Minor hockey players practice at the Western Fair Sports Centre in London, Ont. Days earlier, five former members of the 2018 Canadian World Juniors team turned themselves in to local police in connection with an alleged sexual assault in the city.Brett Gundlock/The Globe and Mail
Sonya Battle sips on a drink at Deke’s Bar & Grill, a parental perch placed above the four hockey rinks at the Western Fair Sports Centre in London, Ont.
Peering down through the windows, she watches her 12-year-old son skate with the other players below. Hockey is a character-building sport that teaches skill and teamwork, she says, adding her 10-year-old son is also an avid player.
Children grow up fast, so Ms. Battle says she’s already initiating difficult conversations about avoiding peer pressure. “My number one thing I say to my boys whenever they’re leaving the house is, ‘You’re not just representing yourself, you’re representing this family – so don’t do anything that you wouldn’t want your grandparents to know about.’ ”
Five hockey players charged are charged with sexual assault: Alex Formenton, Cal Foote, Mike McLeod, Dillon Dubé and Carter Hart.The Canadian Press
One conversation she is struggling with, though, is around the news that five professional hockey players have been charged with sexual assault by London police, with the first court hearing in the case scheduled for Monday.
London adores hockey. The fast-growing centre, which has more than 500,000 people in the city and its environs, has produced more than its share of star players. One of them, Montreal Canadien Nick Suzuki, plays in the NHL’s all-star game this weekend. The city also rallies around the London Knights, a junior-hockey team owned by former NHLers that is a perpetual contender for the Canada Hockey League championship.
But with the criminal case about to enter the city’s downtown courthouse complex – located across the street from Budweiser Gardens, its largest arena – a darker side of junior hockey is taking centre stage.
Posters at Budweiser Gardens celebrate the history of London's junior-hockey team, the Knights. They have called the stadium home since 2002, when it was the John Labatt Centre.
A few blocks east of the stadium is the hotel where, according to a woman known in court documents as E.M., she was sexually assaulted in one of the rooms in 2018.Brett Gundlock/The Globe and Mail
The charges, filed in the Ontario Court of Justice this week, go back to June 19, 2018. In the early hours of that morning, a woman alleges she was sexually assaulted inside a room at London’s Delta Armouries hotel by a group of players from Canada’s 2018 world junior hockey team. The alleged attack occurred on the same weekend as the Hockey Canada Foundation Gala & Golf event, which celebrated the then- 18- and 19-year-old gold-medal-winning squad.
Lawyers for the accused – Dillon Dubé, Alex Formenton, Cal Foote, Carter Hart and Michael McLeod – have all released statements saying their clients deny any wrongdoing and they will vigorously defend themselves against the allegations.
Mr. Formenton arrives at London police headquarters on Jan. 18 with lawyers Daniel Brown and Lindsay Board.Nicole Osborne/The Globe and Mail
For one of the players, Mr. Formenton, the case has brought him back to the city where his career took off as a leader of the city’s beloved Knights.
“I was honoured to be assistant captain for two years in London,” Mr. Formenton told a European newspaper just last month. At the time, he was being profiled as a former NHLer who had recently joined the Swiss National League – after failing to reach a new contract agreement with the Ottawa Senators. Mr. Formenton spoke fondly of the London family that lodged him as a junior hockey player, and about how their child wore his jersey.
Nazem Kadri of the Colorado Avalanche hoists the Stanley Cup at his hometown mosque in London in 2022.Carlos Osorio/Reuters
One hometown hero, Nazem Kadri, is changing the face of hockey in a positive way. In 2022, the NHLer hoisted the Stanley Cup at the London Muslim Mosque.
Mr. Kadri’s father immigrated to London from war-torn Lebanon, and his son has since challenged the stereotype that elite Canadian hockey players must hail from white and wealthy families. Mr. Kadri’s gesture of inclusion resonated all the more in London, given that the city was then still reeling from the 2021 killing of four members of a Muslim family by a white nationalist. The convicted murderer is set to be sentenced later this month, a long-awaited moment that will cap off that high-profile trial – just as another one approaches on the horizon.
Jack’s Bar, where a court document filed as part of the police investigation alleges is where one of the accused met the woman on the night of the alleged group sex assault, is located only steps away from the Victoria Park outdoor rink, a venue where families go to skate. There, earlier this week, Brittany Murray, a mother of five, was watching her children race across the ice sheet; only her baby did not have any skates on.
Hockey has been a great activity for her young family, she said, but she recalls how the elite teenaged players revelled in their status when she went to high school in London. “You saw the hockey culture. It was public – ‘puck bunnies’ and all that kind of stuff,” Ms. Murray said, referring to the familiar term used by teenaged players for female fans as supposed groupies.
Back at the Western Fair Sports Centre, Sonya Battle says she is concerned about the woman who alleges she was assaulted. The hockey mom says that for her, the case is also about more than the guilt or innocence of these specific players. It’s about whether young men and women know to stand up as individuals.
“You should know right from wrong,” she said. “And how your actions have a direct correlation to things that you want to do – and accomplish.”
The net slumps into the snow at a melting skating rink in London.Brett Gundlock/The Globe and Mail
Hockey scandal in London: More from The Globe and Mail
Five hockey players are headed to court in London, Ont., next week to face charges of sexual assault. Globe reporter Robyn Doolittle spoke with The Decibel about their legal saga and the woman, dubbed E.M., at the centre of it. Subscribe for more episodes.
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