Bruce Dowbiggin
How Friends In High Places Protected A Felon
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The current controversy over Hockey Canada’s handling of sexual abuse allegations— exacerbated by HC’s Scott Smith handing out gold medals to Canada’s world champion women’s team— is not the first time the organization has been plunged into disrepute.
When it was revealed in the mid-1990s that Hockey Canada’s director of international hockey Alan Eagleson had serially defrauded, cheated, embezzled and betrayed the trust of his clients and members the revelation hit like a thunderbolt well beyond the hockey community. Pitiful pensions for Gordie Howe, self dealing at Hockey Canada, stealing players’ disability insurance were just a few of the disgraces for the original NHL Players Association director.
But an upcoming new book reveals that, despite the public outrage about his behaviour, Eagleson was protected and coddled by the highest echelons of Canadian business, politics, justice and media— right up to the Canadian prime minister’s office. In John Turner: An Intimate Biography of Canada’s 17th Prime Minister (Sutherland House) author Steve Paikin recounts how Turner would explode on anyone speaking ill of the convicted felon.
“He’s my f***ing friend,” Turner would say. “He made a mistake, and I won’t f***ing hear any more of this… I don’t want to f***ing hear of it.”
Made a mistake? Eagleson’s Bernie Madoff act covered a quarter century of hundreds of acts of self dealing and fraud— all buried by compliant media and reluctant police. We had a front-row seat for the charade from 1991, the year former star player Carl Brewer and his partner Sue Foster began pulling back the curtains on his former agent and union leader for us. (For more, see our two books Defence Never Rests and Money Players at brucedowbigginbooks.ca)
Together with the late Russ Conway of the Lawrence Eagle Tribune we uncovered a pattern of Eagleson putting himself— and the NHL— ahead of his solemn duty to the players he represented. Whether it was pocketing the disability insurance of former client/ Vancouver GM Mike Gillis or seizing Hockey Canada travel benefits from the players who sacrificed for Team Canada in 1972-91, Eagleson rarely let a deal go by without carving out something for himself.
His law office— complete with downtown Toronto parking— was paid for by the NHLPA. He orchestrated fraudulent bargaining sessions between the NHLPA and the league. He lent union money to business partners, receiving prime real estate in the Collingwood, Ontario, area. He received a flat in downtown London, England, from insurance executives. And much, much more.
He made a mistake, Mr. Turner?
The entire process was backstopped by intimidation. When he sued us unsuccessfully for libel, Eagleson was never shy about letting people know he was supported by Turner, Supreme Court justices John Sopinka and Bud Estey, business executives like Hal Jackman and a raft of political pals from his days as an Ontario Conservatives party hack. And that the NHL was his pal, not his adversary.
If you were a player who got too inquisitive, a nosey agent or a media member with questions about where the money was going you knew you could lose your job if you got too close to the truth. While reporters like TSN’s Rick Westhead are now justly celebrated, we were ostracized in the tight hockey community of the 90s for taking the word of Bobby Orr over Eagleson on how the great player had been cheated out of an 18.5 percent ownership stake in the Boston Bruins.
Even when the U.S. Department of Justice and Canada’s Justice ministry finally indicted Eagleson in 1994, he received comfort and counsel from Turner in his fight to avoid extradition to Boston (where the charges were announced). Paikin writes that Turner urged defiance, calling the DOJ “the worst bastards in the world… They’ve got unlimited time and resources. Stick that big chin of yours up front and defy them.”
Paikin quotes the present-day Eagleson, now 89, saying Turner “boosted my morale in the worst time of my life. His friendship means all the world to me.” Turner backed that up by supplying a character letter for Eagleson at his sentencing in Toronto in 1998.
How about those hockey heroes who played for the nation? Who brought excitement to generations of Canadians? Who suffered injuries and mental health issues without a proper union or agent representation? What did they get? It was all chump change to Turner. And, apparently, to a long list of political, media and business leaders at the time.
When Eagleson was released after serving a laughable four months in the Mimico, Ont., jail (his U.S. judge had told him he’d have received five years “not less a day”in his Boston court) Turner staged a “Freedom Lunch” for the just-released felon at the Senator Restaurant in downtown Toronto. According to Paikin, the dozen Al Pals who showed included the crême de la crême of Ontario: former premier Bill Davis, Roy McMurtry, Paul Godfrey, David Smith, Hal Jackman, Bud Estey and Darcy McKeough.
“Gentlemen,” Paikin quotes Turner as saying, “Whatever debt Alan Eagleson owed to society has been paid in full.” According to the book, the lunch was an annual pick-me-up for Eagleson till Turner’s passing in 2020. For this and other reasons, Eagleson— who has split time between Collingwood and England after his disgrace— is unrepentant about his behaviour. As the book reveals he’s still eager to exploit any media opportunity to resurrect his profile.
Thankfully, not everyone was dazzled by him: Eagleson was removed as a member of the Order of Canada and resigned from the Hockey Hall of Fame where he had been inducted in the builder category. The NHL has wisely kept him out of its business since. Few, if any, current politicians seek him out. TV has whited-out his name.
But for those who think there are rules for “us” and rules for “them”, the Eagleson saga is perfect example of privilege serving itself.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft YearsIn NHL History, , his new book with his son Evan, was voted the eighth best professional hockey book of by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted seventh best, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
The problem with liberal tolerance in Canada is that it’s not particularly liberal and it’s certainly not tolerant. For instance, the “everyone must wear an LGBTQ-2 jersey” controversy we highlighted last week. The reverberations from goalie James Reimer declining to wear a San Jose Sharks rainbow jersey have continued all week.
It seems to have escaped many people’s tolerance that refusing to march in a parade does not mean you hate the people in the parade. It is to say that you have a different opinion. One your employer can’t compel you to abandon. An opinion guaranteed to you by generations of free speech and religious freedom.
It is why we have halal and kosher foods. Live and let live. But the hysteria is not stopping with Reimer. The radical blood hounds have tracked down new targets to mount on their gibbet of 100 percent conformity to Woke causes.
The latest NHLers caught up in this fundamental failure to communicate are the Staal brothers in Florida who followed Reimer’s path to say that they haven’t and won’t wear symbols with which they disagree. Immediately the SJW sports media attacked them. When they said they wouldn’t Pride jerseys it was shown by the gotchas ‘ that they had worn subtle LGBTQ jerseys in the past. As if this makes them hypocrites.
My friend Mark Hebscher asked if the NHL should suspend them. Really? What would Mark say if Edmonton’s Zach Hyman, a Jew, declined to wear Muslim symbols on an Islamic Pride night? Would Mark demand Hyman be suspended?
What would he say if secular players in the league declined to wear the cross on their jersey for a Christian appreciation night? Should they be punished as haters? What if a pro sports team has a Mormon appreciation night. Does refusing to wear an LDS badge make people haters?
Of course these examples are moot. There are no progressive DEI laurels for creating political trip wires over Muslims or secularists to advance Woke influence. The only targets that matter here are conservative whites. Sports teams these days would only entertain the most provocative causes to create “a crisis that shouldn’t go to waste” (in the words of Saul Alinsky in his Rules for Radicals).
So Brian Burke was imported by Rogers Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday to further whip the herd into 100-percent compliance on Pride jerseys— and to push Rogers corporate bonafides as a Woke organization. Burke has become a fervent LGBTQ-2 spokesman since his son Brendan came out (and was tragically killed in a car crash). Good on him as a parent.
But he’s also a high-profile NHL figure, who was, in a major way, responsible for perpetuating the “boys-only” culture in the sport when he handled NHL discipline. He was his usual truculent self on HNIC as he conflated free speech with prejudice. He saw no room for tolerance on anything but the Pride agenda, insisting against all evidence that wearing the Pride jersey isn’t a political statement. “I was born and raised a Catholic, I don’t see any conflict between my religious beliefs and my ability to say to the LGBTQ+ community ‘you’re welcome here.”
That’s not what he’s saying, but play along. Host Ron Maclean— with whom we have had our disagreements in the past— did his job, gamely asking why wasn’t there a middle ground between hating and enforced 100 percent compliance to the cause? Burke shooed him away.
Naturally, radical social-media trolls pounced, asking for Maclean’s scalp for doing his job. There can be no exceptions! Reason is not a long suit for these Maoist shills. They want to be in Pol Pot’s Cambodia while their fellow citizens would prefer to remain in what used to be Canada before Justin Trudeau turned it into a postmodern state that stands for everything— and nothing.
The point that needs debate on HNIC is whether a few rich hockey players, who make so much money that they don’t have to give a flip, are going to make the league more inclusive by wearing a Pride jersey for one night. Likely not.
As we’ve contended over decades, the key to acceptance of gays in hockey will be the coming-out of a prominent NHL star(s). They are out there. It wasn’t high rhetoric from Brooklyn Dodgers GM Branch Rickey that changed the colour line in baseball. It was Jackie Robinson’s forbearance. It wasn’t slogans that slowly changed the skin colour of golf. It was Tiger Woods’ utter dominance.
It was also the hyper-macho world that Brian Burke nurtured through the years before his son came out — not colourful jerseys— that has repressed gay participation in the NHL. The weeding-out of gay youth in the development process comes from the grass roots. (To his credit a penitent Burke now owns some of this.)
While it is commendable that Burke now supports his son’s memory, flailing Christians for refusing to wear Pride jerseys is not the way to achieve understanding. Worshipping symbols is a divisive, not a unifying action that plays into the hands of forces Burke clearly does not acknowledge or understand. Radicals who use terms like white settler and cis-gender-entitlement to baffle the vulnerable. And who will discard him when he’s no longer of use to them.
Those would be the people who applaud the current PM and his caucus for having equal numbers of women in their ranks— the same PM who fired his prominent female/ indigenous justice minister for insubordination when the RCMP dug too deep. And the same “feminist” women MPs who stood by silently as Trudeau publicly destroyed one of their own to save himself from RCMP scrutiny. Those are the cowards who back the destruction of free speech.
Churchill was prescient about appeasing today’s virtue warriors when he long ago said that appeasers “are like people who feed the crocodile in hopes that the crocodile eats them last.” Chomp.Chomp. Their day is coming.
Sign up today for Not The Public Broadcaster newsletters. Hot takes/ cool slants on sports and current affairs. Have the latest columns delivered to your mail box. Tell your friends to join, too. Always provocative, always independent. https://share.hsforms.com/16edbhhC3TTKg6jAaRyP7rActsj5
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” They can be powerful words to live by. Live-and-let-live has underpinned much of the Judeo/Christian tradition. It also informs many of the world’s other religions. For secular people the sentiment works just as well.
If you want to be loved and respected then you must extend love and respect in equal measures to those of whom you’re not all that fond. It is both a brake on hubris and an inspiration to our “better angels”. While that balance has been observed more in the breach than in the commission at times, live-and-let-live nonetheless still provides a path to mutual co-existence.
There was a time when that balance guided society. Or, as they like to say, the Good Old Days. Now, the needle monitoring live-and-let-live swings like a Hillary Clinton polygraph. If you’re with safe-space generation, no micro aggression is too small, no affront to LGBTQ-2 too slight to put off national calamity, no enemy too small to squash.
Woke causes replace empathy in the daily conversation. Why? Journalist Michael Shellenberger says apocalyptic behaviour “provides psychological comfort to secular Western people who have gradually abandoned traditional religions. For over a century, sociologists and psychologists have documented rising rates of depression and anxiety… Is it a coincidence that the people who said Western civilization was unsustainable are making it so?”
Not everyone has succumbed. How can you tell? In the spirit of comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be as redneck if…” here is your guide to discovering if you have become a Woke punchline.
If you’ve forgiven Japan and Germany for the atrocities they inflicted on the world in the 1940s but you can’t get past Sir John A. Macdonald putting the railway through the land of the Sioux, Blackfoot and Lakota… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you are concerned about world over-population but you’re nagging your kids about when they will make you grandparents… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you’re so sensitive about killing animals for food that you go extreme vegan but then attend a Pro-Choice rally in a T-shirt bragging about how many abortions you’ve had…you might be a Woke punchline.
If you’re in favour of Trudeau’s aggressive immigration policy but then your kids say they can’t afford to buy a home in a large Canadian centre… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you try to convince friends at a dinner party that Trudeau’s Carbon Tax really does fight global warming but your monthly hydro bill triples… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you think Trudeau family friends are the best people to investigate him ignoring CSIS warnings about China but you think Pierre Polievre is a little too cozy with the international forces of Qanon… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you believe Doug Ford is trying to dismantle free healthcare but then act indignant with the boys at beer-league hockey that you can’t get your knee fixed for over two years… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you think Stephen Colbert is still funny, but think that Bill Maher is now sounding like a January 6 insurrectionist… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you think banning Muslim and Sikh symbols is racist but Quebec doing the same is their cultural right… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you think the B.C. government will cure drug addiction by giving addicts a cozy place to shoot up but you tell people at work that you can’t go downtown anymore for all the junkies blocking the Starbucks entrance… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you firmly believe the prime minister is trying to keep a lid on inflation but you protest that Galen Weston is gouging you on food prices… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you donate to Save The Children but then buy a $350 pair of running shoes made by children in Asian sweatshops… … you might be a Woke punchline.
If you think career criminal George Floyd is a martyr but Egerton Ryerson is a genocidal racist… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you think today’s academic standards aren’t what they once were but then you go to school to berate the teacher for not communicating the curriculum properly to your indulged child… you might be a Woke punchline.
If you get to the bottom of this column without recognizing yourself in any of these contradictions… you might be a Woke punchline.
Sign up today for Not The Public Broadcaster newsletters. Hot takes/ cool slants on sports and current affairs. Have the latest columns delivered to your mail box. Tell your friends to join, too. Always provocative, always independent. https://share.hsforms.com/16edbhhC3TTKg6jAaRyP7rActsj5
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
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