Minor hockey exec ousted after criticizing president
It was Windsor Minor Hockey Association’s Day of Champions last March, when house league teams play their championship games.
“I could feel the coldness,” recalled Mike Dugal, a board member for 30 years and former president. It wasn’t the ice. Dugal, a retired autoworker and longtime community volunteer, had criticized association president Dean Lapierre for calling Canadian women in the Women’s March on Washington “dumb bitches” on social media.
“No woman deserves that,” Dugal had told CBC. He called it “offensive.” After he spoke out, he said in an interview this week, the board ostracized him.
Several days after the Day of Champions, the association’s executive vice-president, Rick Pare, told Dugal his board position was being eliminated.
“I know why they eliminated my position on the board,” said Dugal, who also co-founded ASSIST, a program that helps low income families pay for their children to play hockey. “I wouldn’t condone what Dean had done, even though we were close friends.”
He went home, shaking his head, and typed his resignation letter.
He had known some board members for 25 years. He had invited some to join the board. He never heard from them after that. It still hurts, he said.
“I guess what the president wants, the president gets,” he said. “He wanted me gone, so I was gone.”
Eight board members, including two members of a committee struck to deal with Lapierre’s string of derogatory comments about women and others over at least five years, have left their positions since the comments were publicized last January.
Unifor Local 444 and two sports groups, Club 240 and Windsor Choristers Athletic Club, are still withholding $4,500 in sponsorships from the WMHA because the association hasn’t completed the measures it said it would.
“My concern is that we have lost momentum in completing all action items,” former board member Mario Pennesi wrote in an email to Pare on Sept. 24.
Lapierre and Pare didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Lapierre was suspended for the rest of the season last year. He posted an apology on the association’s website and read it at the annual meeting last spring. He also participated in a program called Respect in Sport and attended a presentation on social media ethics with the rest of the board.
When his suspension ended, he was acclaimed as president again.
But it’s not clear whether Lapierre completed a Sexual Assault Crisis Centre program required by the board. Facilitator Trish McAuliffe, who met with the executive last June on behalf of Unifor Local 444 and the Windsor & District Labour Council, concluded in a report obtained by the Star that all measures had been completed “with exception of Dean’s one on one behavioural intervention sessions with Lydia Fiorini (executive director of the centre).”
Fiorini, who wrote in a letter to the Star last February that Lapierre “recognized the need to ... work toward change,” refused to comment.
Pennesi is an association life member and was a member of the committee dealing with Lapierre’s comments. He left the board in July. He declined an interview request, but in his email to Pare on Sept. 24, he questioned whether Lapierre had finished the program at the Sexual Assault Crisis Centre.
He also asked when a new handbook with a new social media code of conduct will be ready. The association, which already had a code of conduct banning disrespectful and offensive behaviour, including on social media, has posted a new program called THINK on its website. It encourages players, parents and volunteers to think about whether what they say or post on social media is true or helpful. The program includes a confidential reporting system to resolve conflicts.
Pennesi also questioned what the board is doing to get the remaining sponsorships, especially Unifor’s $500. It’s not a lot of money, he wrote, but it “is material because of the clout that Unifor has in the community.”
Pennesi agreed with McAuliffe’s observation that “a common statement heard (in the community is that) ‘nothing changes,’ and that ‘the association doesn’t take these matters seriously.’”
Pennesi also agreed with McAuliffe that the association may need to change the way it’s governed. Only board members can run for president. There are no term limits for board members. And parents can’t vote.
Lapierre has been president for 18 years.
The association’s constitution does “not allow for transparency and accountability,” Pennesi wrote.
Dugal called it “an old boys’ club.”
Pare forwarded Pennesi’s email to Lapierre with the comment: “SERIOUSLY.”
Lapierre responded to Pennesi, writing, “I would like to remind you that while you’re a ... life member, you are NO LONGER a WMHA board member.”
The whole email exchange was then forwarded to the rest of the board by Pennesi on Oct. 28. The Star obtained a copy from another source.
McAuliffe, who declined to speak to the Star, recommended strategic planning to address governance and changing the association’s culture. She also recommended more training for the entire board, saying this is the top concern for sponsors. Unifor Local 444 offered to help pay for it.
But the association, whose teams wrapped their sticks with purple tape Nov. 12 to support Woman Abuse Prevention Month, responded that it “may be too busy.”
Human rights liabilities and a positive relationship with the community “should outweigh” everything else, McAuliffe wrote.
The association agreed to continue working with McAuliffe, and the sponsors agreed to pay the outstanding money when the two sides were finished, said labour council president Brian Hogan. But the meetings with McAuliffe “stalled,” he said. The association hasn’t met with her again.
“They said they were busy,” he said. “We were disappointed.”
The sponsors contacted the board recently to “remind” it about the meetings, he said. The board agreed to meet with McAuliffe again. It also agreed to meet with the sponsors to discuss the measures it has already taken. Hogan says he’s “hopeful.” “The part that stuns me,” said Dugal, “is the women on the board. Why they tolerate this is beyond me.”
The Star contacted four of the seven female board members. Two didn’t respond. Two refused to comment.
“We are moving forward,” said Chantel Burns. “There have been a lot of improvements. A lot of the new policies are listed on the website. This happened last January, correct? Why am I getting phone calls about it now? People won’t leave it alone.”
Said Dugal, “I took a stand. I have a wife, a daughter and two granddaughters. I wanted to be able to look them in the face in the morning.”