FROM THE WORLD CUP TO LIFE ON THE STREET
Former soccer star on hunger strike to draw attention to his plight,
Millions of Canadians logged onto their computers or smartphones Wednesday to raise awareness and money for mental health initiatives.
Paul James did something different. He stopped eating.
The former Olympian, once a star soccer player and coach — now homeless, jobless and destitute in Toronto — began a hunger strike to draw attention not only to his plight, but the plight of all Canadians who suffer the stigma attached to addiction.
Then he took to YouTube, recording a message for the one person he wanted to talk to: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“I’m 53 years of age. I haven’t worked for eight years, in spite of applying for over 100 jobs,” James said in the video, recorded at 4 a.m. “I’m penniless, homeless, with no social status. Substance-use disorders — are they legitimate, bona fide mental health conditions? They are.
“We need that as a declaration so we can start treating people like myself with the dignity and the respect and quality and the fairness we deserve.”
An addiction to crack cocaine sparked James’ downfall.
Actually, he says he functioned well as an addict — until he informed his colleagues and superiors at York University, where he’d turned around the soccer programs. That was in 2008. A year later, he was out of a job and on the road to ruin, the fight against his addiction and legal battles, including a human rights complaint against York University, draining his bank accounts and retirement savings.
Today, a man who competed for Canada in the 1984 Olympics and the 1986 World Cup and who coached at the professional and international levels can’t get a job as a dishwasher in a downtown Toronto restaurant.
“It has a huge negative impact on the person that gets exposed,” James said.
“And I’m living proof of what happens when people find out and what discrimination is. What I’ve experienced, no other Canadian should experience. I am absolutely unemployable. I have lost my career, my lifetime passion.
“We need to normalize this. I don’t mean to threaten anybody by using those words … let’s talk about it honestly.”
James’ video message hit former teammates like a penalty kick in the groin.
“It’s a very sad story,” former Team Canada goalkeeper Paul Dolan said from his home in Vancouver. “He’s always been so articulate, very smart, very bright, very professional. One of the hardest-working players, always won the 12-minute runs and the fitness testing — a very, very committed athlete.
“It really opens your eyes to what can happen through addiction … it can happen to anyone.”
Dolan read about James’ addiction in a tell-all book his former teammate published online in 2012. But he had no idea James was now homeless.
“The video opened up my eyes to a lot of the things he’s been battling over the last little while,” Dolan said. “He brought up some very good points. Whether I agree he should go on a hunger strike or not — you never want to see that. But it did make me realize there is a lot more to it than just dismissing people who’ve maybe made a bad decision in their life and it’s taken them in the wrong direction.”
A former TV and print media soccer analyst, James’ only public platform these days is a website called Confronting the Stigma of Drug Addiction. On it, he says he’s now ashamed of being a Canadian citizen and of ever representing Canada as a player and coach.
Born in Wales, James became a Canadian citizen in 1983, two years before helping Canada win the CONCACAF Championship and qualify for the FIFA World Cup in Mexico. In all, he made 46 appearances for the national team.
He was Canada’s youth coach at the Under-20 World Cup in 2001 and worked with various national youth teams and programs between 2001 and 2008.
In his video, James takes aim at not only his former university employer, but also the Canadian soccer establishment that won’t let him coach anymore and a legal system he says nobody wracked with addiction could possibly navigate — or get justice through.
“How does somebody like myself access social justice when you can’t afford legal representation?” James asked. “That’s a systemic choice that the government, the legal system, has to solve.”
Instead of being treated as someone who is ill, James said he’s simply labelled a crackhead.
“I haven’t harmed anybody,” he said. “If you want to change good people … into bad people, tell them you have a substance addiction to crack cocaine.”
Even if James doesn’t get the prime minister’s attention, he got the attention of others.
“It got me talking this morning with my wife and my kids, even, about his side of the story,” Dolan said. “And understanding where someone like that is coming from, maybe that’s what he’s trying to do with this: open up the discussion so we consider all sides.”
Substance-use disorders — are they legitimate, bona fide mental health conditions? They are. We need that as a declaration.