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“Remember, too, that this wasn’t a case of losing a distant aunt or uncle or a grandparent; we lost four of our best friends, teammates who dressed beside us, who went to war with us, who laughed and cried with us. Hell, some of us were still expecting the four of them to walk through the dressing room door, slip on their gear, and join us on the ice.

“So freaking out and berating us, bouncing a stereo off the wall, all because we had lost a hockey game, was totally inappropriate behaviour. I responded to his tantrum by turning away from him and turning him off.”

Brian Costello, the
Swift Current Sun
sports writer who was on the Broncos’ bus when it crashed, perhaps has described James better than anyone. “Graham was different ways with different people,” he once said. “With reporters, he always had time to talk and always tried to help out. He was a very bright man and he was aware how the media could keep his image as an educator.”

The Coach, Part 3

W
hile
some players may have recognized Graham James for what he turned out to be, none of them would speak out until well after Sheldon Kennedy went public with his accusations of sexual abuse.

No one was closer to James and to the Swift Current players than Gord Hahn, the veteran trainer. And yet, according to him, he was shocked when it all came crashing down. “I never saw it coming,” he says. “I didn’t see any warning signs at all, and I was around the team more than anybody.”

Many of the former Broncos, Peter Soberlak among them, will tell you that James was a brilliant coach; that he understood the game, especially on offence, as well as, or better than, anyone. Others, like Bob Wilkie, gradually lost respect for James and prefer not to discuss that side of him.

“Without a doubt,” Wilkie says, “Graham had developed a core group of talented players and that says a lot about his eye for talent. Unfortunately, it was the way he managed the team that made it rough for players like me. Graham was very blatant about who his favourites were and was extremely negative to the ones he did not care for personally … and that included me. I was constantly berated and belittled by him, and the three years I played for him seemed like ten years. I didn’t want special treatment, but I did expect fair treatment.

“In every game, I would play a minimum of thirty minutes in all situations, and yet even after that I don’t feel I got any respect from Graham. In my view, respect is a two-way street and I certainly did not extend to him any respect once I had been mistreated in this manner. Obviously, I do not have fond memories of Graham James.”

Hahn, for one, understands both sides. “I agree with Peter. I agree with Bob in a way, but more so Peter,” Hahn says. “The finesse and that that he had here as a coach … he brought out the best in everybody, I thought. I think the players really respected him for that. And, yes, he was very smart.”

After James was arrested and charged on November 22, 1996, Hahn says he couldn’t believe the reaction around him. “It was wild,” Hahn recalls. “I couldn’t go to a restaurant, I couldn’t go to work. The phone was ringing or somebody was calling.

“I went to Calgary and someone asked, ‘What do you do?’ I said, ‘I work for the Broncos.’ The response was, ‘Oh, Graham James.’

“There were times when I actually got up and walked out of a place because I just couldn’t take it.”

Wilkie, meanwhile, says he wasn’t surprised when the news came out that Sheldon Kennedy had accused Graham James of sexually assaulting him. “No, I wasn’t surprised,” he says. “I called Bob Harriman, my former billet, and we both found ourselves saying, ‘I knew it.’”

During his time with the Broncos, Wilkie lived with Harriman, then an RCMP officer, his wife Janine, and their children. Now, more than twenty years after he played with the Broncos, Wilkie says he “had a feeling something was going on, but when you’re young sometimes things just don’t add up or click.”

He also admits not knowing what good it would have done had he realized what was going on. “I was already on Graham’s wrong side, and players who crossed him quickly got sent away,” Wilkie says. “We were a group of teens away from home, living with strangers, riding a bus, and doing everything to pursue our dream of playing in the NHL. We needed a strong, well-balanced mentor, not a child-molesting, degrading, controlling monster.

“What people don’t seem to realize is that we were compromised. Our youth was tainted, regardless of Graham’s brilliant ability to spot talent, and he scarred all of us. We saw what was going on, but wouldn’t allow ourselves to believe it could be true. To me, it is clear that Graham James was a master manipulator, and that’s why he got such great results from his hockey teams. However, in the end, this same characteristic ultimately destroyed his life and others.”

At the time of the bus accident and in the months afterward, little, if anything, was said or written about the fact that the Broncos players never were provided the option of counselling to help them deal with the deaths of four teammates. In the immediate aftermath, much was said about all that James had done to get his team through the wreckage of what followed.

Speaking at the memorial service after the accident, James had said, “You’re alone and … at night it gets dark and you’re in your bedroom and the show comes on over and over again, the same thing, and you can’t get it to stop. I don’t know if we’ll ever shake that.”

Years later, it became quite apparent that James was the reason why there wasn’t professional counselling.

“The idea that Graham James got us through the bus crash is insulting,” Kennedy would say later. “We didn’t rally around him. The players rallied. He had nothing to do with it. And he kept the professional help from the team because he didn’t want anyone to know he was a sexual predator — keeping out professional help was his idea, not the players’. The idea of keeping the dressing room door closed came from him.”

Wilkie mostly remembers James as a manipulator. “Graham certainly had his favourites,” Wilkie says. “He would call everyone when Shelly would go missing. He would have Shelly, Danny [Lambert], Kimbi [Daniels], and some others over to his house to watch movies on a regular basis. Some of us, as the outcasts or rebels, would joke about it, but later came to realize what a manipulator we had in control of our lives.

“He always was playing mind games with us. He gave no respect so we gave no respect. I remember Shelly and Danny screaming at him on the bench calling him a fat fuck and telling him to shut his mouth, what did we need him for … all of that kind of stuff.

“We knew what we had the ability to do and we did it. Not because of him but because we wanted it. He was not a motivator, unless you want to call getting everyone pissed at him motivating people.”

Wilkie’s relationship with James bothered the defenceman enough that there were times when he simply went home. “I did quit a few times,” Wilkie says, “thinking,
What the hell am I doing this for?
”

But he always came back to chase the dream of an NHL career. And it’s a career that Wilkie, who was drafted by the Detroit Red Wings in 1987, sometimes wonders if James didn’t work to sabotage.

“Detroit used to come and see me play every so often and, always when we sat down, the reports from Graham got me in trouble,” Wilkie recalls. “Was it all his fault? No, it wasn’t. But he never stood up for any of the ‘other guys.’ If we were going to do anything, it was up to us. Most other coaches at that time were great at really helping their players. Graham helped who he liked, and left the ones he didn’t like to fend for themselves.”

Kennedy says, “There was fear. Graham holds that hammer over them. Power … it’s all about power. These guys are master manipulators. He loved the media attention.”

And then there was the case of Ed Brost, who left the Broncos on his own during the 1986–87 season. Before leaving Swift Current, Brost gave his side of the story to local media, saying that his heart no longer was in it.

“I told Graham I’d be hurting the guys if I stayed,” Brost told the
Swift Current Sun
’s Brian Costello at the time. “The simple reason is I wasn’t happy. I decided this a long time ago. I wanted it to work out … I really like Swift Current, the people. That’s what kept me around for so long. I told Graham it’s hard for me to leave. I almost started crying.

“Graham wasn’t getting through to me. There was a barrier between us. I felt because I was an older player … it seems he kind of pushes older players aside. I can’t let that happen. This is my last year in the league. I have to prove myself elsewhere.”

This wasn’t the first time a player had left a team, nor would it be the last. This time, though, James, for whatever reason, chose to publicly address the issue. And he did so with guns blazing.

“We talked and it was clear he wanted to leave,” James said. “We were going to let him part without any rancour. Everything seemed to be settled. When I heard what he said on the radio, I couldn’t believe it. It’s garbage.

“Every coach has players he knows better than others. If they don’t admit so, they’re lying. I treat all my players equal. I give them the same consideration and each receives the same reprimands for missing curfew, et cetera. I haven’t talked to the players about it, but I invite you to ask anyone of them how they feel.”

In the spring of 2001, twelve years after the Swift Current Broncos had won the Memorial Cup, and four years after Graham James was sentenced to jail, James was found to be living in Spain.

On January 2, 1997, James had pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting two players — Kennedy and one whose name was protected by a publication ban — on 350 occasions. James was sentenced to three and a half years in prison; he received day parole in 1998 and was fully paroled on July 1, 2000.

“The man who shook Canadian hockey to its core by committing more than 350 sexual acts on two teenaged players is back in the game and once again coaching,” wrote Allan Maki of the
Globe and Mail
in the April 26, 2001, edition. It was a story that would earn Maki a National Newspaper Award nomination.

“Graham James … has been coaching in Spain for several months. He was the assistant coach for the Spanish national team that recently placed second at the World C hockey championship in Majadahonda, Spain. The youngest player on the Spanish team just turned nineteen. Mr. James, forty-nine, also works as an instructor for coaches in the Spanish hockey system, where sources say he has no contact with players under the age of eighteen.

“Efforts to contact Mr. James were unsuccessful.”

There was something of a firestorm at the time, especially considering that Hockey Canada had suspended James from coaching for life, but it died down within days, and James disappeared from the public eye.

That lasted until October 2009, when
Playing with Fire
, the biography of former NHL star Theoren Fleury, landed on bookshelves. Fleury had played for James-coached teams in Winnipeg and Moose Jaw. There long had been rumblings that perhaps Fleury had been one of James’s victims.

In 1984–85, Fleury and Kennedy had been teammates with the Moose Jaw Warriors, who were coached by James.

“Theoren had to go to Graham’s Wednesdays — Mondays and Wednesdays, I think,” Kennedy says, “and I had to go Tuesdays and Thursdays. And we’d pass each other in the hallway sometimes.”

In his book, Fleury claimed James had sexually assaulted him on numerous occasions, starting at the age of fourteen. In January 2010, Fleury filed an official complaint with the Winnipeg Police Service, prompting an investigation into James’s activities.

James, however, was nowhere to be found until May 2010, when reporters from CBC News and the
Globe and Mail
found him living in Guadalajara, Mexico. James, who had lost considerable weight and barely resembled the five-foot-eleven, 235-pound Broncos coach, told CBC’s Bob McKeown, “I’m impressed that you found me … not that I’ve been hiding.”

Asked to comment on Fleury’s allegations, James replied, “Not a chance.”

Unbeknownst to many people, James had applied to the National Parole Board for a pardon. It was granted on January 8, 2007, thus freeing him to leave his native Canada for Mexico.

The Canadian Press broke the story of James’s pardon after being tipped off by Greg Gilhooly, a corporate lawyer who, it turns out, was another James accuser but at that point was protected by a publication ban.

That news was greeted with a national furor, which resulted in the federal government acting to tighten rules regarding the granting of pardons.

Eventually, James, sixty years of age at the time of publication, was hit with nine new charges involving three victims, one of whom was Fleury. One of the others, as came to light later, was Gilhooly.

James left Mexico in October 2010, after Winnipeg police issued an arrest warrant. He arrived at Pearson International Airport in Toronto and surrendered to police. In time, he was released on bail with conditions from the Headingley Correctional Centre, which is located just west of Winnipeg off the Trans-Canada Highway, and returned to Montreal. Among the conditions: a $10,000 cash bond, no unsupervised contact with anyone under eighteen years of age, no contact with alleged victims, and weekly check-ins with police. He also had to surrender his passport.

On December 7, 2011, appearing in a Winnipeg courtroom via video link from Montreal, James pleaded guilty to three of the nine sexual assault charges that had involved three players from 1970 to 1994. He entered guilty pleas to charges involving two of the players: Fleury and another ex-player whose name had been protected by a publication ban, but who turned out to be Todd Holt, another former WHL player who is a cousin to Fleury. Holt, a five-foot-seven, 160-pounder, had played in Swift Current for five seasons, from 1989 to 1994.

As part of the plea bargain, the allegations made by Gilhooly were stayed. At that point, Gilhooly stepped forward to tell his story, and the publication ban that had protected him was lifted.

On March 20, 2012, James was sentenced to two years in prison and was led in handcuffs from a Winnipeg courtroom to begin serving his sentence.

In sentencing James, Manitoba provincial court Judge Catherine Carlson noted that “there is no sentence this court can impose that will give back to Mr. Holt and Mr. Fleury that which was taken from them by Mr. James. The court expects there is no sentence it can impose that the victims, and indeed many members of the public, will find satisfactory.”

She was correct.

“This sentence today is nothing short of a national travesty because we know that childhood abuse has reached epidemic proportions in our country,” said Holt, reading from a statement in Cochrane, Alberta. “Graham James is laughing all the way back to the life he has always led, knowing that justice for him is but a blip on the radar.”

The Crown had been asking for a sentence of six years; the defence asked for a conditional sentence as long as eighteen months but without jail time.