THUNDER BAY – Sixteen years ago, Theoren Fleury was alone in the Arizona desert, the barrel of a gun in his mouth, ready to end it all.
But in that moment, he stopped and told himself he’d never quit at anything before, so why quit now?
Fleury, 51, was carrying around a dark secret.
As a teenage hockey phenom, the future Calgary Flames star at 14 left a dysfunctional home and his alcoholic father and pill-popping mother, to seek fame and fortune in the National Hockey League.
Only he found an even worse nightmare.
A scout with the Winnipeg Warriors took the youngster under his arms and into his bed, raping the young hockey player at least 150 times.
To bury the pain, Fleury turned to alcohol and drugs, even while putting up multiple 100-point seasons and winning a Stanley Cup with the Flames in 1989, proving once and for all size doesn’t really matter at the highest level of hockey.
After the incident with the gun in the desert, reluctantly, Fleury decided to write a book, Playing With Fire, in which he was convinced to detail the years of abuse, to get it all out into the open and begin the healing process.
It’s a message he’s still delivering today, including Tuesday’s stop at Confederation College, letting people know it’s OK to share their secret and that they’re not alone.
“The reason why this is such an epidemic and people don’t want to talk about it, is we haven’t created a safe space in society yet for this kind of conversation. Society is so judgmental and we love to point the finger at other people, because then it allows us not to have to look at ourselves,” Fleury said, prior to stepping on stage.
“I think when we create the safe space is when the majority of the healing happens.”
Fleury said when he sat down to write the book, which was released a decade ago in 2009, he did it for selfish reasons.
The goal was to try to put it in the past.
Ten years later he’s still speaking about the subject, traveling the country and continent to speak to anyone willing to listen.
Fleury, who is still waiting for the Hockey Hall of Fame to call, said he soon realized upon the book’s release that he’d done something important, when 400 fans lined up at a book signing in Toronto – including an 80-year-old man who had but two words for the courageous hockey star.
“’Me too,’” Fleury recalled.
“What happened was I ran into a whole bunch of other people who had the same experience as me and then people asked me if I spoke openly, publicly about what happened. Now we’re on the road 250 days of the year, talking about trauma, mental health and addiction and how they’re all connected, and what’s the best way to heal from those experiences.
“It’s been an amazing journey.”
He added being open an honest about his own traumatic experience resonated with readers.
“We haven’t stopped since 2009,” Fleury said.
