All the Way (9 page)

My father is highly respected in our community. He isn't the biggest guy, but no one fucks with Barney Tootoo. Everyone looks up to him. In Rankin Inlet, they think of him as a great guy. When I was growing up, all of my buddies considered him a mentor. I think that in a lot of small communities you've got the “chief” who everyone follows. That's my dad. And he thinks he can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, because everyone respects him. But when my father drinks, especially hard liquor, he becomes an evil monster, a fucking scary guy. Everyone is intimidated by him.

His parents were alcoholics. It's cyclical. It's just what you grew up with. His parents drank, he drank, and Terence and I drank. I don't ever want my kids to have to deal with that and it's
one of the biggest reasons why I called it quits and changed my life. My sister, Corinne, is sober. As a young teenager, she was a bit rebellious and did some drinking, but by the time I started drinking she had quit. I never saw her out partying, because she was already fed up with it. When I was partying, I'd always try to get her to drink, but she wouldn't do it. I'd wonder what the fuck was wrong with her, because I was messed up myself. I was caught up in all of that bullshit.

My dad is mostly a weekend binge drinker. Booze is $150 for a forty-ouncer or a case of beer up north. Most people didn't drink beer because it took up too much room and you needed more of it to get drunk, so liquor was easier to access. Our family had connections in Churchill, where my grandmother lived. It was no sweat to get booze there, because you could just go to a provincial liquor store and buy it. And then you just had to get it on the plane. My grandma lived in Churchill, so you know it was an easy supply line.

In a small town, you don't want to show people weakness, but behind closed doors it's a different story. I remember when I was a kid and it would be Friday. Dad came home at five o'clock. You knew it was going to be a long weekend when he brought out the bottle at fucking 5:10. Once the bottle came out, you knew shit was going to go down, and it wasn't going to be fun. We kids would go into hiding, because you never knew what was going to happen. A couple of hours later, he was going to be tanked and it was going to be a fucking disaster. As for my mom, she was thinking,
Well, I might as well grab a drink to keep myself on the same level.

We'd say to ourselves, “Aw, Dad's drinking again,” and go out to play street hockey just to get away from that environment. At 8:30 or 9:00 they'd be fucking yelling out the window: “Get your ass inside the house!” You knew it wasn't going to be a good Friday, Saturday, or Sunday when you heard that. My friends didn't know anything about it, and I didn't know if it was going on in their homes, too.

My parents were strict, but when they were half cut they were mean, and it wasn't fun when you had to come home and listen to them arguing and scuffling. I remember jumping on a plane one Friday night, fucking off and going to Churchill because my mom had had enough of the harassment and shit from my dad. We jumped on a plane, the three kids and my mom, just to get away.

But usually we would sit in our bedroom crying, and then you'd hear them scream our fucking names: “Come down here and make me something to eat!” I spent a lot of time being looked after by my sister and my brother. They took a lot of the heat. I would do something in the house that would piss off our parents and my sister and brother would take the heat for it. I was just a kid. I didn't know better.

Even my close buddies who I grew up with didn't like drinking with my dad. He would complain that no one ever wanted to come around and have a few beers with him. Well, duh. . . . You're an animal. Who wants to drink with someone who gets so negative and also thinks he's king shit?

Even the RCMP in Rankin Inlet knew better than to fuck with my dad, except for one guy. Dad was walking home
piss-drunk one night and a cop picked him up. Dad said, “Who the fuck are you? How dare you do this to me?” The cop arrested him and threw him in the drunk tank. The cop was a new guy. He didn't understand. He didn't know who Barney Tootoo was. A week later, that cop was gone.

THE LAST TIME my dad hit the bottle was during the summer I beat him up. That's when he was still on the hard stuff. We were all partying at the house. When you drink, there's that fine line where if you cross it, you know you're going to snap. He was drunk, I was drunk, he said something, and I fucking snapped.

No one had ever heard those words from him before, and they really set me off: “You're not my fucking son. I'm not your fucking dad, so fuck you.” When he told me that, it just made me go fucking crazy and I grabbed him and started beating him. My sister and my mom were right there trying to stop me. My mom was freaking out, fucking going apeshit.

“I'm not your father.” I don't think he really meant that I wasn't his biological son. I think it was something less than that. When you're at that stage of intoxication, your brain isn't functioning well. I'm pretty sure him saying that was a spontaneous thing, but to this day I really don't know.

What I do know is that it was the moment in my life when I was finally fed up with all of the fucking bullshit. Before that, I had taken it. We had all taken it. And Terence was too scared to fight back, because my dad had control of him. Terence knew
that if he pissed Dad off, Dad was going to fucking give it to him. My brother was like his right-hand man. Because he was the older boy, when Dad needed a hunting partner, Terence was there. When he needed a babysitter, my brother was there. He had Terence under his thumb. And all of that just fucking piled up in Terence's brain.

For me, it was different. And on that day, it was as if all the anger and frustration that had been building up for my whole life had to be let out. I'd had enough. I'd had enough of watching my dad be that monster to my family, to my mom and my sister. After all of those years of getting abused, I finally said fuck it. I was just sick of all of it. It was time to fucking step up. “You want to fuck around? Let's go. I'm a man now. There's no more of this. You're not going to fucking push me around anymore and treat me like an inmate.” I got up and started a fucking shoving match with him right in front of my mom and my sister. The doors were all closed and shit was flying everywhere in the house and then I just fucking laid into him. I let it all out, all of that anger, and beat the hell out of him. That was me saying,
Fuck you, Dad. You're telling me I'm not your son? I'll fucking show you.

Afterwards, I was in shock. I hadn't realized how strong I was. My dad hadn't realized that either. He thought I was still a little kid that he could push around. But, no more. I beat him up good. He was wearing a T-shirt and by the end of the fight it was ripped to shreds and covered with blood. When it was over, I picked the shirt up off the floor and handed it to my sister. “Here you go, Corinne. Keep that as a souvenir.” I don't know if
she still has it. It's never been brought up again, but I'll have to ask her to pull it out one of these days. Maybe she has it framed.

It was all over within thirty minutes. And that was a turning point. It felt like shit lifted off of my shoulders. It got all the anger and frustration out of me and onto him. Afterwards, my mother gave me shit for doing it. She said, “Why would you do that to your father? What's wrong with you?” I thought,
Fuck you, too. You guys raised me on a leash. I could only be in certain areas of the house and I could only say certain things. Now I'm a grown-ass man. I'm not a fucking kid who you can toss around and bitch-slap and force to look after you. I'm fucking playing junior hockey and making peanuts and you're calling me and asking me for money, telling me, “You'd better send me money or you're going to get it when you come home.” No more. Fuck you.

After the fight, I walked out of the house like nothing had happened. I left everything there, went to my sister's house, and shed a few tears with her. I stayed there for a few days. After that, nobody knew what had happened, not even my best friends. When they asked why I was all scraped up, I just made up a lie.

“Where's your dad? We haven't seen him in a couple of days.”

“Aw, he's sick, you know.”

In my family, we knew how to weasel our way around those kinds of questions.

My father retreated to my parents' bedroom. I'm sure he was black and blue, but I didn't see him for a whole week. I wasn't going home. I wasn't going to fucking talk to him after him telling me he's not my dad. A day went by and there was no sign of him. Two days, three days: still nothing. I wasn't going
to approach him. I was waiting for him to apologize for all that he'd done. My mom asked me if I was going to talk to him. I said, “Fuck, no, I'm not talking to him.” She said, “He's asking me questions about what happened.” He had blacked out. My dad acted like he didn't remember a thing. That's the way he is. I told her she could tell him what had happened, because I wasn't going to do it.

Finally, my mom told him straight out what had happened and then, about a week after the fight, he approached me and told me he was sorry for his actions. And I was just like,
Okay, whatever.
But I was still fucking furious. A guy you grew up with all of your life, who you called Dad, all of a sudden tells you he's not your dad and you're not his son. . . . A week after that, I took off back down south. I had to go back to Brandon. Nobody outside the family knew what had happened.

Terence had been in The Pas when I fought Dad. I told him about it when I returned down south. How could you not tell your best friend something like that? His initial reaction was to wonder whether he was somehow going to wind up taking the heat for it. But then he gave me a look that said,
Fuck, yeah.
He didn't want to show that he was happy about it, but I think he felt that inside of him. He was so tight with our dad that I don't think he would have ever gotten to that point with him. But he understood why I did it.

Relations with the family were pretty hostile for a long time after that. I didn't want to go home in the next off-season, so Terence and I spent half of the summer in The Pas and then went to Brandon. We lied our way through everything with our
parents, saying we had to do hockey schools or were trying to earn extra cash. We knew how to lie because we were brought up lying. Meanwhile, we were partying and didn't have to put up with their antics.

When I finally did go back home the next summer, it was like nothing had happened. It was back to partying. The only difference was that Dad knew he couldn't control the liquor, so he'd switched to beer. That fight changed our relationship. It was a stepping stone. It was a way of letting him know I wasn't a kid anymore, that I was going to start standing up for myself. He knew, now. He knew what would happen if he ever pissed me off like that again. And he never did.

SIX

T
he following season, his second in junior hockey, would be a significant one for Jordin. Because he turned eighteen on February 2, he was eligible for the National Hockey League draft. No one of Inuit descent had ever played in the league before. By now, anyone who watched the Wheat Kings knew that Jordin was tough and that he was willing to drop the gloves when called upon. He easily could have been pigeonholed in the enforcer's role. But there was more to his game than fighting: the speed and skills and scoring touch that would soon make him a first-line player in major junior hockey. Kelly McCrimmon, the coach and general manager of the Wheat Kings, was the first to understand Jordin's potential and to give him the chance to become a complete player.

The fact is, if it weren't for Kelly McCrimmon, I wouldn't be where I am today. He was the one person who believed in me and gave me every opportunity to grow as a hockey player. I
think he saw something in me that no other person in the hockey world did. Plus, he's a person who cares a lot for his players. He's played hockey himself, so he understands how players feel and how they think.

It's not like we always got along. We had many disagreements and battles, as you've already heard. But that was part of me being a young, egotistical hockey player who thinks he has everyone by the balls and can do anything he wants. Kelly definitely put me in my place many times and I thank him for doing that. There were some dark times when I could have just given up and said,
The hell with it, I'm out of here.
But he kept hounding me in all the right ways.

Kelly sensed that I had more in me as a hockey player, and I seized that opportunity. He must just have a knack for knowing, for picking out certain players. He definitely sensed that with me. Kelly knew what type of player I was and that I meant a lot to the team, but he's also the one who saw my offensive skills. I was more of a guy who thought he could just be a physical presence and not worry about scoring goals and putting up points. Kelly brought me into his office many times and said, “Hey, everybody in the league knows you're tough. There's a time and place for fighting and being physical. But you can score in this league. You have a great shot. You're one of the fastest guys in the league. We need you to focus more on that.”

I didn't know I had that in me. But when a coach believes in you and trusts you and gives you an opportunity, you can break through those limitations. In my draft year I was just starting to figure that out, but obviously some of the scouts—who also
must have been talking to Kelly—were starting to see that potential.

Early in 2001, Kelly called me into his office and told me I had been selected to play in the CHL Top Prospects Game. Apparently, that meant I was considered one of the forty top draft-eligible players in Canadian junior hockey. But at that age I didn't really understand how the hockey world worked regarding the draft and rankings and all that. For me, the important thing was that it was kind of cool.
I'm going to play with other great players in Calgary? That's great. Awesome.
I didn't realize the significance it could have in my draft year. I just got on the plane and enjoyed myself, and enjoyed all of the great hockey players I was surrounded by—guys who are in the NHL now. It was an honour. And, of course, I was the only Inuk to ever make it there.