And he was very much encouraged to do that. That's his first memory of playing hockey.įor him, it was an outlet, a way to escape the horrors.
And he eventually started slapping a cow patty around the ice. He talks about how he learnt through one of the fathers, one of the ministers at the school, who whittled down a stick for him. That was one of the really compelling things that I took away from his experience there in that it changed his life - for the negative and for the very positive at the same time. How good was the team that came out of that school? Residential school was where he learnt to play hockey. (Yvon Theriault/CBC)īut while he experiences this inhuman stuff. Writer Waubgeshig Rice says that the late Fred Sasakamoose remains a role model for Indigenous hockey players today. So it's heartbreaking to read in detail the horrors he experienced in the residential school system. And he explains in the book how he just couldn't understand why. But then he was ripped from his family, ripped from his community. It opens with his birth and his upbringing pretty much on the land in Saskatchewan amongst his people, learning the language and learning about ceremonies and the importance of community and so on.Īnd he was very much, essentially a Cree person from the beginning, and he was very proud of it. That's probably the most heartbreaking part of the book.
What does his autobiography tell you about that time in his life? He spoke about his residential school experience at a Truth and Reconciliation Commission community hearing. Kids, especially growing up now learning about the game of hockey, they can really look to his example as really a microcosm of the Canadian experience in many ways - both good and bad because of what he endured throughout his childhood, having gone to residential schoo, and then playing the game of hockey and experiencing racism on and off the ice. He really broke down barriers throughout the course of his life from his childhood all the way up through his professional career and beyond. I would definitely describe him as a trailblazer, and I think those of us who play the game of hockey - especially those of us who are Indigenous - very much follow in the strides of his skates. If you were speaking to a group of Canadian kids about Fred Sasakamoose, what would you say? How would you describe him?
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