FORGIVING JAMES
Fleury asked to meet him
After the repeated sexual assaults, the shame, the self-loathing, the booze, the hard drugs, the difficult public admission ... after all that, Theo Fleury says he’s finally forgiven Graham James.
It took a long, long time, Fleury said this week during a stop in Saskatoon to promote his new book Conversations with a Rattlesnake — the realization not hitting home until last year, in the wake of an awareness walk from Toronto to Ottawa.
Fleury wants to sit down and talk with James — ask some questions, seek some understanding. He tried to do just that for a recent documentary and says he was turned down.
“I think it would be kind of cool to give people that perspective,” says Fleury, a longtime NHL star who acknowledged publicly in 2009 that James, a renowned coach, assaulted him repeatedly during his youth-hockey days. “It would be an interesting conversation, and I think we’d learn something from it.”
Fleury is asked if that conversation would be confrontational.
“Not at all,” he responded. “May- be on his part. Not on mine. I’ve been on this healing journey for a long time, and I think forgiveness is a huge part.
“When you say that to people, they’re like, ‘How can you possibly forgive that person?’ Well, I have to, in order to move forward. Anger never served me any good purpose in my life. Why would I focus on that? It takes energy, it takes stuff away from you when you’re in conflict and in confrontation.”
Fleury detailed the horrific abuse, and his subsequent trek “to the bottom of the gutter,” as he puts it now, in his 2009 book Playing With Fire. He still can’t pinpoint why he reached that sharp and definitive point of forgiveness last year, though he has some theories, all of them stemming from his “Victor Walk” to Ottawa that started with a mindset focused on justice.
“I don’t know what happened. Something changed inside of me,” Fleury says. “Maybe it was because of all those people I met along the way; they needed healing, more than justice. And I think (it included) my process, too. I’ve had to take a look at my whole entire life and figure out, ‘Where do I pick the battles?’ When people ask me, ‘Should I file a complaint, or should I go through this whole process,’ I say you should heal yourself first. Because once you’re healed, you don’t give a (crap) about justice. Then you can get to that forgive- ness part you need.
“Graham James doesn’t have control over me anymore. I don’t think about him. It’s a waste of time. But if I focus all my energy and attention on helping people heal, or coming up with a process of healing for people, my energy’s better spent doing that.
“We only have five or six men in Canada who openly talk about this subject. We’ve got a long, long, long way to go,” Fleury adds.
His newest book is set up as a 2 1/2-year dialogue between Fleury and therapist Kim Barthel as they explore the process of healing from trauma and abuse. That partnership, Fleury says, both changed his life and taught him about life.
“I’ve learned … that trauma is the biggest epidemic on the planet,” Fleury says. He hopes the new book adds a fresh layer to the growing chatter.
“Playing the victim, at the end of the day, doesn’t do us any good,” Fleury says. “What we need to do is we need to heal. And how do we do that? Having conversations. There’s no magic pill out there.
“If you drink 10,000 Caesars, that’s not going to do anything for you. If you snort 50 kilos of cocaine, that’s not going to do it for you. It’s a matter of finding a safe place, with somebody who’s vulnerable, that you can trust, and start to have a conversation.”