Players and coaches usually able to solve issues on their own
Because my late father ran a hockey arena, I spent my formative years in Quebec and Toronto in rinks, and at its best, the game was always accepting of those who are different — usually well ahead of the societal curve, in fact.
I remember “the Wire Boy,” as he was called in my hometown. Now, he’d probably be on the autism spectrum, or perhaps diagnosed as intellectually disabled. But back then, he was just the Wire Boy, so called because he always had in his quick hands a length of wire which he twirled non-stop.
I don’t remember him ever speaking. I never saw him in school, though he could have gone to the Catholic one.
But at the rink, he just … fit in.
He came to all the games, with his wire of course, and would sit and twirl frenetically, or pace about. Everyone knew him. No one stared. No one made fun of him or bugged him.
Every rink I’ve ever been in, and many of the minor teams I followed for years, had a fellow or two like that.
In Humboldt, the Saskatchewan town whose junior team was all but wiped out in that terrible bus crash earlier this year, they even named the rink after their Wire Boy.
He is Elgar Peterson, now 82, and not long before the bus crash, the late and by all accounts wonderful head coach of the team, Darcy Haugan, took his players on a special trip to meet the man who had tied generations of players’ skates, was the equipment manager for so many teams and who’d stood behind the Broncos’ bench for decades.
For the public vigil, held at the rink, the team arranged for Mr. Peterson to be brought down from the nursing home out of town. He was the only individual honoured by name and asked to stand.
I mention this because in my experience (or should I say “lived experience,” as if there is any other sort), hockey needs no lessons in the milk of human kindness and inclusivity.
Yet, the world being what it is, that is just what has come to pass.
Because of a settlement reached four years ago in a case brought to the Ontario Human Rights Commission in 2013, the Ontario Hockey Federation, the governing body for most of minor hockey in the province, has now trained its coaches in gender diversity (this apparently happened last season) so that for the 2018-19 season they might have appropriate “pre-season chats” with their players, including an “introductory pronoun check-in.”
According to the program developed by Egale Canada, an LGBTQ advocacy organization, this should see the coach explaining that calling someone by their preferred pronoun is respectful, introducing him or herself by saying “I’m (name) and I go by the pronouns (insert pronouns),” and explaining that it’s okay to ask for and share gender pronouns, “because it is not something you can always tell just by looking at someone.”
Popular pronouns, according to Egale, include they, ze, ey or xe. (Not included is “oy”, which should be there.)
The complaint was brought by Jesse Thompson of Oshawa, a transgender teen who alleged that he was effectively “outed” when he was asked to use a dressing room that aligned with his gender at birth (female), and not his identified gender (male).
He wasn’t allowed in the boys’ room, and sometimes, parents of female players objected to him being in the girls’ room.
In any case, Thompson took his complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Commission and reached a settlement with Hockey Canada, the effect of which applies only in Ontario.
Now, it sounds as though Thompson’s hockey club handled the situation badly and to the young man’s detriment and embarrassment. The game is magnificent at its best, as I said, but it is not immune to the usual quotient of dolts, bullies and even the cruel.
And that’s the thing. By the latest estimate, the transgender and gender non-conforming (TGN) among us account for 0.7 per cent of the adult population. (The figures for young people are harder to come by, but there’s some evidence transgender numbers are bigger in younger age groups.)
By my reckoning, that’s probably close to the percentage of clumsy or mean people in hockey, too.
Most coaches, certainly the many I’ve known in my life, would have figured out a solution that was discreet and kind. They almost always did. They too had gay players, shy players, anxious players, players who weren’t like the others, players with big problems at home, players with domineering or absent parents.
They helped those kids, accommodated them, made damn sure the others on the team toed the line.
If only Jesse Thompson had had one of those men as a coach he wouldn’t have needed to file a human rights complaint — and now, there wouldn’t be a whole new set of rules and regs tailored to 0.7 per cent of the population with issues that were only ever a problem for 0.7 per cent of the hockey population. Oy.