Head Tale

On Dec 4, just before the December 6 anniversary of the Ecole Polytechnique Massacre, longtime Montreal Canadiens goalie, Carey Price, waded into the gun control debate with a poorly timed tweet defending his rights as a hunter and attacking the most recent changes to gun control legislation by the Justin Trudeau government.

In his initial tweet (pictured above), Price mentioned a pro-gun group which had used the promo code “Poly” as a reference to the massacre in their marketing.  This caused Price to later walk back that aspect of his tweet.

The next day, the Montreal Canadiens released a statement defending their star player and saying that Price didn’t think of the timing of his tweet in relation to the massacre (though some took this explanation to mean he didn’t know about the massacre at all with fans defending him by saying “He was two at the time” as if playing in Montreal for as long as he has, or really living anywhere in Canada, where this tragedy is mentioned on an annual basis, is unlikely…unless you choose to ignore it completely.

Statement from the Montreal Canadiens pic.twitter.com/JoVuiSvR75

— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) December 6, 2022

There are lots of interconnected issues being raised by this situation – Price’s personal reputation (generally seen as a “good guy but also a very private family man“), his Indigenous heritage and how that relates to hunting, arguments about whether the gun he was pictured with in the original tweet would even be banned or not, Price’s own mental health and addictions history which he has also spoken openly about, violence against women, the role of celebrities who speak out on contentious issues (especially hockey players in Canada), the rise of American-style gun lobbying in Canada, etc.

Although it was later clarified, I found the defence that Price might not have known about the massacre very telling.  Not just because he’s a “jock” but more of a general trend I’ve noticed where lots of people, even those who are highly educated, don’t seem to have a lot of awareness about the goings on in the world in terms of news, politics, history and so on.

I’ve even heard people who admit happily that they *don’t* follow the news at all because it “depresses” them.  I get that – often the news is depressing and it can be hard on your mental health or your worries about the future or your kids’ futures or whatever.

But I don’t think ignoring reality is a good idea either.  I always remember an RN colleague of Shea’s who told her  “I could never go downtown in Regina – my kids might <gasp> see a…homeless person!”

I don’t think she was afraid of the homeless person (maybe?) so much as she was afraid of having a difficult conversation with her kids about why people are homeless, addictions, mental health, intergenerational trauma and so on.

No one is an instant expert and it takes work and time to learn and understand these complicated issues.  And that work is never perfect and it never stops.  For any of us.

But it’s still better to attempt to understand the world, think critically about events, and process as best you can, how and why things happen, rather than sticking your head in the sand and pretending things don’t happen – scary things, tragic things, horrific things.