AS I SEE IT: What happened to the once courageous Theo Fleury?

Hockey fans of a certain vintage fondly remember Theo Fleury for a couple of big reasons. First, despite his small stature, he excelled at a time when the NHL was primarily a physical, ‘big boys’ league where players of smaller stature were rare.

I especially loved watching Fleury play for Canada internationally. The larger ice size gave him the room to showcase his prodigious offensive skills.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, hockey fans — myself included — looked up to Fleury for his courageous advocacy for victims of sexual abuse. Graham James went to jail for his sexual assaults of Fleury (and others), and Fleury showed tremendous bravery for publicly talking about the issue. It’s not easy for male professional athletes to admit being victims of sexual abuse, but to his credit, Fleury did.

In 2015 Brandon University gave Fleury an honourary degree for his laudable advocacy of survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

But in the intervening years something highly disturbing has happened to the Oxbow, Saskatchewan product.

It started with Fleury saying COVID wasn’t real, that it was a social experiment to tag kids. He questioned the legality of life-saving mandates. He made the outrageous accusation – twice – that Dr. Fauci, a man who has devoted 40 plus years saving human lives, of genocide.

Then in 2021, Fleury wrote the following on social media.

“With vaccine passports the pedophiles will know where your children are at all times.”

Last week Fleury responded to a disgusting “Deport Jagmeet Singh” tweet by writing it was “the best idea I’ve heard of in long time!!!”

It’s hard to find a more racist sentence in Canada, let alone from a once admired and respected former professional Canadian athlete. Jagmeet Singh was born in Scarborough, Ontario. He is just as Canadian as Fleury is and Theo knows it.

Fleury’s outrageous, unscientific, hateful and overtly racist screeds once again reveal the rot at the heart of modern conservatism.

Not only did Theo Fleury receive a ton of support for his racist tweet about Singh, but the recent re-election of he-who-shall-not-be-named – the singularly stupidest, most cruel and racist president in American history – has emboldened people across the continent to loudly and proudly proclaim their racism.

For many on the right, you no longer need facts, reality, truth, science, evidence or expertise. Emotions and feelings have won the day. We live in a post-truth world. In 2024 racism is a feature, not a bug, of American conservatism, which is increasingly being adopted by many right-wing Canadians.

Fleury is, sadly, part of that toxic rot.

If his Wikipedia page is correct, Fleury played for a Manitoba team in at least three different Allan Cups. I was there. You could feel the genuine sense of awe of seeing the world class Fleury play for Manitoba. It was beyond cool.

So to see someone you admired and looked up to say such hateful and dangerous and racist things is hard to process.

Fleury’s sad slide down so many conspiracy rabbit holes is difficult to watch. One commenter, likely representing many of Fleury’s fans across the country, accurately summed up his conflicted feelings about Fleury this way: “I love the player, love the survivor. The man on twitter is an idiot. It’s complicated.”