06/23/2016
Story on NHL icon Ted Nolan
Swift Current – Ted Nolan, former National Hockey League player and Coach, paid a visit to Living Sky Casino in Swift Current on Tuesday evening to celebrate National Aboriginal Day.
This year marked the 20th anniversary of National Aboriginal Day, a day which recognises the culture and contributions of the First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples of Canada.
“I think it’s long overdue (to celebrate this day), for the contributions our people made and some of the sacrifices our forefathers went through to give myself and people my age the opportunities (we’ve had),” Nolan said Tuesday after his keynote speech at the casino. “It’s well deserving to show respect (to our forefathers and our ancestors) and I think it’s going to get bigger and better as we keep going. Hopefully we are going to make a significant difference in the next generation.”
The speech was very inspirational to those in attendance, as he spoke of his struggles growing up on the Reserve. Often being overlooked, finding a way to battle through adversity using perseverance and work ethic, he credits all of this into making him the man he is today.
“I’m just a real big believer in working, if things aren’t working, then work harder and if things aren’t working out, find another way, don’t give up or use excuses,” Nolan, a member of the Ojibwa tribe, a First Nations people said. “I don’t believe in excuses, we have to try and find a way to persevere through it (the challenges we face). It’s tough, I’m not claiming it was easy for me and I’ve cried myself to sleep many times, and I was very frustrated and it’s not easy but sometimes the best rewards in life are some of the biggest struggles we have to go through in order to get to where we have to get to.”
One of those times for Nolan was during the Detroit Red Wings training camp, when he ended up in two fights during his first two days.
He was able to instill his message into a former player whom he coached in the Ontario Hockey League by the name of Chris Simon who is of Aboriginal descent. Simon was acquired to help the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds make a playoff push in 1991-92, but within four days of his acquisition most of the staff wanted to send him home because of off-ice issues. Nolan gave him a choice between going home and spending the rest of his life doing whatever he wanted to do or he could stay and earn the teams’ trust enough to be inserted back into the lineup. That season Nolan coached the Greyhounds to winning the J. Ross Robertson Cup (OHL Championship) and in the same season helped coach Simon into sobriety.
“There is a lot of tragedy in my life losing my parents when I was young and most of my siblings,” Nolan said. “I looked at both my parents are gone and my siblings are gone (only five of the twelve remaining) and I wanted to honour their memory in a positive way. I wanted to make sure they were looking down from above being proud of what I’m attempting to do in their name.”
Nolan, the 1996-97 Jack Adams Award winner (NHL coach of the year), started the Ted Nolan Foundation. The Foundation is in loving memory of his mother Rose Nolan, who was killed by a drunk driver in 1981. The Foundation was started to give scholarships to aboriginal women to further their education by attending a post-secondary institution. To date, the charity has provided over $200,000 to approximately 125 women.
“The greatest calls I get to make are calling the girls and saying they won the award and you hear cheers, gratitude, emotion and how thankful they are. They can use the scholarship money as they see fit, whether it’s to buy groceries on weekends when they aren’t in school or help with their gas,” Nolan said. “It’s great, I get to be the Santa Claus every June and July when we give them out.”
The Foundation keeps a log of the women who receive the scholarship money and what they go onto to do with their careers.
“My mother didn’t go to university, but she really pushed education, she talked about education is the new buffalo and we can’t go out and hunt buffalo, we’ve got to get ourselves educated,” the former left winger for the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins said. “Education is the key, especially with our women and the mothers. I wouldn’t be half the man I am today without my mother, so I know the importance of our women.”
Nowadays, Ted is teaming up with his two sons, Jordan and Brandon, to offer a hockey skills development camp for First Nations youth in First Nation communities across Canada.
“We have a 3NOLANS website now, we do hockey schools and for anybody that wants Jordan to be a public speaker anywhere, he’s very good at talking to young kids, he’s only 26 years-old and he’s won a couple Stanley Cups and to go to First Nations communities is great,” he said. “We did two or three where me, Jordan and Brandon did all three of us (together) and we would talk from a young person growing up now, to a parent and how we parented and how significant it is to have mom and dad there with you or mom or dad depending the case and how important parenting is.”
Ted’s legacy will live on for generations to come, while his sons continue to carve out their own. Jordan plays for the Los Angeles Kings and has won two Stanley Cups. His older brother Brandon last played in the NHL for the Carolina Hurricanes during 2007-08, and is now the Vice-President of the Ted Nolan Foundation and Director of Business Development with the 3NOLANS.
