The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben speaks with Scott Oake about the Pain of losing your Child

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Guests and Topics: Guest: Scott Oake, Long-time Sports Broadcaster, you can hear him on Hockey Night In Canada and author of For the Love of a Son: A Memoir of Addiction, Loss, and Hope If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Gambling problem? For free assistance, call the Connex Ontario Health Line at 1-866-531-2600. BenMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show and a couple of weeks ago, I was on the walrus website, the walrus.ca and I read an excerpt from a book that hit me it was like a gut punch. And so we reached out to the publishers to see if we could get the author of the book to come on. And to almost every Canadian, Scott Oak is a legendary broadcaster, sportscaster for CBC Sports, Sportsnet, Hockey Night in Canada. He has covered the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games, the CFL.

He also happens to have the Order of Manitoba and the Order of Canada. But today, Scott is here in his capacity that we can all relate to as a father. And he wrote a book about losing his son to addiction. The book is called For the Love of a Son. And I thank Scott for taking time out of his day to join us here on the show.

Scott, welcome. Ben, thanks very much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to be with you. The book is called For the Love of a Son, a Memoir of Addiction, Loss, and Hope. And if there's one thing I know about addiction, it's that the person can get lost in the addiction. And so I think it's important that we start this conversation

by talking about the person, not the addiction. So tell us about your son, Bruce. Well, first of all, Bruce was about more than his addiction, that's for sure. He was a precocious child, a beautiful boy that had a lot going for him. He had a wicked sense of humor. He could light up a room when he walked into it. He got the best of Ann and I. That's how we remember him. Now I remember him now that Ann has passed.

But addiction knows no socioeconomic boundaries. It can come for anyone at any time. And it did for Bruce. At the age of eight or nine, he was diagnosed with ADHD, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It made him right for taking chances and there weren't many he didn't take. Consequences be damned. And that had, I would have to think, a lot to do with his descent into substance abuse and addiction. And there's, my dad used to say all the time that there is nothing less natural than a parent outliving their child.

And, you know, my son had an accident and he snapped his femur a couple of days ago. He was in tremendous pain. A father seeing his child in pain, knowing he can't do anything to take that pain away, hurts a lot. So you had the long, slow descent into addiction where you tried, but you couldn't help. How did that feel? And at some point, was there a moment, Scott, that you said, you know, this is

going to end with us losing Bruce? Well, I remember the day, and this is in the book, I tell the story of this in the book, when he had, I think, been asked to leave the treatment center he was in because he failed a drug test. And Anne had been at work and she was a palliative care nurse in the community. She came home and I broke the news to her because I had got the call and I remember saying to her at the time, this is not going to end until he's dead. And she said, oh God, don't say that. But that's how it turned out.

We always, I guess, were aware of the possibility that it could end in his death. You know, every time an addict uses, depending on what you're using, right up to fentanyl, Bruce was never involved in that because that didn't hit the scene until he was gone. But every time an addict uses, especially if it's something like fentanyl, you're rolling the dice. And we were aware of that possibility and sadly, we did eventually get the call that no parent should ever get. So you prepare yourself, you say it's going to end that way. But even though you've said the words, when you get that call that, that Bruce is no longer with you, it still has to, like, you can't prepare yourself for that. No, of course not. And I wouldn't say that we were prepared for it to end that way or that it would end that way because, you know, recovery is always possible.

As long as you're breathing, there is hope. And we had hope for Bruce right up until the end. your breathing, there is hope. And we had hope for Bruce right up until the end. But we got the call that he had passed away and it was horrid. But we just did the best we could. We gathered ourselves and went to Calgary to get him and on the plane we wrote his obituary and Ann and I and Darcy were resolute in our belief that there was no shame in what had claimed Bruce's life, that there was in our belief that there was no shame in what had claimed Bruce's life, that there was, you know, no shame in addiction, that it is a disease, we should see it as such, and so we decided not to hide behind it. And the first line of Bruce's obituary reads, sadly, Bruce Oak lost his battle with addiction at the tender age of 25.

And that one line was the genesis, I guess, of the grandiose project that became the Bruce Oak Recovery Center and will become the An Oak Family Recovery Center in short order. Oh, that's wonderful. And that was going to be my next question, because you said recovery is always possible. How does a family recover from the loss of a child? Well, I'm not here to give advice. I can tell you that. No, how did you, how did you, how did your family recover? Well, how we recovered was when you lose a child, I guess you have choices and

one might be to resign yourself to your grief and carry on as best you can. Our choice though was to give voice to our grief in the hope that we could bring the concept, the wonderful concept that Bruce benefited by at a place called Simon House in Calgary, that's where he had the best year of his addicted life because it was long-term treatment at no cost. And so our goal became to bring that concept to Manitoba. And that's what kept us going. We just worked hard at it and eventually the Bruce Oak Recovery Centre became a reality.

It's a sparkling, beautiful 43,000 square foot state of the art facility in the West end of Winnipeg where at any given time there are 50 men there reclaiming their lives and getting ready to go back to their families, their loved ones, their jobs and society in general. Well then you've certainly added something beautiful and vital that this country needs. We need far more of it. You know, you've been on the front lines of addiction with your son, but the entire country is wrestling with how we solve this epidemic. And I know you said you don't have any advice, but you do have experience. So what do you say in the face of this battle

that we as a nation are facing? I would say this, that addiction or substance abuse is the single greatest peacetime problem our city, our province, our country has ever faced. We are losing in this country over 20 people a day to substance abuse, overdoses, et cetera. And so we need to do better. We don't need in Winnipeg, we don't need one Bruce Oak Recovery Center. We need probably eight or nine, but we started with one and it's spawning a second one, which is the Anogue Family Recovery Center. And we need far more

recovery beds than we have in this country right now. When Bruce was battling addiction, it was a serious problem. Since then, I would say it's mushroomed into a crisis that needs to be addressed. And you know, the last line here says, a memoir of addiction, loss, and hope. Is that hope embodied in this treatment facility? Absolutely, Ben. At the Bruce Oak Recarby Center, there's 50 beds, as I say. We have, in the gymnasium of Bruce Oak hanging there 121 Jets sweaters. Those sweaters represent one year of sobriety and it's a hard measurement. It's not completing a 21-day or a 45-day program.

Our measurement on success is sober one year after entering the program. So there's 121 jet sweaters. There are many of those men have more than one year. Yeah. Their names are on the backs of the sweaters. I can tell you that there is one place in the city of Winnipeg, the province of Manitoba where jet sweaters probably mean more than they do to the men who wear them in games.

And that's at the Bruce Oakley Garvey Center. It's running at a success rate of 57%. That's along with our partners in Calgary, Fresh Start, another recovery center that's been in operation for about 30 years. They are probably the two most successful recovery centers, not for profit recovery centers in the country, if not all of North America.

Well, 57%, I mean, I remember hearing something like, people who do cold turkey is probably around 10% at best. So for you to have gotten to 57% is incredible and congratulations. Scott, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for sharing this story. The book is beautiful for The Love of a Son by Scott Oak. I really appreciate it.

Great talking to you. Thank you, man. I appreciate the opportunity. Be well.