Three hockey truths.

One, our kids are never going to play in the NHL.

Two, it’s just a game.

Three, our kids are never ever going to play in the NHL.

I’ve got four kids, three boys and a girl. All of them played hockey. I spent a lot of time in cold hockey rinks over the years. Those three points above were my motto.

I was one of those hockey Dads who wouldn’t say much. If the kids scored a goal, I’d clap. If the team needed a sponsor, I’d be it.  If someone needed a ride, on either team, I’d give it.

Every once in a while, I’d be standing beside a Dad, or a Mom, who was not setting a good example. You know: the parents who would scream at the kids, or the officials, or the coaches. The ones who thought their little angel was going to play in the NHL. The jerks.

So, I’d sidle up beside the loud parents – I stand 6’5” in my Doc Martens, and I usually was wearing a biker jacket and a punk rock T-shirt with an offensive band name on it – and I’d quietly remind them of the three points above. They’d look a bit uneasy. Then I’d move on.

The people who ran Hockey Canada – now blessedly gone – remind me of those parents. Hanging out in rinks, bossing people around, clueless about the harm they were causing: that was the leadership at Hockey Canada.

The loud parents and the ex-execs at Hockey Canada share one other character flaw, too: they were apparently always willing to excuse, and cover up, any and all sorts of misconduct. Because, they thought, they were sending the kids to the big show.

Except they weren’t. Instead, they were teaching the kids – young males, almost entirely – that any type of wrongdoing, even criminal, was fine. As long as they were devoted to the game.

As noted, however: it’s just a dumb game. Hell, it’s not even Canada’s game anymore.  No Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since 1993. So much for the national pride exemption.

It’s a game, Mom and Dad. It’s a game, Hockey Canada white-washers. It’s a game mainly for kids. Chasing a lump of vulcanized rubber across frozen ponds with some wooden sticks.

The bad parents, and the bad Hockey Canada execs, lost sight of that. They believe and believed they are/were on some higher mission. That they were in pursuit of some higher divine purpose, all truth and decency be damned.

But, but. When the boy-men start to get charged criminally with sexual assault and assault and gang rape, will the bad parents and the bad Hockey Canada people wake up from their infantile fantasy on skates? Probably not.

If you are willing to overlook rape, and gang rape, you’ll probably forgive anything. But at that point, you’re not just a hockey Mom or Dad or more. You’re not just an executive who has selflessly devoted yourself to the national game.

You’re beneath contempt, and you don’t belong near any hockey rink, hurting some kids who are just trying to have fun – chasing a but of vulcanized rubber and a dream of new friends and laughter.

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When a bad person supports you, what should you do?

Well, if you’re a normal human, you say you don’t want or need the support of the bad person, and you denounce and renounce them.

If you’re a politician, apparently, it’s more complicated. Apparently.

When Barack Obama’s pastor was caught saying that America was a terrorist state, and that the Sept. 11 attacks were self-inflicted, Obama dithered. The future president took weeks to renounce and denounce the pastor. When it became apparent the controversy wasn’t going away, Obama finally quit the pastor’s Chicago church, calling his words an “outrage.” He went on to become president.

A few years later, the one-time Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, endorsed Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions. At first, Trump told media he’d repudiate Duke “if it made you feel better” – and that he “knows nothing about white supremacists.” As with Obama, when the controversy grew too big to ignore, Trump repeatedly and angrily disavowed Duke. He went on to become president, too.

Up here in Canada, there are similar examples. In 2004, former Conservative MP Randy White complained that the Charter of Rights was being “used as a crutch” by certain people – assumedly, non-whites, women and gays – and that a Conservative government would put up “checks and balances” to stop that. “To heck with the courts,” White said.

White’s comments happened just days before that year’s election, and Harper did not denounce them quickly or clearly enough. The Paul Martin Liberals would win, and Harper would not go on to be Prime Minister until much later – and after White was no longer a Conservative candidate.

In 2018, Justin Trudeau had his National Lampoon-like trip to India, which was a total fiasco. Among other things, Trudeau brought along a man who had been previously convicted of attempting to assassinate an Indian cabinet minister. When the Indian media started shouting questions at him about it at cartoonish photo-ops, Trudeau eventually realized the extent of the damage, and said “this person should never have been invited in the first place.”

But the damage was done. Trudeau would go on to lose his Parliamentary majority, and the disastrous India trip would be widely cited as one of the reasons.

Which brings us, in a circuitous route, to Pierre Poilievre.

Like many other politicians (see above), the newly-minted Conservative leader has been endorsed by – or gotten too close to – bad people. Unlike those politicians, however, Poilievre has been slow to renounce and denounce. In some cases, he’s adamantly refused.

So, there was James Topp, a Canadian Armed Forces member who – in uniform – urged his fellow soldiers to disobey orders, and never get vaccinated against COVID-19. Topp would go on to lend support to Diagolon, a white supremacist group whose members are among those arrested in February for allegedly conspiring to murder police at the Coutts, Alta. border crossing.

Not only did Poilievre not renounce and denounce Topp, he marched with him in Ottawa at the end of June, in full view of media cameras.

Shortly after that, a smiling Poilievre was photographed with a happy-looking Jeremy MacKenzie, the leader of the aforementioned white supremacist group, Diagolon. MacKenzie, who is a racist and thug, would later be arrested on a Canada-wide warrant for weapons and assault charges.

Poilievre didn’t denounce MacKenzie for the Diagolon stuff – he actually claimed he didn’t know what Diagolon was, even though the media had been asking him about it for months. Instead, he (appropriately) denounced MacKenzie for making a disgusting, despicable comment about his wife.

Then, this week, Poilievre was embraced by Alex Jones of InfoWars. On his Sept. 30 broadcast, Jones said: “We got the new Canadian leader who’s set to beat Trudeau – who is totally anti-New World Order. You look all over the world, we are rising right now.”

Jones is a bit better known. He has done so many evil, hateful things, we literally don’t have room to catalogue them all. Recently, however, he has been in the news for saying that the mass murder of children in Sandy Hook, Conn. in 2012 was “staged,” and urging his deranged followers to attack the parents of the dead children. A jury in Texas said Jones needed to pay $45 million in damages for that.

And now, Jones is singing the praises of Poilievre.

I don’t believe, not for a moment, that Poilievre supports Jones in any way. I believe he will denounce and renounce these bad people. Eventually.

The question for Pierre Poilievre isn’t what he believes, or what he thinks about these bad people, or about renouncing or denouncing the bad people.

The question is this: Why do the bad people keep coming back?

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