![]() Out of everything I felt that day in Windsor - the rage, the crippling pain, the sadness - the worst part was the feeling I had right when the fight ended and I got a look at my teammates, my peers, standing in a circle, watching this go on. ![]() I was attacked because of the color of my skin. He looked at me and saw a black boy with a weird accent - and didn’t like me because of it. He had nothing but hate in his heart back then. I don’t really give a crap what he thinks about the way I just described him. My parents and brother had sacrificed their time, their ambitions, to help me succeed in hockey and get me to the OHL.Īnd then in my few months in Windsor, I went through hell at the hands of a racist sociopath. I fought for my right to have a life that I had earned. We fought, and I did my best to show the rest of the kids surrounding us on the ice that day that I wouldn’t give up on the game. So I dropped my gloves and took part in another Canadian ritual. Blood gushing down my chest into my pants. I turned, and he shoved his fiberglass stick through my mouth. That same kid - the guy who went on to play over 400 NHL games - came up to me a few days after I refused to take part in his horrific ritual and tapped me on the shoulder during a practice. The NHL’s title for their annual diversity campaign, “Hockey is For Everyone.”īecause, right now, hockey is not for everyone. Stripping 16-year-old boys and shoving them in bathrooms and cranking up the heat. I read headlines like, WAS WHAT HAPPENED TO AKIM ALIU WRONG? And, somehow, the whole issue was treated like some sort of discussion. Instead they had to hear about my refusal to strip naked and get in a bathroom in the back of the team bus with three other rookies. I dreamed of my parents reading in the paper back home about their son scoring a hat trick in his first game, or leading his team to the playoffs. I was the kid who wouldn’t go along with it. Thanks to this guy, that was the way I was introduced to the entire hockey world. If you’ve heard of me, you’ve heard of the hazing incident that took place that season. He was two years older than me and a rising star, and he wielded his power over me like I was nothing - like I was subhuman. He’d make fun of my clothes, the way I spoke. And then he began to belittle me in front of my teammates, the coaches, whoever would listen to him. Then he took my gear outside and threw it on the roof. There was this guy on the team - he was the top-prospect, future-NHL-star type that most junior teams in Canada have - and he looked at me, Akim Aliu, and chose to make my life a living hell.įirst couple of practices he put Tiger Balm in my jock. But from the moment I joined the Windsor Spitfires, I had a target on my back. I was just a raw 16-year-old kid with a big ol’ dream that he’d make it to the show one day. It was the year I’d left my family home in Toronto to go play hockey in the OHL. In 2005, in a tiny arena in Windsor, Ontario, I fought for my life.
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