The Current - Storied Indigenous hockey coach receives Order of Canada.

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Ted Nolan started his hockey career by servicing his childhood ice rink in Garden River First Nation.  Decades later, he’s being honoured by an appointment to the Order of Canada for his time as a hockey player and a coach.  He explains how a life devoted to hockey and teaching others has shaped him into the person he is today.

There are two kinds of Canadians. Those who feel something when they hear this music. And those who've been missing out so far. I'm Chris Howden. And I'm Nile Coxall. We are the co-hosts of As It Happens. And every day we speak with people at the center of the day's most hard hitting, heartbreaking, and sometimes hilarious news stories.

Also, we have puns. Here Why As It Happens is one of Canada's longest running and most beloved shows. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current Podcast. On the program this month, we've been highlighting some of the extraordinary people

who have just been named to the Order of Canada. And today my guest is Ted Nolan. He's a community leader, retired professional hockey player, and award-winning hockey coach. With his sons Brandon and Jordan, he founded the three Nolans First Nation Hockey School, as well as the Ted Nolan Foundation, which provides scholarships to First Nations women. Ted Nolan, good morning. Good morning, Megan. How are you? I'm well, thanks. First off, congratulations.

What does it mean to you to be named to the Order of Canada? Oh, man, I really don't know how to quite put it into words, except for I'm honoured, deeply honoured and full of pride, I guess, to be recognised by your country as something special. A lot of young people dream of making it to the NHL, but you actually did make it. What do you think explains your success? You know, I never dreamed about playing in the National Hockey League. I dreamed about playing hockey. I just loved the game and I worked extremely hard at it. Growing

up in a reserve, there wasn't too many other things to do except for maybe pow-wow dancing and baseball and hockey. And I just took a real liking to hockey and I just got better and better at it and finally got noticed and somebody selected me in the national hockey draft. Wow. I mean, do you have any particular memory from your childhood playing hockey? You know, the first time I played hockey, I tell this to particularly my grandkids because they think you have to play at the elite level and you have to have the best equipment to succeed and I really don't believe you do.

First memory I have is joining the Sault Ste. Marie Recreation Hockey League. When I was a little boy, my parents finally got enough money to put me in a Recreation League and that's pretty well where I played until I got noticed. You must have enjoyed it a lot. I mean, you mentioned the hard work and everything, but I imagine there was a lot of pleasure in playing hockey for you. Yeah, I made a rink in my backyard. And I tell this to kids all the time, you know, we didn't have indoor plumbing at the time.

So I made a rink with a pail of water. And it's almost like a metaphor of life. You just do it one pail of water at a time and all of a sudden before you knew it, I had a rink and that's where I spent the majority of my time. Amazing. Oh, yeah. Now I think of it. I was about probably what, eight years old. In time, I filled up

the pail of water and walked around the back of my house. I probably maybe had a half pail of water left and I just did it over and over and over again. And I had no friends building it, but I tell you what, I had a lot of friends when it was done. I bet. What a sweet memory. So what was it like for you to be one of the very few Indigenous people who were in pro hockey back then? It was really hard. I left home when I was 16 years old to go and play with the Manitoba Junior Hockey League with the Kenora Thistles. And that was really the first time in my life that I really faced any kind of real serious racism and name calling and bullying and what have you. And to tell you the truth, I don't remember the whole year except maybe

the first week or so that I had lots of fights on ice for no apparent reason except the way I looked. I played the opposition and I went to school and had some fights there. So it was just one of those years where I went because of the love of the game, but I stayed and tried to survive in the game. How did you cope? You say you don't remember a lot of it, but do you remember apart from fighting back, how you kept going? I think because of my upbringing and hearing the stories about the residential schools and seeing my uncles go through what they went through, and you know, with their alcoholism, and I've always

wondered what happened to them, and what made them this way. So, once my mom filled me in, I just told myself right then and there, that's not going to happen to me. So, when I went to Canora, as much as I wanted to go home, it gave me more of a determination to say, no, you're not going to chase me home. I'm going to stay. I'm sorry you had to go through that. Now, you had to stop playing in the NHL after a serious back injury. What inspired you to then become a coach? See, it's almost the same thing as what inspired me to be a player. When I retired, I didn't know what I was going to do. I went back home and probably the best thing I ever did was

I went back to school. I enrolled back in university. I went to Lake Superior State University and during the time there, the head coach of the team, Frank Ancelone, asked me to come out and mentor the kids that he found that I played professional hockey. Then all of a sudden, Phyllis Bezito, who owned the Sousa Henry Greyhounds where I played, he said, what are you doing over there? You should be helping us. So anyways, long story short, I accepted an assistant coaching job with the Greyhounds while I was going to school. About three weeks

later, they fired the head coach and they asked me to take over and my immediate response at the time was, absolutely not. I don't know how to coach and anyways, he convinced me to do it and I was right. I was just an awful coach. I didn't know what I was doing and more of the fans started booing our team. Our team wasn't very good but I was just an awful coach. So anyway, I just took it from there. Same thing as I did as a player. I just learned how to be a better coach.

You got better and you eventually got a reputation as a player's coach. So what does that mean to you, being a player's coach? Well, I think being a more understanding of the player and what they're going through. When I went to, when I played junior hockey and I played in Canora, I didn't go to school. I quit school in grade 10 for the year. I went back to school the following year in Sault Ste. Marie, but I quit. And the coach never asked me if I'm not in school, never asked me where I was in school.

I got myself into some issues where I got involved with drinking a little bit and doing some marijuana at the time and nobody seemed to care. Nobody asked me what I was doing and what I was fighting, I was crying and nobody asked me why. And when I went to Sault Ste. Marie, similar things happened, not as bad. And so when I became a coach, the one thing I really wanted to do was,

was try to ask the players how they're doing, how are you feeling? You know, guys, I really believe that players don't have bad games for no reason. There's something happened in their lives. I just really wanted to find out and be more helpful in making them more comfortable. So if they're more comfortable off the ice, they'll be way more comfortable on the ice.

Right, and you're of course a father too. You have two sons who followed in your footsteps and also made it to the NHL. After the experiences you had with injury and racism, how did you feel about them pursuing hockey? I mean, did you have any worries? You know, I love the game of hockey. Sometimes the people who are running it are not the best people in certain situations. By learning that, I just really was very protective when I put my boys into hockey.

When I was growing up, we didn't have a car to get to the rink, so my father and my parents never really got to see me play all that much. My mother never seen me play hockey, period. She didn't like the game, and my father passed away when I was only 15, 16 years old. So if he would have found out what I was going through, I'm quite sure I wouldn't be talking to you today, because I'm quite sure he would have pulled me out. And so I just learned from my own experiences that I had to be there more for my kids and watch them during practice and watch during the game, see the interaction between themselves and the coach.

And if I felt they were getting yelled at or abused, I certainly would have pulled them out too. On both occasions, and I think the kids are going through their draft here, both of them didn't like what was going on in practice and games and the coach was yelling a little bit too much. And so we pulled them out. We pulled them out of AAA hockey and we put them into house league hockey. My goal and my goal as myself, I never played the game to play in the National Hockey League. I just played because I really wanted to make some friends and play the game.

And I put my kids into the game, same reason, I just really wanted them to play. So it wasn't trying to play at the elite level all the time, it was just making sure they enjoyed the game so they weren't enjoying it. So we pulled them out and the following year they went back and the rest is history. Well, good model for other parents, I'd say. Now you're continuing in retirement to teach hockey and inspire young people. Can you tell me about the work that you're doing with the Three Nolans? Well, you know, in a lot of our communities that we, that our kids are growing up, there's not a whole lot of programming going on. It's not like living in Toronto or Bramford or

a city. So what we want to do is we want to bring a high quality hockey school to them versus them leaving the community and coming into Winnipeg or Toronto or Sault Ste. Marie or whatever. So we bring a school to them. But the main emphasis with our school is hockey is a trick to get them there. Once we get them there, then we talk to them about the most important things about life is about the importance of education, the importance of substance abuses, about nutrition, about leaving home and how tough it is sometimes

when you do leave home, you're going to run into obstacles. So we talk to the kids about how we persevere through them, so at least have a little bit of a, kind of like a homework before they, or if they leave for hockey. Yeah, does it work? I mean getting them into play hockey and then talking about all these other important things? Do you find it's effective? Oh, it's very, very effective. We hear stories all the time. There's two young girls playing NCAA hockey now that when we went to the community, they both decided to quit hockey because they weren't having any fun at it. But we kind of introduced it. We

went back year after year and all of a sudden we get a letter from the father and say thank you very much for getting my girls back interested in hockey. Now they're both playing in, I believe outside of Rochester, New York at the university there. And this year they'll be graduating. Oh, wow. Amazing story. I just wanted to ask you, since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it feels like Canada has been going through a reckoning with some of the uglier chapters in our history. Where do you think we are on that path? We're getting there. I mean, we still got a long ways to go, and there's still a lot of, I think more understanding

is necessary, because even with myself, to even talk about certain things, it's still raw, and it's still deep, and I'm 67 years old. And so, it's kind of, you know, one of the easiest things people always say, when you got to get over it, and got to move on. It's easier said than done. There's a lot of healing that needs to be completed yet, and it's going to take a little while. But through, like the main word I like to use is through perseverance and education, we'll get to where we have to get to. Ted, it's been a real pleasure talking with you today.

Thank you, Megan. Ted Nolan is a retired professional hockey player, award winning coach and community leader. He's also the author of the memoir, Life in Two Worlds, A Coach's Journey from the Reserve to the NHL and Back. He's just been named to the Order of Canada. This has been The Current Podcast. You can hear our show Monday to Friday on CBC Radio One at 8.30 AM at all time zones. Canada.