Former NHLer Theo Fleury was a hit at the Eatonia Sportsman’s Dinner held last weekend.
Kenneth Brown
of The Crossroads
Former professional hockey player Theoren Fleury shared his story with an eager audience at a dinner and auction held last Saturday in Eatonia.
A celebrity sports dinner and auction was held on April 14 at the Eatonia Community Hall. The audience of more than 250 people enjoyed a catered roast beef supper, auctions, draws and more than two hours of quality time with Theo Fleury, who played 16 seasons in the NHL.
The Eatonia and District Recreation Board presented the event and Vanessa Price, the recreation director in Eatonia, was the mistress of ceremonies for the night. Price introduced Sam Somerville, the auctioneer for the night, and the first order of business was for people to bid on Fleury to eat supper at their table.
A table of guests from G-Mac’s AgTeam Inc. paid $1,750 to eat with the evening’s sports celebrity. Somerville, along with family and helpers from Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, worked the live auction after Fleury had left the building.
Price welcomed people to the event, a fundraiser for the recreation board, and before supper she told people there was a donation basket at the entrance for people to support the Humboldt Broncos bus crash victims. She noted that the tragedy united people from around the world.
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“Let’s take this time to truly enjoy this evening out with community family and friends,” said Price, who mentioned the names of all 16 people who died in the bus accident, recognizing that quality time with family and friends is what life is all about.
Price returned after supper to address the crowd and to introduce Fleury, who had copies of his two best-selling books on hand. She said the support organizers received from donors and sponsors was truly exceptional and she thanked everyone that helped with the fundraiser.
Fleury, who has received accolades for his work in mental health and with child and sexual abuse, and healing and recovery from trauma, spoke about a new documentary he was filming the day before at Stony Mountain Institution near Winnipeg.
The former NHL star, who was born in Oxbow, Sask., gave an impassioned speech about his life from his early years growing up in small town Saskatchewan and Manitoba. He said he grew up in a small town similar to Eatonia, so it was great to such a large crowd out to support the event.
Fleury said his community raised him and helped to give him the start he needed to make it to the NHL as an undersized player. He said his father was an amazing athlete who was drafted by the New York Rangers in 1963.
His father broke his leg in an accident on the baseball field a year before his father’s first NHL training camp and it derailed his hockey career. He said his father did rehab and he ended up playing a lot of senior hockey in different places across Canada. He spoke about how he started playing in hockey in Binscarth, Man., and if you had skates and a stick in the community, you were on the team.
He noted that it was a nice November day in Binscarth with a temperature of -35C and -90C with the windchill. He was walking home from school one day, and a dindergarten classmate told him about their first hockey practice of the season. The classmate asked him if he wanted to play, so he did.
Fleury said his father was an alcoholic and his mother was a prescription drug addict. He continued to speak about his early years in hockey and the struggle of growing up with parents that had addictions, and the sport and life theme was maintained throughout the speech. The speaker told the audience that with his problems at home, the hockey rink and baseball field were considered to be his happy places.
He turned out to be really good, and he mentioned a season in his minor hockey career when he scored 238 goals in 63 games. He was about to be a part of the inaugural WHL bantam draft and he caught the eye of a coach and scout for the Winnipeg Warriors, a team that moved to Moose Jaw. The coach and scout was Graham James.
Fleury spoke about his assent through junior hockey to the NHL, and he touched on as many, if not more, of the negative things that happened along the way as the good things. He spoke about being sexually abused, abusing alcohol and drugs when he was playing for the New York Rangers, being kicked out of the NHL in 2003 and sitting in his truck contemplating suicide among other ups and downs along the way.
He even spoke about playing the Allen Cup in 2005 and how, at the time, he was enjoying his time in senior hockey because his father had done it for so long. It was about the point he started to speak about how he started to realize he suffered from trauma and he needed to find a better way to cope.
Fleury changed gears when he started to talk about his struggles and addictions, but also how he co-wrote his books and found a way to forgive himself for negative things he had done. The speaker told the crowd how he found a way to forgive James as part of his healing process.
At a book signing for Playing with Fire in Toronto, he said a man who looked as if he could be homeless had a copy of the book, and he watched him through the line. When the stranger got to him, he looked at Fleury and the only words he spoke were, ‘me, too.’
“I always thought the purpose of my life was to be a hockey player,” he said, recognizing the encounter with the homeless man changed his life forever because it helped him to find his true calling. “The God of my own understanding has a wonderful sense of humour because this is the purpose of my life. This is the reason why I was put on this earth.”
Fleury was speaking about how he had a platform to help other people who are struggling with trauma. At one point, he told a dead silent crowd if he could hear a pin drop in a room of 250 people listening to him, then he has done his job.
The speaker continued with his message and told everyone the world would be a better place if people were more compassionate to each other. Fleury also answered several hockey-related questions after his speech including one about the brawl between Canada and Russia at the World Junior Championship in Czechoslovakia in 1987. He received three standing ovations from the crowd before while he was on stage.
Price said in an interview after the soldout event that it worked out well. Although a number has not been finalized, she estimated that the event will raise about $70,000 to support operations and maintenance at recreation facilities in the community.
“It went really well,” she said, recognizing that she believed Fleury would be a good speaker for the event and he really exceeded her expectations as a speaker. “We’ve had phenomenal feedback. Everybody really thought he was great. The general feedback is he is the best we’ve ever had at a sportsman’s dinner.”
She noted that the event was organized by the Sportsman Dinner & Auction Committee, a group that organizes events about every other year. The auctions worked out nicely for organizers and the food was awesome, Price added.
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