Tough upbringing helped Cujo find his path to the NHL
Curtis Joseph signing new book Thursday that shares the story of his difficult childhood
Very few people know how difficult Curtis Joseph’s upbringing was they only know him as a great goalie.
Cujo, as he’s known by hockey fans, has revealed his story in Cujo: The Untold Story of My Life On and Off the Ice, written with Kirstie McLellan Day. Joseph will be at Chapters on Lansdowne Street for a book signing Thursday at 7 p.m.
The opening paragraphs of the book paint a vivid picture of Joseph’s neglected childhood.
“By the time I was eight years old I lived on a steady diet of stale cookies, processed cheese slice sandwiches and frozen institutional hamburgers. God knows what they were made of. Every night I’d throw one on a dirty old barbecue we kept outside the kitchen door.
“My bed was a mattress on the floor. It was tough to find a dry corner because Mom’s cats peed and (defecated) all over it. I didn’t have sheets or anything, just an old blanket. In the winter I’d sleep in an old coat that one of the men in the house had thrown out. Mom treated her animals better than she treated us kids.”
There is so much about Joseph’s story that makes his NHL career so unlikely.
He was given up for adoption by his 17-year-old birth mother and taken in by a couple in their 50s. His adoptive mother, Jeanne Eakins, struggled with addiction issues. Joseph never put on skates until he was 10. He never played above single A hockey. His adoptive parents moved to Nova Scotia when he was 17 and he stayed behind because he didn’t want to leave his hockey and school friends. He was never drafted to the OHL or NHL.
His introduction to hockey came through his older adopted sister, who let him fill in for her son for a game. Since he couldn’t skate they put him in net and so began an unlikely journey.
“I always say the position picked me because I wanted to be a forward. I never played net in road hockey once,” he said.
His hockey community became his salvation.
“Families that take you in and feed you and show you love. You crave every morsel of that,” he told The Examiner.
It’s a story Joseph said he never talked about until after his career was over.
“When you’re younger you don’t really know any better and you kind of want to leave it in the rearview mirror,” he said.
“I feel like I was a driven person to make something better of my life and I was a little bit embarrassed of that situation. I never had other kids over to the house. It was private and I never told anybody while I was playing. I was making a new road.”
After his playing days his wife Stephanie told him he should share his story. Joseph began to share it in talks he had with upand-coming hockey players.
“The feedback was tremendous and caught me a little off guard,” he said.
“Someone would come up to me and say, I was adopted, too or I was a goalie because of you.”
Stephanie convinced him a book about his story might be helpful to people. It took finding the right co-author. Stephanie met McLellan Day at a Wayne Gretzky Fantasy Camp and the connection was made.
“By sharing your story hopefully it encourages others,” Joseph said. “My youngest son Luke said, if you can help one kid who is going to quit or might feel bad about himself and keep him going, then you’ve done your job.”
Through the process of writing he connected with his birth mother, Wendy Munro, and she became a chapter in the book.
Joseph says he honestly wouldn’t change a thing about his upbringing.
“I told Wendy that when I met her. It made me who I was. All those life experiences really teach you a lot. You always wish you had the normal childhood where you went to Disneyland and all that good stuff but it makes you who you are. I feel I’m more appreciative today of a lot of things because that’s the way it was.”
Joseph said he never felt a need to tell his story to NHL teammates.
“I don’t have the victim mentality,” he said. “I guess that’s why it took me so long, also. I always say to my kids you can be the victim or you can be victorious. You decide.”