Shimmering legacy

Theodore Niizhotay Fontaine walked down many paths throughout his life. The late Anishinaabe author of the best-selling book Broken Circle: The Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools was a former chief of Sagkeeng First Nation. He was an elder, an educator, a public speaker, a residential school survivor and held many other titles and roles throughout his life.

One of them was being a skilled, semi-professional hockey player.

Fontaine, who died on May 10, 2021, after a short battle with cancer, was posthumously inducted into the North American Indigenous Athletics Hall of Fame earlier this month.

“To me, this induction recognizes Theodore’s legacy of leadership and achievement both in hockey and in building truth and equity in Canada, said Fontaine’s wife, Morgan Niizhotay Fontaine.

“It honours his life journey that I was so privileged to share. It’s another step toward fulfilling his stated intention, ‘Indigenous and non-Indigenous together, may we close our circle to honour this land and its legacy of freedom and hope for children.’”

NAIAHF co-director Dan Ninham said the organization is considering other members who played on the 1960-64 Assiniboia Residential School hockey teams, some of whom have been inducted into the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame.

“The legacy of Theodore Fontaine has touched a tremendous amount of people and his memory will be carried on,” Ninham, who is Oneida and lives in Minnesota, said in a statement.

Hockey was more than a game for Fontaine, who found comfort on the ice. The freedom of playing hockey as a child, and later as an adult, was critical to his survival and well-being after suffering years of sexual, physical, spiritual and emotional abuse during his incarceration at residential school.

Just after his seventh birthday in 1948, he was left at Fort Alexander’s residential school, where he remained for 10 years. After that, he was sent to Assiniboia on Academy Road, because it offered high school.

“He was there for two years, and although the situation (at the high school) was not one of violence and abuse, the way he expressed it was that, ‘You know, there was some sense of freedom there, and we started to reclaim our identity a little bit, but it was still an Indian residential school with a barbed-wire fence around it, and no interaction outside of it,’” Morgan explained.

“He left there in 1960, and after that he started playing hockey, and he went all over Western Canada playing hockey. He was finding his path back from the horrendous damages of res-school abuse. Later in life, in his foreword to Stolen Lives, he wrote, “…Each day as I take another step toward reconciliation, I take a step toward finding my way back to the joyous, effervescent, mischievous Ojibway child that the Creator intended me to be.”

He ended up playing in the Northwest Territories, in Pine Point in a mining town. He was asked to lead a mineral exploration crew up there and it was one of the best times of his life.”

In his early years, Fontaine played senior and semi-professional hockey, signing a “C” contract with the Detroit Red Wings. Morgan said the overt racism he experienced led him to give up his opportunity, something that he would later regret.

But he didn’t give up on the game. When he got older, Fontaine played for 10 years with the Sagkeeng Oldtimers, winning international, national and regional awards, including three World Cups.

While his skill and determination on the ice was ever present, it was off the ice where Fontaine really broke down barriers and created pathways for others. Throughout a rich and storied career, Fontaine, who earned a civil engineering degree in 1973, was a fierce advocate of First Nations rights, languages, culture, spirituality and traditions. He believed in employment equity, and in ensuring that Indigenous voices and perspectives were included.

“He said one of the elders told him this story about people who are climbing the ladder, like whatever you define your ladder as, and when you get to the top and you see the person coming behind you, you either kick them down, or you lean down and bring them up. You put them in front of you and you help them go up, and that’s what he did,” Morgan said.

After writing his memoir in 2010, Fontaine shared his story and residential experience with more than 1,600 audiences throughout North America, in part for his own healing, and in part because he wanted people to know the true legacy of the residential school system.

Morgan said her husband’s induction into the North American Indigenous Athletics Hall of Fame is not only an honour, but a way to keep moving his legacy forward. In their 44-year partnership she walked alongside him on his journey of healing and recovery and supported him completely. Although he is physically gone, she continues to support his work, because she says it can’t end, or flow backwards. You don’t dedicate your whole life to something and then say that you’re finished.

“There was more that he planned to do and wanted to do and it’s going to get done,” she said, adding Fontaine’s friends and colleagues are helping to carry on his legacy.

“Theodore’s legacy lives on in the hearts and minds of those who knew him, heard him speak, or read his memoir. Induction into the NAIAHF is a big step toward building on that legacy, and I feel really good about it,” she said.

Shelley.cook@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter @ShelleyACook