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The Current Transcript for January 1, 2019

Host: Michelle Shephard

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: The guy who wrote Canada spent ten years of his life on stage or in the pit because he led the band in blackface, in those outlandish costumes. He was a minstrel.

MICHELLE SHEPHARD: Whether it is stirring hearts or controversy, our national anthem has a history as colourful and complex as the nation itself. We kick off 2019 with a look at the history of O Canada and a Francophone nationalist who composed it when the country was still young. After that.

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VOICE: I was a forward. I was never a goalie. I wanted to be in the action, running, being aggressive. Even though I was a really shy person, that was my personality coming out in sport.

MS: And yet that shy boy would go on to play 19 seasons in the National Hockey League as a goalie. In 30 minutes, hear Curtis Joseph's story of rising from a harsh and heartbreaking childhood to being a three-time NHL All-Star star. I'm Michelle Shephard, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti. This is the New Year's Day edition of The Current.

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'He clearly did not believe in Canada': The surprising story behind the man who wrote O Canada

Guests: Robert Harris

SOUNDCLIP

[Song: O Canada]

MS: That's how O Canada sounded when it was recorded 105 years ago. Those words were fairly new, but the score dates back to 1880, when a talented French Canadian musician named Calixa Lavallee composed it. While the anthem is now known far and wide, for years very little was known about the incredible life of its composer. That is until now. Robert Harris is a long-time music journalist who has worked here at the CBC, as well as at the Globe and Mail. His new book is called, Song Of A Nation: The Untold Story of Canada's national anthem. And Robert Harris is with me here in our Toronto studio. Hi Robert.

ROBERT HARRIS: Delighted to be here.

MS: So let's start at the beginning OK. Tell me a little bit about the early life of Calixa Lavallee, the man who composed, O Canada.

RH: Well you know Calixa Lavallee was a a guy who, as often happens in the world, had this enormous musical talent and musical talent and you know artistic talent shows up where it shows up. You know it shows up when it wants to and where it wants to for no rhyme or reason. So in this case, it showed up in a kid who was born in 1842, in a Vercheres, Quebec. You know an immensely talented kid. His father was a blacksmith, but who was fascinated by music himself and turned to instrument making. So there was a musical household, but that doesn't explain Lavallee's talent. It was just a prodigy, you know genius maybe too strong a word, but he was just this kid who played music effortlessly and his finally moved to Saint-Hyacinthe from where he was born and he started playing the organ at ten and notoriety about his prowess reached Montreal and in Montreal there was a butcher named Leon Derome, who was also an arts patron, who heard about Lavallee and managed to hear him play and convinced Lavallee's father Augustin, the instrument maker, to let Derome take Lavallee to Montreal and live with the Deromes. So at 12-years-old, Lavallee basically left home went to Montreal, lived in the Derome household and began a career as a child prodigy in Montreal. In the you know we're now talking 1850, you know.

MS: And what was Quebec like at that time, what were the politics?

RH: Well the politics were very complicated actually, much more complicated than we in English Canada realize because this was the period this weird 25 year period in Canadian history of Canada East and Canada West. You know there were no provincial governments. There was no Quebec. You know I mean Quebec didn't exist at the moment and that there's a long history behind that, but basically the intent of that was to merge the two, Upper Canada and Lower Canada became one Canada. And the basic idea, which we'll get to was to swamp French Canadians. The English majority in Upper Canada, in Ontario now, and the English minority in Quebec, the idea was to always outvote the French Canadian minority and to make it go away basically. So those were the politics and just a few years before Lavallee's birth had been these rebellions that we all learned about in school and we thought we learned about in school, you know the rebellions of 1837 and 1838. In Upper Canada, without you know being too dismissive, you know William Lyon Mackenzie took a little walk on Yonge Street down from the close to the tavern up there you know Hoggs Hollow and you know twenty minutes later it was all done. In French Canada, you know there were like thousands of people over two years who were either killed or wounded. There were 27 executions because of the leaders of this and 57 of them were exiled to Australia. This was a major trauma in French Canada, those rebellions and Lavallee was growing up just after that period and just before confederation. So in a strange mix of so much going on, that's where he grew up.

MS: And I'm sure that had an impact on him, but I understand, some of his teenage years, he wasn't here, he actually went to the US.

RH: Oh well so he's a child prodigy in effect in Quebec and when he was 16-year-old he basically ran away to join the circus. Except it wasn't a circus, he ran away. He ran away to join the New Orleans Metropolitan and Brass Band ensemble, which was based not in New Orleans, but in Providence, Rhode Island and it was a minstrel troupe. Calixa Lavallee was a minstrel. He was a black faced minstrel. The guy who wrote O Canada spent 10 years of his life onstage or in the pit because he led the band in blackface, in those outlandish costumes. He was a minstrel. He ran away to become a minstrel when he was 16-years-old.

MS: When you started researching this book and you came upon that little nugget, that the man who wrote the lyrics to O Canada, spent ten years in blackface.

RH: Well it was pretty shocking. I sort of heard about this I mean, Lavallee suppressed this information all of his life. He went to great pains so that no one in Quebec would know this. His friends knew, but in fact it was never. So when the minstrel troupe would travel around the United States, his name would be featured in the ads. When it came to Quebec, his name was never mentioned.

MS: And as he's doing all of this in the U.S., civil war breaks out.

RH: He joined the Fourth Regiment of the Rhode Island Regiment, regiment the Fourth Regiment as a bandsman, as a bands person. So he enlisted in the civil war and what's interesting about that is 50,000 French Canadians fought in the civil war.

MS: And how did Lavallee, how did his military career end?

RH: Well you know, so he's a bandsmen and I mean the band's music was more important to the Civil War than any other conflict before or since and he traveled around the regiment for a year and his war ended at the Battle of Antietam. It's the single bloodiest day in the history of military warfare in the United States still. 23,000 people were either killed or wounded in a 12-hour period. I did the math it's like one every two seconds, one every two seconds for 12 hours. You know to put that in comparison, so Gettysburg more people died, but it was over three days. On D-Day, 8000 Americans lost their lives, on D-Day and there are a hundred thousand soldiers or more. 23,000 people.

MS: And he's there for this battle?

Yeah, he's there for this battle and exactly what he was doing we're not sure because during the battle the musicians obviously weren't playing, but they were pressed into service. They were stretcher bearers and they assisted surgeons in the horrifying conditions of surgery on the battlefield. So perhaps in that, so he was wounded near the end of the day. We're not exactly sure how or where he spoke about it. There are very few primary documents about this guy. So it's really hard to nail things down. His war record doesn't mention a wound, but he spent about a month after Antietam convalescing. And the guy who wrote our national anthem, you know whether he had a musket or whether he had a trumpet or whether he was carrying somebody on a stretcher, he's there. He's there like the moment, it's like somebody, it's being there at Waterloo. You know it's like such a seminal moment in the history of America and there he is.

MS: You're almost like portraying a Forrest Gump like character.

It's Zelig, if you remember Zelig, Woody Allen's Zelig, same idea. Exactly the same idea. He's popping up everywhere, but as I say and again I'm somewhat speculating on this because there's no documents, but you get the sense that here was a guy who began his life wanting to be a classical musician and with the lure of minstrelsy, which I'm sure was incredibly you know dramatic and very, very exciting for him, lures him away into popular music. And he's always drawn back to Quebec and when he comes back to Quebec, it's always to pursue classical music and that happens three or four times in his life, before he finally shuts off the minstrel past and becomes a serious musician. So the first time this happened was in 62-63, when he came back to Quebec to try and revive a career. People still knew who he was, but of course 63 to 64 you know we think of you know when we think of Confederation, talked about the politics of Quebec, we signed the year 1867 because that's the year that the bill actually passed. But the real confederation debates were 64 and 65. It took two years to actually get the British Parliament to get their act together. So he came back to Quebec right in the middle of this incredibly contentious suggestion of changing the political landscape of Canada. Confederation Quebec was the first Quebec referendum. We think there were two. We think there was the one in 1980 and the one in 1995. Well the one in 1865 which is when this actually came to a head, was the first Quebec referendum. And there were tremendous opposition to confederation in Quebec. And he was, although again, he was a musician not a politician and he never wrote on this, pretty clearly was on the anti-confederation side.

MS: But once again the irony of that. The guy who penned Canada's national anthem was actually against the founding of our country.

RH: He didn't believe in Canada. He never traveled in Canada. He's traveled in Ontario, more as a minstrel than as himself. He was an annexationist, which was a big deal in Quebec at the time. And the idea was, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, our prime minister was an annexationist. The idea was that Quebec should join the United States. We get a better deal from the United States than we would from English Canada and partly that was because there were so many French Canadians already there. So that was where his sympathies lay and he stayed that way all of his life. Yeah the whole thing, the whole story is ironic you know.

MS: It really is.

RH: But that's one of them is that Calixa Lavallee clearly did not believe in Canada.

MS: So who came up with this idea that this new country called Canada would need a national anthem?

RH: Well I think it was in the air you know. So Confederation was 1867, the Governor General that was appointed, just before the Governor General Lorne was an author and he was married to Princess Louise who was the daughter of Queen Victoria. So this would be like if Princess Margaret's husband became the governor general and you know Lake Louise is named after her and her middle name is Alberta, so Alberta is named after her. So he got into his head that Canada needed a national anthem. I don't think he was the only person who thought that, but Lorne decided to take steps a bit further. He wrote 17 verses of the national anthem, I mean and cringe worthy.

MS: I'm just shaking my head.

RH: Well when you read them it's all about Britain and he decided that OK we need a composer, so let's get the most famous composer in the world, Sir Arthur Sullivan and he did.

MS: And that's of Gilbert and Sullivan.

RH: The most famous British composer maybe ever, Sir Arthur Sullivan. And Lorne you know couldn't afford them up, but he sent some and said I want you to write the national anthem for Canada and you don't turn down the queen's son-in-law. So he did. So there is in fact a dominion hym, a national anthem, no one knows about this, that Sir Arthur Sullivan wrote for our country.

RH: So I want to play you a very scratchy recording of Arthur Sullivan speaking into this new invention by Thomas Edison that record sounds at the time. In fact this was a message from Sullivan to Edison and you have to listen very closely because it's a 130 year old recording.

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[Recording of Arthur Sullivan speaking to Thomas Edison]

MS: So I know that's pretty hard to make out. Maybe you could just tell us a little bit about what we just heard.

RH: What Sullivan said was he's worried that people are going to be putting bad music on this forever and it will stay forever and that was a very, very common reaction to the gramophone to the photograph. He's lucky in that, as far as I know, the bad music he wrote for us, to him has never been recorded. It's had two performances, as far as I know, both in 1880. It's hard to say whether the Sullivan thing was directly leading to O Canada, but it was around the same time. So the Saint-Jean-Baptiste side decided they needed a hymn. They wanted to have competition, but that didn't work and eventually Calixa Lavellee and Sir Adolphe Routhier who wrote the words, put together this song for that gathering. So it was premiered on Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day in 1880 and I remember we weren't quite in this room, but we were in this building. In fact it was the old radio building in 1980. I did a thing with Peter Soskin on Morningside and Peter said you know relegating relaying the lack of understanding we have about this in English Canada, how ironic is it that you know O Canada's first performance was on Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day when the Saint-Jean-Baptiste side was trying to break up the country and they said well you know it's actually more ironic than you think because like they commissioned it you know. The Canada, that O Canada originally referred to, stopped at the Ottawa River. You know so you know we'll maybe we'll talk about you know this controversy about the lyrics, what should the lyrics be of O Canada? Well there's no controversy in French candidate because there were the original lyrics are in French. There were no original English lyrics to O Canada, it wasn't for us. It was for Quebeckers. It was a hymn for French Canada to glorify the history and future of French Canada and so of course the Saint-Jean-Baptiste side was involved in it. It was their idea you know to have this thing. So Lavallee spent a great deal of his time in the United States. He spent a lot of his life in English. You know he spoke you know all of his minstrel career he spoke English. All of his civil war career he spoke English. He ended up in Boston, where he spoke English, but French Canada is really important. He was a real French-Canadian Nationalist. So I think he wanted to put into sound that sense of a country, the love you have for it, the martial sense of it. He wanted and work you know. I mean what's interesting of course is that Lavallee wrote this thing for one part of Canada but all of us hear in it, something that inspires us.

MS: And what happened to him after he wrote it?

RH: Well you'd like to think you know and if this were Hollywood, we would say OK so he writes O Canada, it's a major success in Quebec. You know he's fetted there and lives a wonderful life as a national musician. The exact opposite is true. It died. It was performed twice. Never performed for 20 years. Literally three months after he wrote O Canada, he left the country and never came back. He went to Boston and died there. I mean he's back in Canada now because in 1933 they took his bones out of the Boston cemetery and put them back in Montreal. But so not only was O Canada ignored, but so was he. And he left in disgrace, in a way it was the ultimate exile, you know. So he left Canada for good, just I mean within weeks of having written O Canada. So they just sat there, O Canada, it just sat there until again, irony of ironies, until it started to get known in English Canada. And when it started to get known in English Canada, it got revived in French Canada. It started to get known in English and it seemed because there was a royal tour here in 1902 and in Quebec, Joseph Vezina, who was a pupil of Lavallee, actually found O Canada, knew about it and played it for the royal tour. When they came to the Ottawa and Toronto they did it again and the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir still in existence liked this so much that in 1907 they performed it in Toronto and it was a big, big hit. People loved it.

MS: But it would take years still to actually become the official.

RH: Indeed. So that's 1907. So if O Canada was heard in English Canada for the first time in 1907, it was 1980. 1980 was when it was proclaimed the official anthem on Parliament Hill. So that's a long time.

MS: It's a long time and I want to play you a bit of the July 1st, 1980 edition of the CBC's The National. This is Mark Phillips reporting on the day O Canada did become our official national anthem.

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VOICE 1: The proclamation of all Canada, as the official anthem, gave today a focus and a special purpose, one reflected in the grand circumstance of today's ceremony on Parliament Hill. Drenched by a hot summer sun, thousands came to watch the event. They clung to lampposts and statues of Victoria, who might not have approved of the rejecting of God Save the Queen in favour of O Canada.

VOICE 2: It represents my country. I mean I can say now and say yes, it's our national anthem and be honest about it.

MS: So Robert Harris why did it take so long?

RH: So it's exactly what Mark Phillips said because God Save The Queen was sitting there. And as it turns out, O Canada, the interesting thing about O Canada in all of its manifestations, the anthem ,not just Lavallee's life, which is fascinating, is that it stands as a symbol for all of the tensions and all the contradictions and all of the anxieties and hopes we have as a nation. So you know over the past year, we've had two or three, we've been arguing about whether we should change the words from all thy sons command to all of us command and many, many people have said what a waste of time, like why are we wasting our time worrying about two words in the national anthem.

MS: How do you feel about that?

RH: Well the answer is that it's not a waste of time because the national anthem is about who we are.

MS: Robert what do you think O Canada says generally about this country and says to the rest of the world?

RH: Well it says a lot. So the music itself you know works. So interestingly you know why does music move us, nobody knows. You know there have been three million books written on this subject and nobody has an answer. So I can't say exactly why this two and a half minutes of music works, but it clearly does. You know again if you go on the web and watch a few pictures of our Olympic athletes as they're standing there watching the flag go up and tears streaming down their faces, it's hard for the same thing to happen to you. So why, what is it about this music? There's no words there's, just the music. So I can't explain that, but O Canada it's exactly, it goes back to what Mark Phillips, what that woman in the Mark Phillips' clip was talking about. You know we, in all of Canada, but especially in English Canada, have struggled so much to find an identity for us and the basic reason for that is that we were a colonized people. I mean we were a colony of Great Britain, you could argue well into the 1970s. I mean I would argue well into the 1970s, we were still a British colony emotionally and we struggled with that. You know we struggled and we still struggle with how to define an identity for ourselves and what that means to me O Canada is part of that. What's interesting to me about Canada and maybe true of other countries, but it's certainly true of ours, is that we always see what we are as a nation in the future, not in the past. This is the major difference between O Canada in French, which is terre des nos aieux, we look backwards. The first line of O Canada, is O Canada land of our ancestors. We would never say that in English Canada, not just because many people who you know who live here, whose ancestors were born someplace else. It's not just that, it's just that we see ourselves, our meaning in the future. This is the 20th century belongs to Canada that was Wilfrid Laurier and that was MacDonald's confederation gamble. You know that we could actually knit together as a country. There was no evidence that we were a unified country in 1867. None. So that's where O Canada fits in. That's why it's so important.

MS: Robert, thanks so much for joining me.

RH: It's a pleasure.

MS: Robert Harris' new book is Song of a Nation: The Untold Story of Canada's national anthem. And he was with me in our Toronto studio. Well if O Canada, the maple leaf and the beaver are all icons of Canada, you might say the same about William Shatner. In 2011, the folks at the National Film Board, asked the legendary space traveling captain to sing O Canada and for better or worse. Here's what they got.

["O Canada" performed by William Shatner]

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Why a Canadian who fled the U.S. after Trump's election says Canada isn't perfect either

Guests: Don Sawyer

MS: You are listening to the New Year's Day edition of The Current on CBC Radio One. I'm Michelle Shephard, sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I've just received a call from Secretary Clinton. She congratulated us. It's about us on our victory.

MS: That was late into the night of November 8th, 2016, the night that Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency. It was also the night that Canadian Don Sawyer decided he had to live up to his promise. He was leaving America and returning home to Canada. We spoke to Don Sawyer then to get a sense of why he was heading back home. At the time he was living in Fair Hope, Alabama.

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VOICE: I think this is the last straw. I mean it's been difficult enough for us. We've lived in Canada for 40 years and it's been hard to deal with a society particularly in the Deep South where racism and bigotry and misogyny is just below the surface. So it's been, despite having wonderful circle of friends here, it's been a challenge. And this is just in the last straw because I think anybody who looks at this rationally, has to be terribly frightened, this man now has his hands on the reins of power of the most powerful country in the world.

MS: That's Don Sawyer speaking to Anna Maria Tremonti from Fair Hope, Alabama, just after the election of Donald Trump. Don Sawyer and his wife Jan, did leave the U.S. They are now living in St. Catharines, Ontario and that's where we've reached him today. Hi Don.

DON SAWYER: Hi, how are you Michelle?

MS: I'm good. Thanks for joining us.

DS: Oh my pleasure.

MS: How has your life changed now that you've come back to Canada.

DS: You know there's so many tangibles and intangibles. Since I've been back my blood pressure has dropped to normal and I'm no longer on blood pressure pills. Those very significant kinds of things. The less anxiety, the sense that you're living in a place that better reflects your values and your attitudes, the being with people who are less fearful and more inclusive and more tolerant. All of those things you know just amount to feeling more comfortable in the place where you live and not constantly oppositional for me the stress was just too much. It was just the drain was too great and coming back to Canada has been a wonderful experience for me.

MS: And you know when you describe the difference there and the difference even in your health, you make Canada sort of sound like some kind of utopia and I think there's some that would disagree with that.

DS: Well of course, I think there are many people. I mean you know we have 18 percent of children living under the poverty line, you know we have a terrible opioid crisis right here in Niagara, where I'm currently living. We had over 70 people die of overdoses last year. I mean Canada is not a utopia, but we, some of the things that I see that really strikes me being back here, the positives that I see, I think this is really important to talk about as a nation that we have a different tradition, we have a different history and we have a different set of values and those values have to do with inclusivity and they have to do with tolerance. And they have to do with caring about one another. You know we have a national medical plan here that's been fought forever down there. Tommy Douglas is the most popular Canadian because he fought for what was right for all Canadians, not just a few. And I think we are susceptible to the same kind of populism that propelled Trump into the White House, but I also think we have very different traditions that we can also build on to help avoid that eventuality. I certainly hope so.

MS: Tell me about the night when Donald Trump won the presidency. I actually was in the U.S. as well, I was in Denver and I remember it was incredibly emotional. And the next day there was a young man on the street just crying and he had a sign saying FREE HUGS. I was really quite struck by how powerful that night was. What are your recollections of that night?

DS: Well when I heard that clip, honestly I had a surge of adrenaline and the emotional response was so visceral because I can remember that moment too and I was actually at a friend's house, it was about 20 or 30 other really progressive people. And just over the night you could just see the mood darken and darken and at that point and I know this sounds ridiculous, but I literally felt like I had veered off into some alternate reality. This just isn't possible. And the implications of it you know sort of slowly seeped in and that's when I realized that I just couldn't stay here. I mean I had not prepared myself for that eventuality and when it came, I just knew, I could see where it was going, maybe not to this extent.

MS: Well that was going to be. That was going to be my next question. You used the phrase alternate reality, what do you see happening now?

DS: I had expected the appeals to people's basic instincts because that's what demagogues and populists do. I had expected the toxicity that he would create in this society. I had expected him to exploit the divisions that were there in every possible way. I don't think I had expected just what a fanatic he was and how the damage he could do in a short time. I don't think I had expected the complex set of criminal and ethical transgressions that were going to surface over the next couple of years. That sort of stuff I hadn't fully anticipated and I'm just so relieved to be in a country where at least up to this point, we're still largely free of that.

MS: You did mentioned earlier that you saw some similarities and populist sentiments here in Canada. What are the parallels that you see in Canada to what's happening in the U.S.?

DS: In the last Ontario election, we actually saw a government elected with no coherent platform. But we did see slogans like for the people or help is on the way. So those are just straight emotional appeal. We have the highest personal debt load in the world in Canada. People are feeling insecure and so when they're in that state, I think they're susceptible to the demagoguery of people with easy answers to very difficult questions. But I do want to say that what gives me hope is that and I see it every single day is that we have a very different tradition to build on here than in the US. You know we really do have a tradition of helping one another. We have a tradition of accepting differences and valuing and celebrating our differences. So my message is let's really work at not screwing it up.

MS: Well that might be a good place to leave it. It was a pleasure talking with you, Don. Thanks so much for joining us.

DS: Thank you, Michelle.

MS: Don Sawyer is a Canadian who left the United States after Trump was elected. We reached him in St. Catharines, Ontario.

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'It made me who I was': How growing up adopted fuelled Curtis Joseph's NHL career

Guests: Curtis Joseph

SOUNDCLIP

[Clips of NHL commentary of Curtis Joseph]

MS: Those are some highlights from the career of the NHL goalie, Curtis Joseph or Cujo, as fans know him. His hockey career started in St. Louis and took him to Edmonton, Calgary, Phoenix, Detroit and of course, Toronto, where he helped bring his hometown Maple Leafs close to the ever elusive Stanley Cup finals. Not bad for a kid who grew up in a group home for the mentally ill, who slept on a mattress soaked with cat urine and had little more than processed cheese sandwiches to eat. Forget all the hockey accolades, Cujo's greatest accomplishment may have simply been surviving his childhood. Now retired, Curtis Joseph has written an eye opening memoir with Kirstie McLellan Day called Cujo: The Untold Story of My Life On and Off the Ice. He joins me in our Toronto studio. Hi Curtis.

CURTIS JOSEPH: How are you?

MS: I'm good. Thanks.

CJ: Good.

MS: And before we get to your remarkable upbringing, I just wonder listening to those highlights of your career, does that ever get tiring?

CJ: No, actually you don't appreciate it when you're playing, you're in a little bubble, but I get a little excited when I hear it.

MS: You know an NHL career obviously is just a long shot for any Canadian kid, but when I read your memoir I realized what a longshot it was for you when it seems like growing up, you know getting a regular meal was a more pressing goal. So just to briefly summarize your memoir, you were adopted as a baby, raised in a group home for the mentally ill, where your mother lived and worked. Can you tell me a little bit about that place called Martin Acres?

CJ: Yes we moved there when I was probably under 5 and my parents' job was to look after that home and twenty mentally ill men and some severe, you know screaming and yelling and or writing on the walls and so it was different. You kept your distance and our apartment was right inside of it. So I would say needless to say I never had any kids over after school.

MS: I can imagine.

CJ: I didn't want anybody to see that.

MS: And describe what some of those men were like.

CJ: Yeah it was you'd get to know some of the guys who you know had a, weren't as mentally ill like Little George and Big George. That was their names you know and Big George actually did our dishes and helped out with the dishes and everything, he was part of the family. And we used to tease him, we'd wrestle or fight or if he saw something on TV that was violent, he would lose his mind you know just the way. You know, but he was a sweetheart of a gentle giant, but there was all kinds of different characters and the sad thing is that nobody ever came to see these people. So it wasn't ideal but you'd get to know them and all the people and personalities and who to stay away from and you know lock your door at night and just pay attention.

MS: Yeah cause there were a few residents that used to bend a bit worried about, I think you wrote one was actually a pedophile.

CJ: Yeah, Wellington. Yeah you'd have to know where he was. He flashed me one time and then after that I had to know where he was at all times in the house and I'd have to go down and get potatoes and that's where he cornered me the one time. So you know I'd always make sure I'd look around, make sure that I got in and out of there and take maybe the alternate path down in the basement to get there and out of there quickly.

MS: Must be surreal now thinking, obviously that was your upbringing, but it must be real thinking about that looking back. You're a dad yourself, seven children. What's that like as a kid facing all that?

CJ: Well you don't know any different. It's your life you know as long as you can remember. So it's a gradual thing, but you, the fact that you don't want anybody else to know about it, should tell you something probably and it's just a little different and you know Harold was African-American and Jan you know she was native descent I believe and she was hard core.

MS: Those are your parents.

CJ: Yes she was really hard core. I tried to avoid her at all, out of sight, out of mind type thing. I would say you know when you read the first part of the book, it's all factual, but don't feel sorry for me because it made me who I was and it made me driven and made me want something better for my life. So it's very important and it's very important to me that it was that way.

MS: You mentioned Jan and Harold and Jan was your adoptive mother and Harold was her second husband.

CJ: Correct.

MS: And was your father. Did you know you were adopted at first?

CJ: So Janet told me from as early as I can remember that you're adopted, you were chosen. And that's the best thing she could have ever done for me because I didn't even know what adopted meant. There was no finding out later, I think that would be traumatic for anybody, but everybody is different, right. So I I always tell people yeah tell them right away. You're chosen, you're adopted, we chose you.

MS: When you said earlier that you had sports, you had friends, you found ways to cope. In finding sport, did you know right away that you were a natural athlete or how did that come about?

CJ: Yeah I played baseball, fast ball and I always played shortstop and you know I was a good athlete at everything that I did, triple jump, high jump, I could do everything. So I knew that, but I was small, so it was hard to compete at a younger age. Once I got bigger then that's where I started to advance. I had all those hand skills and knowledge of sport and how to play. Yeah I was never a prospect or anything because I started late, but I always knew I had I could play every sport well. That's something that you're born with.

MS: So why pick hockey then?

CJ: Well it picked me and hockey is our great pastime in Canada. So played road hockey three times a day. Any time anybody was playing road hockey at school, I'd play before first recess, lunch hour recess, second recess and then after school as much as I could. And I was a forward, I was never a goalie. I wanted to be in the action, running, being aggressive. You know as a really shy person, that was my personality coming out in sport.

MS: How'd you end up in goal then?

CJ: Well so Karen Eakins is Jan's real daughter. She was probably 30-years-old and she had a son that was playing and she had already paid the fee. So she said I paid this money and we're leaving, you know just let him play. And of course I get out on the ice and I couldn't do all the things that I could do in road hockey, you know score at will. I got out there and I was tripod, I had the stick and my skates and I just turned basically in a circle. It was so frustrating and disappointing to say the least.

MS: So you became a goalie because you failed as a forward basically.

CJ: No question. Couldn't skate. So what they threw me in net, lied to me, said oh you're good good, stay in there. So I went in and we won the house league championship the next year I played single A hockey in East Gwillimbury, so rep hockey. But there was no other goalie, so again you're playing all the games, but it's at a single A level. So I always say the position chose me and when I got you know to the NHL, guys would go, wow you're such a normal guy for a goalie. Most goalies are real quirky and I'm like well, I never wanted to be a goalie.

MS: Your coach was trying to get you a US scholarship and no one was biting. So the only offer that I read you got was a walk-on invitation to a Junior A team in rural Saskatchewan. What were those years like in Wilcox, Saskatchewan?

CJ: So even to get out there, you know I was playing in the Ontario Junior Hockey League and that's where you get scholarships from and I would see other kids get scholarships from that league and my last year at 19 there, I was MVP of the league. And you know I still didn't get one at all and I had a man named Paul Saunders. He drove the fruit truck for Vince's fruit market and he would occasionally do things nice for me. I don't know what his connection was, but he was a guardian angel. That's what I always say. And he said my boys go to Notre Dame and they play football there, but you should go out there. It's a great school, great people and you know I think you should go. So he paid for my flight. I went out there and I don't know if you've ever been to Wilcox, Saskatchewan. It's a town of 200 people in the middle of nowhere and I remember standing at the end of town, one stop sign in the town and tumbleweeds were literally blowing by in front of me and I'm like where am I?

MS: What have I done?

CJ: What am I doing? Sure enough, we played the whole year. We won the Centennial cup. We're the best team in Canada and we all got scholarships. So it was the best move and I would have never made it to the NHL, if I didn't go to Notre Dame.

MS: I just want to take you back just for a couple of minutes, back to your teenage years. We have a clip from someone from your past, who has a vivid memory of meeting you for the first time. So have a listen.

CJ: Who?

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: First time I ever saw the guy I was pitching against him. He was in the batter's box for Park Avenue Public School. I was pitching for Meadowbrook Public School. I think we're in about grade seven or so. I had a huge afro that stuck out the sides of my hat. And he was the skinniest little kid I'd ever pitched against, but my coach had warned me, he said watch out for this guy. He's leading the whole school league in home runs and I was like yeah okay whatever, I'll freak him out with heat. And I came in, I just wired some crazy wild pitches, in around his head and he sort of backed off, and then as soon as I put one anywhere near the plate, bang homer. Like the guy was just the best athlete I'd ever seen.

MS: So you're grinning wildly here. I take it you recognize that voice. It was Tyler Stewart and he's not only your old high school friend, but he's also drummer for the Bare Naked Ladies and actually Curtis, as a surprise, we had arranged for him to join us this morning, but unfortunately his flight was delayed. So he couldn't make it, but you did, you do write about him in the book quite a bit. And you wrote about that meeting at the baseball game.

CJ: Yeah, you know it's a good thing he didn't show up because we would have been reminiscing the whole time, taking up all your airtime. He makes me laugh. Everything he says, he could say the sky is blue and I would laugh. He's just a funny human being, so creative, so funny and yeah I do remember back then, I always admired Tyler because he was so out going. And I was so impressed with his personality and so I always admired him. He was the president of the student council. He just had a lot going for him. He's a good athlete. He played third base, I played shortstop for the school team in high and you know he just had it all going and we'd always joke around that he's going to play in a band and you know I'll be in the NHL one day. And sure enough it happened. I think he even wrote that in his book. So he's a good man. He's been a good friend and those runs we had with the Maple Leafs in the playoffs, Tyler would always be like hey I got tickets, I'm coming to the game. I'll see you after. Good luck. You know so we always had that in common, all those playoff runs.

MS: We actually do have a few more clips from him. So it's almost as good as him being here, but he had some interesting insights into why he thinks you guys became such good friends.

CJ: Oh, okay.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I think that stems from both of us being unsure about our identities. You know I mean I came from this incredibly white household, but I was this kind of brown kid with a big afro and I was struggling with who I actually really was. At the time I hadn't found out from my mom who my actual biological dad was. And you know he was a black man and I lived with my stepfather and my sister and my mom, who were all very white. My little sister Melanie had blonde hair and blue eyes and I had a pretty big afro and brown skin. So it was very interesting for me to know that Curtis grew up in a family, essentially a black family. You know his step brother Victor and you know his dad Harold and occasionally you know we would joke like we should swap families. You come over here and live with Bob and Sandy and I'll go over there and live with Harold and everything will be fine. You know we used to make like kind of gallows humour like that and I think honestly that kind of thing brought us together.

MS: Where do you think your bond came from?

CJ: Lots of things with Tyler. I should have known my own family's situation, not to be embarrassed right there because I didn't look at him any differently. You know I looked at him for who he was and I like funny, like I like to be around people that are upbeat and make me laugh. So he does still, like I wait for him to say something. So there's a lot to it, plus he was extremely talented at what he did and very driven and just a lot of things about him and then obviously to be able to connect when I played in Toronto and him to be a Leaf fan and for us to converse about the game and what I saw and what he saw and different stories. It was priceless.

MS: He says that he always knew you were going to go far as a goalie and he actually told us about one game in particular.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I remember once going to one of his games. I think it was the Sharon team, I can't remember the exact day, maybe Mel's Express or something like that. I don't know. Single A, final series and the arena was packed, cowbells ringing, everybody going crazy. All our high school buddies were there, all the parents were there, people from town were there. It's a small little arena in Sharon, Ontario and they were probably outshot 50 to 20 or 60 to 10 or something like ridiculous like that. And they ended up winning the game like 2-1 or 3-1 or something and like Curtis stopped everything. It was absolutely insane the number of shots that he faced. He was just flying all over the place, making ridiculous TV save after ridiculous TV save. And I like honestly like then I kind of went wow this is, that's real.

MS: You write in your book that you really liked facing lots of shots. That's when you were sharpest, when you were super busy and that was for some personal reasons too. Why do you think that was?

CJ: Oh you know, in my 40s, I was discovering myself, life after hockey and how I am and I always say to my wife Stephanie, I met her 11 years ago and she made me grow by 400 percent. It's amazing. You know I talked about my childhood and got me to talk about it and got me to write a book. But you know, as recently as five years ago, she goes you need to be needed. And I'm like what? She goes you need to be needed. I see your eyes light up when one of your kids asks you for something. And I'm like, I'm not like that. I'm not like that. So and then I look back at my career and I'm like those teams that I got lots of shots against and they needed me to be good, that's when I was at my best. So when I went to Detroit and they didn't need me as much, 17 shots, they didn't need me as much as you know the other teams like St. Louis, Edmonton, Toronto I faced tons of shots and that's when I was at my best, first 13 years of my career. So I do need to be needed.

MS: And back to Tyler for a moment. You both had these, as you say these, outsized dreams as teenagers and you both actually realized them.

CJ: Yeah very strange and I know I was a dreamer and I'm sure Tyler is, but the NHL oddly enough because of my small stature and dislocating shoulder, it put things in perspective. So the goal was to get a US scholarship and I tell parents that now, you shouldn't be dreaming about the NHL. It's a miniscule percentage of guys who make it. You should hope that your child goes to college and as a student athlete and gets the most out of it. If they're good enough, they'll make the NHL.

MS: You already mentioned that Tyler was extremely excited when you went to the Maple Leafs and you actually write about that as well in your book. Here's how he put it.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: So I'm a huge Toronto Maple Leafs fan, for better or worse, I've lived and died with the team and when my good buddy from high school was not only on the team, but you know one of the reasons why they were doing so great and almost made it a couple of times to the Stanley Cup Final because of him and I was always there at the game, in the room. We were really in touch in those days. It was really, it was so awesome to be like that connected. The Leafs are a part of every Torontonian hockey fan. They live and die by the Leafs, but when your buddy was a huge part of that, it was just like the greatest thing ever.

MS: What was it like for you singing on with the Maple Leafs?

CJ: Yeah it was a little scary at first. If you were going to bomb, it was going to be a big time bomb. But it added a new level of intensity to your focus and to your game. There was never, you couldn't take a practice off, you couldn't take a shift off, you couldn't take a day off. I remember those four years I was all in and like I always was, but just the magnitude of media coverage, especially in the playoffs, it was 100 times what the regular season was, but it was just intense pressure and you know to hear Tyler talk now about it, yeah it was a great time and I felt very important and he made me feel important. But I was always guarded, definitely I was guarded in my life, my personal life, my questions, my answers, everything. I probably was the most boring interview you could possibly listen to, which is fine because you don't want to give anything away. You know that's just you, never show weakness, never give anything away and that's how I lived, especially those Toronto years.

MS: And to be fair, I think most hockey players give the most boring interviews ever when they come out during the game.

CJ: Talk to them when they're retired. They're real humans.

MS: Exactly we have to wait for this. But being in the NHL, there are a lot of peaks obviously, but there are some valleys too. And we'll just bring in Tyler one more time because he felt he could relate. The music business is similar.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: Tremendous highs of the sporting world and professional sports. It's very similar in music where you know there's years where we won tons of Junos or we're nominated for Grammys and we had number one singles and sold out tours all over the place. And then there's other years where you release two albums and don't even get invited to the Junos. The ups and downs, that kind of thing and you know Curtis has been through them too, getting traded and going out to Phoenix and you know having his career come to an end without winning the Stanley Cup. You know there's those disappointments as well, but what you realize is it's the ride is so exciting.

MS: What's it like on that ride as a professional athlete when you start getting closer to the end of your career than the beginning? So you're transitioning now to the backup role when you were once the rising star?

CJ: You have to adopt an attitude that's going to work. If you don't, you're just going to be miserable. So when I, when the league stop calling for a number one goalie, which made sense, who wants a number one goalie that's 38-39 years old? Nobody. It doesn't make sense. So I adopted an attitude that works and I became a backup for my last couple of years and you know I embraced that role. And I think I was a good back up. I tried to be a good friend and a good teammate to the number one goalie.

MS: And you've been retired now for almost a decade?

CJ: Yeah.

MS: And what's it been like now stepping away from the game?

CJ: Certainly the first few years are always tough and I've talked to other guys in other sports and they'll tell you the same thing. I think part of that is that you think you can still play. Those are still your friends out there and you're important to them, but you know father time like they say and I love this quote is undefeated and so true. But after you get by that first three or four years you understand that life goes on and you're going to be retired a lot longer than when you were playing. So you better get on with life and you better adopt an attitude that's going to work. And I always told myself, I tried to prepare myself, I said I'm never going to find another job that's as good as this one. Just get used to it. Just get used to it. So as much as you could tell yourself that, it's hard, you get up in the morning, you're like OK what am I supposed to do? Like before your mind was always focused on being better, being better, being better or how do I feel? I remember getting up in the morning that first year and I'm like you know feeling my knees and my legs and getting out of bed, how do I feel and then I thought to myself, I'm just taking the kids to school. It doesn't matter how I feel.

MS: You don't need to stretch before that.

CJ: Yeah doesn't matter if my hamstrings are a little tight. It really doesn't work.

MS: Well Curtis we just have a few minutes left. So I want to go back to your upbringing briefly. You said that you knew you were adopted when you were growing up, but it wasn't until you were already in the NHL that you finally found your birth mother. What was that meeting like?

CJ: It was great. She's extremely shy. I could feel it when I met her. And the joy of her seeing me, I knew what I was going to say. If she felt anything like me, she may feel you know a little guilt and so I told her, Wendy you know you made the best decision you could ever make was to have me. Thank you for having me. And that was important, I feel like the first time we met and it's the truth. She gave me up, she wanted somebody to give me the life that she couldn't, felt that she couldn't give me at 16-years-old and sure I had some trials and tribulations, but like I said, I wouldn't change a thing. I would not change a thing. It was it made me who I was, it made me hungry, it made me pursue what I wanted to pursue and so she made the greatest decision and I always thank her for that.

MS: And you said earlier that one of the things you hoped maybe in writing this book that people would take was your experience with adoption and knowing very early on that you were adopted. In general, why did you decide to write this? What else would you like people to take away?

CJ: So yeah that's a great question. My youngest son Luke is 17 and we're in the car a lot. That's one of the great things about being a hockey parent is you're in the car a lot with your son or daughter and you get to hear things they normally wouldn't talk about, but Luke would tell me, he said dad if you can help one kid make it to the NHL or you know help his life then you've done your job and that means a lot to me.

MS: Well thank you, Curtis Joseph, for sharing your story and for coming in today.

CJ: Thank you very much. It's been, it's been great.

MS: Curtis Joseph played in the NHL for 19 seasons, including for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames. He's the author with Kirstie McLennan Day of the memoir titled, Cujo: The Untold Story of My Life On and Off the Ice. He was with me in our Toronto studio.

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Jan. 1, 2019 episode transcript

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