The Carnegie Initiative Summit reminds us work on racism, inclusivity not nearly done

The Bruins will retire Willie O’Ree’s jersey on Tuesday, a fitting nod to the groundbreaking life and career of the NHL’s first Black player. The ceremony represents just the seventh jersey to be retired by the Original Six franchise and comes on the 64^th anniversary of O’Ree’s first NHL game.

It’s a moment that the entire hockey world should stop to appreciate.

The hockey world should also stop to appreciate what will be happening in Boston leading up to that moment on Tuesday night as the Carnegie Initiative will hold its first-ever summit to discuss the thorny issues of racism and inclusivity in the game.

The summit will bring together stakeholders from a wide range of perspectives including academia, the media, the LGBQT+ community, visible minorities, business leaders and grassroots hockey representatives. NHL executives including commissioner Gary Bettman are expected to take part in the two-day event.

There is, of course, a temptation to be dismissive of more talk.

Fine.

There has been a lot of talk about change and promises to be better and not enough tangible action to suit lots of people. But to be dismissive of an event like this is to frankly be part of the problem.

To ignore the determination of those who will attend these panels and share their stories, no matter how hurtful they might be is to miss out on being an ally to the game.

And to ignore the work that will be done in Boston on Monday and Tuesday is to ignore the Carnegie Initiative the Carnegie story.

What is it they say about those who ignore history and being doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past?

The Carnegie Initiative is named for Herb Carnegie who was, by all accounts, a rare hockey talent in the 1940s and 1950s.

He counted among his supporters Hall of Famer Jean Beliveau, who played with Carnegie on the Quebec Aces of the Quebec Senior Hockey League in the early 1950s, before Beliveau become an iconic captain of the Montreal Canadiens.

Carnegie never played an NHL game and there are several versions of a story involving Toronto owner Conn Smythe, who lauded Carnegie’s skill, but made it clear he wasn’t interested in having a Black player on his team. One version of the Smythe story is that he remarked that he’d pay $10,000 to anyone who could turn Carnegie white.

The New York Rangers offered Carnegie an opportunity to attend their training camp in the late 1940s. But the contract they offered would have been half what he was making in Quebec. And there was no guarantee he would skate with the NHL club, so as a father of a young family, he turned them down.

He never got another invitation, even though he was Quebec league MVP that season.

“The times were so different. He couldn’t speak up in the same way we can speak up now,” said Carnegie’s daughter Bernice, who is the co-chair of the summit next week. “There was nobody to go to. There was nobody to tell that would understand. If he did say something, was he actually putting his job in jeopardy? And I really think that’s what happened when he said ‘no’ at the New York Rangers’ training camp. A Black man saying ‘no I’m not going to take your offer of cutting my pay in almost half.’ And I think after that they decided well Herb you’re out.”

Being denied a spot in the NHL because he was Black is, of course, part of Carnegie’s story. But it’s not his legacy. In fact in some ways it’s a sidebar to his real story.

After winning a championship in Owen Sound in the mid-1950s in the province’s senior league, Carnegie was asked to coach a team of youngsters at a tournament when their coach unexpectedly died. They didn’t have a name so Carnegie dubbed them the Future Aces.

He would later admit he might have been the worst coach in the world. He was focused on winning and played only the best kids. The others were heartbroken.

“And that’s how the hockey school came to him,” Bernice Carnegie said.

The Future Aces hockey school would run for a decade and even now Bernice Carnegie will get notes or calls from players who attended those camps.

The name Aces was embedded in the mission statement created by Carnegie for the camp via qualities like: Attitude, Cooperation, Example, Service, Sportsmanship.

“Everybody gets a chance,” Bernice Carnegie said. “Everybody’s treated the same. But we know that all these kids aren’t going to be NHLers, that’s not in the cards. So he goes ‘alright, what about life skills? What did hockey actually teach me?’ And so he transferred his leadership skills, his sense of teamwork, camaraderie, attitude, into helping these young boys feel better about who they were.”

Those same foundational concepts also formed the bedrock of what would be longstanding educational curriculum taught in Ontario schools. The Herbert H. Carnegie Future Aces Foundation, created by Carnegie, his wife and daughter Bernice, helped create and administer Future Aces schools, as well as providing financial assistance for post-secondary education.

In spite of the obstacles thrown in his path, Carnegie, a member of the Order of Canada among many honors bestowed upon him, was a titan of sorts, a successful businessman, exceptional golfer and inventor. He wrote a book about his life, a second edition of which was released on what would have been his 100^th birthday in 2019. Schools and arenas bear his name.

Bernice Carnegie worked alongside her father for 30 years and during most of that time, the last 25 years of his life, Carnegie was blind.

What would Carnegie think of the summit that bears his name taking place in Boston?

“I can see him sitting there now with his little wry smile,” Bernice Carnegie said. “And his bright eyes going ‘yes, what I did was worthwhile.’”

If there is optimism about what could lead from the discussions that will unfold in Boston, it is tinged with the sobering reality that the issues that confronted Carnegie very much remain a problem that society as a whole, and the game of hockey specifically, has not yet gotten its arms around.

“What I’m feeling is we’ve come full circle,” Bernice Carnegie said. “He started the hockey school to make a difference, to teach young people that they could be better people and hockey’s such an amazing sport that can teach so many great skills. But we keep getting sidetracked with some of the crap that goes on and now we’re coming back to exactly what he did in 1955.

“And we’re saying to the hockey community we can do better.”

The gathering will come less than two weeks after a powerful video was released by the Hockey Diversity Alliance (HDA) that features raw commentary from a variety of current and former NHL players. TSN’s Rick Westhead reported Tuesday the video has already logged more than six million online views.

Members of the HAD, Sarah Nurse and Angela James, also have roles with the Carnegie Initiative and are expected to take part in the summit.

Hockey equipment giant Bauer has created a series of vignettes called "The Barn" that discusses in candid fashion the issue of the game’s accessibility from a variety of perspectives. Bauer executive Mary-Kay Messier will be part of the summit.

“It feels as though it’s part of a movement,” said Bryant McBride, the other co-chair of the summit. “We’ll work with anybody who wants to push these issues forward.”

McBride was a producer of the successful documentary ‘Willie’ that chronicles O’Ree’s barrier-breaking life. He was also the man who hired O’Ree to work in the NHL’s fledgling diversity program in the mid-1990s.

“Broadly defined, racism is cancer,” McBride said. “It really is and there’s over a hundred known forms of cancer in existence. And to think there’s one cure for cancer or racism is naïve and short-sighted.”

If we accept that trying to make the game more accessible, more tolerant, better is a kind of puzzle then it stands to reason the more people engaged in solving the puzzle the better the chances are it happens.

“If you do nothing you’re adding to the problem,” McBride said. “You’re at the game, you’re not in the game in terms of solutions. Pointing out problems is often a solo sport.”

Among those taking part in the media session at the summit will be national analyst and longtime NHLer Anson Carter.

“This is why I wanted to participate in this, I want to highlight the amazing people and the projects and the initiatives and things people are doing in the game of hockey,” Carter said. “It’s not about branding and catchy slogans and tearing people down and attacking people. It’s really going to highlight all the great work people are doing.”

Carter is the co-chair, along with former Norris Trophy winner P.K. Subban, of the NHL’s player inclusion committee part of a series of initiatives announced by the league in the fall of 2020 to combat racism and deal with issues of inclusivity. Carter recalled the conversations that surrounded the decision during the 2020 playoffs to pause play in response to the George Floyd murder.

Carter spoke candidly at the time about how he would have lobbied to keep playing, but push for change in other areas like having NHL teams open their arenas as voting centers for the U.S. presidential election. Some NHL teams did just that.

Still, Carter was criticized in some quarters for his stance. But when he spoke with veteran player Ryan Reaves, one of the leaders of the decision to cease play, the two had an open and honest discussion about their differing points of view.

“We had a conversation like two grown men,” Carter said.

After that Carter asked Reaves to join the player inclusion committee which he did.

Those are the kinds of conversations Carter expects will take place in Boston.

“There might be disagreement about what people are saying,” Carter said. “That’s okay, too.

“It’s about putting in the work,” Carter said. “We want to be about uplifting the game. A lot of like-minded, intelligent people are going to be there.”