THE 1970S, everyone in the Winnipeg hockey community knew Graham James. He was an innovative minor hockey coach focusing on talent and speed, not size and brute force. He produced winning age-group (under sixteen) hockey teams while serving as a successful scout for major junior hockey teams in the Western Hockey League, one rung below the NHL. And he was based in St. James, the western part of Winnipeg, where I grew up.
Graham seemed to live and breathe hockey.
You might find it odd that I refer to the man who abused me as “Graham.” Yet that is how I see him, how I think of him to this day. He is, was, and always will be “Graham.” I have tried to pretend otherwise, and I have been encouraged to try to distance myself from him by referring to him as “Mr. James,” “the accused,” or “the defendant.” But to me, he is and always will be “Graham,” and so “Graham” he is.
I had only seen Graham from afar, but I, like the rest of the hockey community, saw him as somebody of importance. He was a winning coach, a scout, an innovator, a hockey intellectual working among less-educated and less worldly coaches. His demeanor at the rinks was somewhat aloof, and he always seemed to be deep in thought, analyzing and processing everything going on around him. He had an aura about him, and he was somebody you wanted to impress. And then suddenly you would see him laughing with a group of coaches or players, and in an instant he went from unapproachable Hockey God to regular guy. Everybody either knew or knew of Graham, and it seemed as if everybody wanted to impress him.
Impress is an interesting word to use, because Graham himself was anything but impressive. He was short and pudgy, with a boyish round face and unkempt curly hair. He had a sad face and was poorly groomed, and his presentation could best be described as “disheveled.” Yet because he was someone of importance in the hockey community, none of this seemed to register. He was somebody to impress.
It was Graham’s job to know about every hockey player who might be of potential interest to a junior hockey team. It was Graham’s job to get to know young boys. He was coaching the St. James Midget (sixteen-year-olds) AAA Canadians, a team from my area composed of boys two years older than those on the Bantam team I was playing for. We were both involved in hockey at the highest level in Winnipeg, and Graham most definitely knew who I was.
I finally got to meet Graham in January 1979, when my St. James Bantam Canadians traveled to Minneapolis for the North American Midwest Regional AAA Silver Stick Championships. Although Graham was coaching the St. James Midget Canadians, something that itself would have involved a massive time commitment, he somehow found time that weekend to help a friend of his, Mike Tishler, the coach of our arch rivals, the St. Boniface–St. Vital Saints.
In January 1979, people saw only good in Graham. They looked fondly upon him for giving even more of his time to the game of hockey by helping coach another team at that Silver Stick tournament in Minnesota, a team he was not directly involved with. The tournament was an opportunity for him to scout the best players in our age group. And there may even be people who to this day believe that Graham’s motive was solely to help coach that team and give his time freely to the game he loved.
As a scout, Graham was interested in identifying the best upcoming players, and the tournament featured the region’s best teams from both Canada and the United States. Our rivals, the team he was helping out, featured several outstanding players who were already attracting significant attention in the hockey world. Looking back, it is almost ridiculous to think about the talent that was playing hockey in Winnipeg in our age group. The St. Boniface–St. Vital Saints featured Darren Boyko, who would eventually play in the NHL and later set records in the Finnish Elite League; Dale Derkatch, who would set records in junior hockey while starring for the Regina Pats; and Mark MacKay, who would end up playing professional hockey in Germany and eventually captaining the German national team. The Winnipeg South Monarchs had among their players Brett Hull, Bobby’s son and himself now also in the Hockey Hall of Fame; and Richard Kromm, a highly sought-after prospect who eventually played for the New York Islanders.
There were other extremely talented players in our league in our age group. We played a very high level of hockey, and there were opportunities for an adult to latch on to a boy’s success. There was money to be made and coaching and management opportunities to be had by showing an eye for developing successful hockey players.
Graham was neither a parent nor a relative of any of the players. Still, it would never have occurred to anyone that he might have an ulterior motive. It would have been beyond contemplation in 1979 that Graham was using his position to develop relationships with young men, to access potential prey. Nobody considered for a moment that he might be putting himself amidst young, athletic, and even, some would say, good-looking boys for his own satisfaction.
Everybody on our team knew that Graham was there. As hockey players, we desperately wanted to impress him. But at the same time, we saw his helping a team from a different district, our rivals no less, as an act of treason against both the St. James team he coached and our team representing that same district. We used this seeming treason as motivation throughout the tournament. Hockey is about many things, with loyalty and respect for the jersey very high on the list. How dare he disrespect our jersey, his own team’s jersey, and help another team against us? Oh, the silly things that motivate young boys.
And of course, things being what they are, our two Winnipeg teams had traveled all the way to Minneapolis only to end up facing each other in the Mid-Western Regional AAA Final, a game that could have been scheduled just a short drive from everybody’s house back home.
I don’t remember much about that game except that I did not play particularly well and we lost to the team Graham was helping. For some reason, I’d been very calm on the bus taking us from the hotel to the rink for the game and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t more energized for the final. So I mentally “worked myself up,” that being the mantra for successful athletes back then. But I had completely misunderstood what was going on. My perfectly calm state had actually been something I’d never experienced before—perfect preparation for a big moment. As the game wound down I realized that in working myself up, all I’d done was get in the way of my ability to play naturally to the best of my ability. I was so disappointed, so mad at myself.
Me being me, I blamed myself for the loss and was both angry and somewhat despondent as our team left the ice with our second-place trophies or medals or whatever they gave us—it was just a loss to me, and second-place awards meant nothing to me that night. And just then, as we were walking down the pathway from the ice surface to our dressing room, there, almost incredibly, was Graham standing just off to the side, alone, watching us but looking as if he didn’t want us to see him. I looked over and saw him and couldn’t help myself: “Hey! Graham! Nice job helping them. Traitor! You have to leave St. James to be a winner?”
Back then, I would have been the last, and I mean last, person to say anything rude to an adult. I immediately felt sick about what I had done and resolved to do whatever I could to try to take it back.
Except you can’t ever really take words back.
After getting out of my equipment and eventually leaving the dressing room, I searched for Graham to apologize to him. I was nervous and ashamed. I expected the worst. Instead, I was met by a very calm, very reassuring, almost nurturing man who said that he understood that things are said in the heat of the battle and that I shouldn’t worry at all about what I’d said. He said that if he’d been in the same position, he likely would have done the same thing. I was relieved.
“Hey, Greg, this is just one game,” he said. “Focus on what you’ve accomplished. Focus on your skills, on what you can do. That’s the real you. You know you’re better than today. Today, tonight, was an exception.”
“It’s Gil. The guys call me Gil.”
