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“So we went out. Surprisingly, there was no reaction from the crowd, and the media didn’t realize the significance, but that was the first time in university hockey history that there had been three black players on the same line.

“I wouldn’t say it was a wake-up call for me, because I had experienced racial slurs all my life. But the ironic thing is that in playing baseball, I never encountered that kind of stuff, probably because of the Negro leagues and some sort of awareness of blacks in baseball. So even though my brother and I were the only two blacks in the Dartmouth area playing baseball, that seemed to be fine. I’d also never encountered that sort of thing in minor hockey or high school. It was only when I hit university and players had different ambitions about playing pro hockey, the drive and ambition they brought to the game was different, and the racism was part of that competition. The sport itself didn’t induce racism, but the emotional environment did. The darker side would come out in these moments of intense competition, both with players and fans. And that wasn’t the only incident.

“Even after I left St. Mary’s, I had some encounters with racism. Playing adult recreational hockey here in Ottawa in the 1990s, a couple of guys who didn’t like that they couldn’t get around me would use the N-word. And about two years ago, I was playing in a summer hockey league, and in the course of a game, I scored a goal. And as we were skating back to the bench, one of my own teammates said to me, ‘Black man scores goal.’ So I held my glove up to him and said, ‘You know, Chris, years ago I would have kicked your ass for this.’ He apologized shortly after, and that was that.