ♪
I got the call that Angela was gonna be coaching me.
I definitely bawled my eyes out.
A breakaway for James.
For myself, that was really the only person
that I had to look up to
when I was growing up in the hockey community.
There wasn't any other Black women for me to look to.
The MVP, Angela James.
Playing professionally now, I-- I don't think I play
with as much hate in my heart,
um, but at the same time,
I'm still aware of all of the things
that have happened in the past.
The league itself, when it first started,
we're talking about the turn of the century,
into the early 20th century.
So you've got great leadership, right?
You've got people like James Kinney,
James Robinson Johnston.
They're getting into politics,
they're becoming a force in elections.
They're building up the social structure
of Black communities.
Come on, let's go! Let's go!
The league was seen as part of a social movement
which should help develop pride
but also raising the social mobility of Blacks.
You've got people coming to the games.
Black empowerment, taking shape through ticket sales.
You've got to remember, work for Black men in particular
was very scarce.
So the revenue that was generated
from the Hockey League was very, very important
to, to the whole community,
not just the league itself.
I think my aunt told me my...
Her father, my grandfather, got 50 cents a month,
and it was big money.
The white teams
who played hockey here in Halifax
wanted a part of that revenue, that money.
So they would organize exhibition games
against the Colored Hockey League
to get a share in the gate.
They could bring a crowd out.
I remember reading about one game that happened in Sydney,
where they had 250 people come out to watch.
Some amazing stuff to read about being able to break the color barrier.
Playing games against white teams, which would've been unheard of.
They were living second-class citizenship in this country,
uh, and yet they were playing Canada's pastime back in 1895.
You know? Wow. The-- the amazingness
that surrounds all of that when you think about it.
But when you look at some of the things
that-- that were in the Sydney paper
when the teams went down and played in Sydney,
it had really nothing to do about the game.
It had more to do with trying to make spectacles
of the Black players that were playing.
Those were just racist, cartoonish,
derogatory depictions of Black people.
That was our systemically racist society
that always tried to make us more buffoonish.
Or tried to make us less than serious,
instead of in reality, looking at the sportsmanship
that was out there and talking about
how these players were playing.
Were there white leagues that saw the--
the Colored Hockey League as a threat to them?
Possibly.
Uh, what's the best way to dismantle that,
is to, you know, to put out
something that says they're not as good
and they're just making fools of the games.
And so therefore, you diminish people's interest
in going to watch them,
uh, and going to pay to see them
or, or talking positively about it.
We now acknowledge
that race is a social construct.
In the 18th, 19th, early 20th century,
we talk about race as being a biological construct.
People really believed
that there were differences in biology
that distinguished races from one another.
So your race determined your temperament,
your morality, your behavior, your potential.
When I was 12 years old,
I said, "Mom, I wanna be the first Black woman
to play in the Olympics for team USA."
2013 rolls around,
I'm graduating from Boston College,
I'm in my prime.
- It's a score!
Tapped in by Bolden.
I won two U18 World Championships,
I'm in this pool of 40 to 60
of the best players in the world
that are trying out for the national team.
Obviously, I'm the only person of color.
The idea that Black people
are naturally physical, naturally gifted
and suited for manual labor,
as opposed to leadership or intellectual pursuits,
is a longstanding stereotype.
It ties directly back to that legacy of racial hierarchy
connected to transatlantic slavery.
And the idea that white people
were superior in every way, was common at that time.
I would constantly go into these training camps
and feel like I wasn't being seen.
Feel like there was just this barrier
of misunderstanding and perception.
That idea needs to be passed down
from generation to generation for it to occur today.
And then when we bring sport into it,
that kind of binary thinking leads to Black people
being assumed to not be coachable
and not be leadership potential.
I was told that...
I was perceived to be uncoachable.
And that was like, a gut punch to me.
What do you mean? I'm, I'm...
I'm not a disrespectful person.
I shake my head, I give good eye contact.
I show up, I do the work.
I was shocked when that was told to me.
I don't know if it was because of this.
I don't know what it was because of.
But I can only think about things like that
based off of my experience.
And it was-- it was tragic for me.
It was heartbreaking. I lost myself.
For years.
In hockey, there are certain adjectives
like "heady" or "smart"
that are not applied to Black players.
The result of that 20 or 30 years ago
was that Black men in the NHL
were pretty much relegated to being enforcers.
George Laraque, Donald Brashear...
He's just too strong.
This guy is a tower, I'll tell you...
This assumption that you don't think as well as people
from other groups,
it's all based on stereotypes, not reality.
Unconscious bias.
I've been dealing with that my whole career.
I've had coaches say, "Oh, your hockey IQ
is actually pretty good,"
and, "Oh", like, "You're actually...
Oh, you're actually articulate."
Looking back, they're just like...
It's just cra...
Things that are crazy that no one should have
to really deal with, to be honest.
In my experience, and I've been raising Black kids for 30 years,
they could think the game just like anybody else.
Guys, everybody got a puck? Everybody got a puck?
Stand still. Okay. Let's start moving.
Keep it on your stick.
What happens is, is because those teams are coached,
by hockey dads and volunteers and friends,
they take the Black kids, and say,
"You're gonna play defense."
We're gonna stick you back at the back
because we're just gonna use you athletically.
It's just like, "Oh, you're six-foot-two
and you're a Black kid, you're 190, you should be a beast."
No, why can't a six-foot, 290-pound Black kid
be pretty out there?
One, two, three, four.
Come on. Come on.
It's just something that, that starts from the time
that they're younger.
They just segment guys.
That's why you don't see a lot of Black centers,
glory positions.
And it's a story that they've created.
They're running out of, um, excuses,
really, is what I would say.
When I was younger, the first player I was introduced to
was Willie O'Ree, um, by my parents.
They just wanted me to know that, you know,
obviously, hockey is a pretty white sport,
but, you know, it was a possibility
because somebody, you know, who looked like me
had already made it.
My parents always prepared me well
for being one of the only Black players
in hockey, to expect it,
you know, and try not to react to it.
But it's hard. I'm a human being.
I had just gotten traded from LA to Philadelphia, and...
It was kind of, you know, a new start for me,
a place where I could go
and, uh, kind of reinvent myself.
We were playing Detroit,
at the John Labatt Centre in London, Ontario.
So we were tied after regulation,
overtime, we go into a shootout.
Um, I'm skating down the ice,
and all of a sudden,
I see an object fly by me.
Um, you know, at the time,
I'm like, kind of, you know, "What is that?"
I take a glance. I'm like...
it's a banana.
And immediately,
I already know what's going on.
I honest to God, I had a million different things
going through my mind.
I knew guys weren't gonna understand
what I was going through, so I just buried it.
To the outside world, I probably looked like it didn't affect me much.
But, um, you know, on the inside, it was burning.
This morning, Londoner,
Christopher Moorhouse, 26,
pleaded guilty under the Trespass Act
for throwing that piece of fruit.
While Moorhouse pled guilty to the one charge
after an extensive police investigation,
what was revealed this morning
was that there was absolutely no evidence
that the throwing of the banana
was racially motivated.
After hearing the evidence,
justice of the peace, Robert Seneshen,
referred to Moorhouse
as a thoughtful young man
who is not a racist
or a bigot in any way.
Moorhouse was fined $200,
and the justice of the peace said he hoped
that he could put the incident behind him
and continue on his path towards a career in policing.
I don't know how many times
I've gotten called something and everyone's like,
"Oh, you know, it's just one person,
you know, they're ignorant."
Well, then why has this happened to me?
I can't even count the amount of times this happened to me.
So why does that happen? If it's one person,
and that is the only ignorant person,
how is that situation isolated? It's not.
It's-- it's a cultural problem within the sport of hockey.
And the fact that, um, it goes unchecked,
is the biggest problem about it.
- Anybody of color
that tried to make it playing hockey up there,
listen to the stories they had.
They'd be like, "Were you in Alabama?"
- "No, it was in Manitoba."
Members of an indigenous hockey team
say they faced racist taunts.
In my lifetime, I faced racism before
but not at this level.
These aren't one-off incidents.
They happen all the time.
Racism knows no age limits.
Ask Divyne Apollon.
He had to endure monkey chants from an opposing team.
Take Ty Cornett who dealt with opponents
who acted like gorillas every time he lined up
in front of an opponent's bench.
It's frustrating because I know what that's like.
You know, when I'm five years old, listening to parents
scream names and things at me.
Subban shoots, he scores.
Montreal's P.K. Subban wins the game.
Meanwhile, on Twitter, 17,000 racist tweets
were posted by Boston fans against Subban.
#whitesonly,
and called him an "effing N-word."
It's meant for you to feel like
you need to stay in your place.
This is not attainable for you.
Blatant racism is easier to pinpoint.
There are actions. There are verbal assaults.
You can point to it. It's very clearly,
you are called the N-word, that's racist.
...24-year-old Jonathan Diaby.
He says racist fans targeted him and his family.
Player Akim Aliu,
was surprised by equipment manager
dressed in Aliu's jersey, with blackface.
People don't really understand how bad it is unless you're on the inside.
People think that when we talk about systemic racism, we mean,
there are racists in your system. But that's not it.
The Rangers organized the Zoom chat
with Miller and fans,
and Miller saw racial slurs
all the time on this chat.
Jalen Smereck was the target of a racist gesture
by Andrei Deniskin.
He pantomimed unpeeling and eating a banana.
When I seen that, like my heart just dropped.
Systemic racism is the idea
that even if there were no racists in your system,
we would still see racially disparate outcomes.
Right? Because racism is embedded in our institutions,
in our ideas, in our patterns of behavior,
and it's self-perpetuating.
Death threats made towards you,
racist threats made towards you.
How do you deal with all that and move on and play?
Sad to say, but that's just the fact of the matter.
I'm getting good at just putting it in the rearview mirror.
I've had racial remarks directed towards me,
you know, in the last couple of weeks.
There's so much hate going on in the world today.
The video is damning evidence of player misconduct,
yet no disciplinary action has been taken.
In my time, playing that level of egregious misconduct,
was never punished. Ever.
There's a huge disconnect between policy
and the enforcement of the policy.
I'm not calling that a blind spot.
That's a gaping hole in our game,
that needs to be repaired.
You cannot see systemic racism
by focusing on individual actions.
That is all smoke and mirrors.
These incidents happen more often
than people wanna believe or admit to.
We had 130 articles
of incidents dating back to 2018.
And because we keep treating them
as isolated incidents, no one's connecting the dots
and saying, "We have a broader problem
that we need to deal with,
and it's called systemic racism."
You cannot solve systemic issues
with individual action.
You cannot understand racism
as only individualistic.
It's-- it's a distraction.
The Black community is starting to emerge
by the early 1900s.
Simultaneously, they're sitting in around the Bedford Basin.
Places like Africville, prime industrial land.
Halifax has to expand. The railroads have to come in.
Whose lands are they taking?
They're taking
the Black hockey players' lands.
So these families are fighting back.
The city of Halifax wanted to build a railroad
through the community.
And a number of players
that played on the Africville Seasides
started to protest.
A part of the backlash from that
was to attack the Maritime Colored Hockey League.
Rinks weren't available.
Local newspapers, uh, refused to cover the games.
By 1908, there's no Colored Hockey Leagues
playing in and around the arenas of Halifax.
They're gone.
Fast forward, 50, 60 years,
you've got the destruction of Africville.
Africville obviously,
must be redeveloped.
And sometimes, some people need to be shown
that certain things are not in their own best interests
and not in the best interest of their children.
Many of the city officials
saw that community as a barrier
to supposedly economic development.
They razed the-- the homes and the school...
It was quite a traumatic experience.
Not only for the Africville residents themselves,
but for the broader Black community.
They took our homes,
they moved us out of Africville,
in the city garbage trucks.
We had a lot better out there
than some places they put us in this city.
I'm living on welfare.
I think a whole lot of us,
when we came in this city, we had to go on welfare.
When we lived in that city of Africville,
you look in the record to see how many Africville people
had to humble and come to the city for welfare.
We were too independent.
We didn't want it, we earned our own living.
And we've earned it the honest way.
The last resident to leave in 1970
was Aaron "Pa" Carvery,
and he played with the Africville Seasides.
Aaron "Pa" Carvery, he would be my great uncle.
He was the last warrior.
He didn't go till 1970.
And, you know,
my Uncle Pa,
and my grandmother, in that generation,
all of them,
were gone within five years
of having to leave Africville.
And every one of them died with a broken heart.
Because all they wanted
was the dignity to die where they were born.
It's all they wanted.
Yeah...
There's an anger.
Not only a sadness,
but I am-- I am moving into anger,
that through no fault of their own,
that this community's gone.
And there was no longer
the community taking care of community anymore.
And all the social ills
that, um, society's plagued with,
um, hit our community that was now dispersed.
What's up?
Julian, where's your dad at?
What's up? Nice jersey. Julian, where's your dad at?
I would say, I hit this, like, pivotal moment around,
like, 26, 27
where my mindset changed from
me being, in some ways, selfish
and just concerned about my own career.
"How do I get better in this game?
How do I move up in this game?"
But then... What's the next kid that's gonna be me,
coming up in this game.
What's the ten-year-old Akim, right now, feeling?
How can I help that kid
to not experience what I went through?
Today's a celebratory day for me.
I mean, obviously,
you see a lot of kids of color sitting here,
and girls, and obviously indigenous, Asian, Black.
For the most part, you look different in your dressing rooms
than I did growing up. I mean,
I played 12 years professionally
and I played with two other people of color.
Every time you look left or right,
you never really see anybody that looks like you.
Um, and that kind of hits you in a-- in a different way,
especially as you get older. So...
I had some racial incidents happen to me.
Um, what, what I'm doing right now,
obviously, we don't have to go through the same thing.
I'm super excited. We'll go out there
and have fun today and have a good tempo
and good atmosphere and enjoy it.
I've kind of come into my own recently.
It's just been a recent switch from anger to empowerment.
Anybody want an XL?
The XLs actually aren't even that big, so... You want XL or large?
I'm more so worried about affecting the girls behind me
and allowing them to have a pathway
to walk that I didn't have.
Let them have the resources, the networking,
all of those amazing things
that I saw my teammates having,
that I didn't have necessarily growing up.
Um, and making sure that they feel comfortable
and welcomed in the arena.
That is great.
How great is this, guys?
I thought I had trouble fitting my hair.
Everyone always ask me, um,
"How does all your hair fit in a helmet?"
- I know. - I'm like it just does.
- Right? - Yeah.
I know that they love seeing me on the ice.
And I love seeing the Black girls
that I see at the arena every day.
Um, now, that I didn't see when I was younger.
There we go.
- Let's go.
Let's go, let's go. Let's go!
...inside, inside.
Good job, good job.
My generation is trying to open it up
so that you can be yourself.
My dream is that, you know, everybody can,
you know, play hockey without having to worry
about what's gonna happen to them if they speak their mind.
But I know we've got a long way to go before that happens.
I think it's time for the game of hockey to evolve
the way Canada is evolving
and bringing in people from all over the world.
It's Canada's game, but it doesn't appeal
to what Canadian demographics are.
And we still have a really tough time
in attracting people of color to play the game of hockey.
They just don't resonate with it.
For me, it's one of those things I just think that...
That it's something worth saving
because it has so much potential.
My first year playing with another Black player
was my senior year of college.
And at that point in time, I felt like
that was gonna be my last year playing.
Um, I had lost my love for the game
because I didn't have friends on my team
like how you guys are all friends in a community.
I know sometimes things get said,
it might be awkward and then you got to internalize it
because you're the only Black player in the room.
But I think once we-- once we get these Black faces in the arena,
I think we're gonna see Black individuals
being welcomed in the arena,
um, which is something that we haven't necessarily had.
I really wish now I had spoken out a lot more
'cause I think it would have went a long way to helping out,
you know, younger kids that were...
You know, look like me, and could possibly be in that position.
All right, ladies and gentlemen,
I think I wanna leave you guys with one parting message.
You guys can do whatever you guys wanna do.
You guys see me, right? I play in the NHL.
I started right where you guys are. Right?
Don't ever let anybody take that from you
because you guys are kings and queens,
and you can do whatever you guys wanna do.
- Yes? - Uh...
Yes. Um...
Unfortunately, the sport that we play,
some people don't want us to play this sport.
But we got news for them. This is our sport.
We go all the way back to the 1800s
and the Colored Hockey League back in Nova Scotia, right?
So don't let anybody ever tell you this is not your sport
because this is exactly what you're supposed to be.
Exactly.
I thought about sometimes quitting hockey
but my teammates brought me out,
telling me, you know, "We support you in this"
and they helped along the way.
And the community behind us, especially.
That lift my spirits and made me feel very good.
You know, even guys we compete against, you know,
some of us are buddies, and we all know each other.
And they tell me, like, "Hey, man,
we support you through this."
They all said, you know, "This got to be changed. This got to stop.
It shouldn't be happening anymore."
There are a lot of things that people might not think is palatable.
But all those stories have to be told
so that we get a true depiction
of where we need to go, where we've been
and, and how we get to where we wanna go.
I think it's vitally important
that we reclaim our place in history.
We're not just the runaway slaves
or free loyalists who came to build and to clean.
We had a good place in history.
That should not be ignored.
Nor no longer forgotten or buried.
I think now, you know, I'm a grown man.
I learned so much.
And now, at 26 years old,
I'm finally talking about this.
It is... It's not easy. You know, it's not comfortable.
Um, but it's, it's definitely, uh, something we have to do,
especially for the younger generation coming up.
I've seen so many kids, like, be turned away from hockey,
and it makes me so sad every year,
because I see, like, my younger self
in these kids.
Our game is stagnant right now.
Are we going to invite the next generation in,
or are we going to isolate
and say, "No, you actually can't be a part of it?"
It's about the incidents that happen
every day in our world.
It's opening people's eyes
that these things happen
and people have to live with these things.
That's difficult.
If you start talking about those kinds of issues,
there is a level of uncomfortability.
But as you come to grips
with those uncomfortable issues,
can you move forward?
I mean, the stories we tell,
and the stories we tell ourselves,
the stories we tell our children,
the stories we tell about ourselves,
who we are as individuals, as communities.
As a country, right?
These are foundational to who we think we are.
Right? And so the stories that are not told,
the stories that are kind of jettisoned
from the realm of what's imaginable,
it goes to the core of our national identity.
And so, when Black people are excluded
from those stories, right?
We let Canada think that we are new,
we have never been here,
we don't really belong here,
we should be grateful to be here.
While what we actually are, are, you know, we are integral
to everything this country thinks it is.
♪ Oh, Africville Look what they've done to me ♪
♪ It's a part of our history They kept in the class ♪
♪ And professors never taught the lessons ♪
♪ They neglected forgot it ♪
♪ They kept it underneath the table ♪
♪ Kept it under the surface ♪
♪ Nervous that we would reemerge it ♪
♪ They dispersed us and jerked us ♪
♪ Out in Africville Halifax is ill ♪
♪ How can us Blacks rebuild when the facts reveal ♪
♪ The government left them comatose ♪
♪ The younger and older folks in Black Nova Scotia souls ♪
♪ Have frozen many homes ♪
♪ Are broken drugs started creeping in ♪
♪ Crime started seeping in The heaven got crushed ♪
♪ When the demons started sneaking in ♪
♪ A Black community lost and trampled ♪
♪ Left out in shambles ♪
♪ Dismantled and it's still hard to handle ♪
♪ You can't put a price ♪
♪ On the lives that they ruined ♪
♪ No reparations, no nothing ♪
♪ Why would you do this? ♪
♪ Divide my people to find out on the corners at night ♪
♪ Oh, Africville, look what they've done to me ♪
♪ Take my word it's time to settle this ♪
♪ As I reminisce about the settlement ♪
♪ If you Black from Halifax ♪
♪ I'm speaking about your relatives ♪
♪ History don't like to tell of it ♪
♪ Discreet about its relevance ♪
♪ 'Cause a Black community ♪
♪ Was a disease to their development ♪
♪ Therefore they had to change that ♪
♪ But those in the community ♪
♪ That lay beside the train tracks ♪
♪ Forced to make tax payments ♪
♪ Despite the lack of running water and sewage ♪
♪ Flat pavement and light ♪
♪ Our forefathers bought themselves from enslavement ♪
♪ With rights to land ownership ♪
♪ I'm asking people How do you condone this shit? ♪
♪ See what happened to Africville ♪
♪ It happens still ♪
♪ They choose land over man ♪
♪ To expand extract and kill ♪
♪ You can't put a price ♪
♪ On the lives that they ruined ♪
♪ No reparations, no nothing ♪
♪ Why would you do this? ♪
♪ Divide my people to find out on the corners at night ♪
♪ Oh, Africville Look what they've done to me ♪
♪ How can you compensate a lost culture? ♪
♪ Especially when it's smashed up ♪
♪ In a system of colonial vultures ♪
♪ Africville, they made a real-life theatrical poster ♪
♪ They moved Blacks off the base ♪
♪ And using garbage trucks as chauffeurs ♪
♪ It's pretty clever how they did this through the night ♪
♪ Destroying Black history ♪
♪ With no regard for human life ♪
♪ Into the crack-infested ghetto city lights ♪
♪ Hundreds of Black children ♪
♪ Hating each other ready to fight ♪
♪ There's no amount of reparations ♪
♪ Compensations rehabilitation ♪
♪ Three day celebrations never changed the situation ♪
♪ Even though it's been proved by the United Nations ♪
♪ That the Africville relocation ♪
♪ Was a civil rights violation ♪
♪ You can't put a price ♪
♪ On the lives that they've ruined ♪
♪ No reparations, no nothing ♪
♪ Why would you do this? ♪
♪ Divide my people to find out on the corners at night ♪
♪ Oh, Africville Look what they've done to me ♪
♪ Look what they've done to me ♪