Daryl Devonish

A stranger messaged me for encouraging words as his father had passed away the night before. Here’s what I sent: Be the man he’d want you to be. Instead of focusing on your sadness, focus on helping everyone else through theirs. Use the proximity of his death to get you to take the actions you were too afraid to take before. Because the window of time where his death affects you will be finite. But the changes you make can be everlasting. If you live his values, he lives on through you. And ask yourself a scary question: how can this make me better? Then answer it. Realize that the length of time you mourn has nothing to do with how much you loved him. You don’t have to be sad to prove to yourself that you loved him.

Racism still exists in hockey. Former St. Mike Major Daryl Devonish knows this all too well. His negative experience during his own hockey career has driven him to make hockey a safer place for BIPOC youth. A space where Black kids can ask the question “Why Not Me?”

Until my kids reach grade 7, their phys-Ed classes are run by their core teacher. Who has no phys-Ed background. It’s a 20 min class. WTF?

Wayne Simmonds speaks candidly on the racist incident in the Ukrainian league: "I can see why people of colour don't want to play hockey... I have faced a lot of these things myself. I don't know if I would want my kids to be playing hockey, to be quite honest."