Ted Nolan, first Indigenous head coach in the NHL, talks perseverance

Ted Nolan, former NHLer and the first Indigenous person to be an NHL head coach, spoke in Sudbury on Friday ahead of National Indigenous Peoples Day.

On Friday at Laurentian University, there was an event to celebrate National Indigenous Peoples Day, which is being celebrated on Saturday.

The keynote speaker was Ted Nolan, a former NHL player and the first Indigenous person to be an NHL head coach.

Nolan, who is from the Garden River First Nation, shared stories about resilience and perseverance.

The former NHL coach of the year shared a story about how his father, who died when he was just 16, taught him to “work with what you got.”

“Hardships that I faced in growing up with a lack of materialistic things in order to play and then the lack of acceptance when you tried to play,” Nolan said.

He shared stories about challenges he’s faced, including racism, discrimination and battling multiple myeloma. His mother was killed by a drunk driver when he was 20 years old. Nolan said he hit a dark place in his life when his pro coaching career came to an abrupt end.

“The rumours started percolating and a lot of them were derogatory statements about our people -- drinking and lazy and those types of things that probably hurt the most versus losing the job,” said Nolan.

Key principles

Through it all, he said he follows some key principles.

“Perseverance word always sticks with me,” Nolan said.

“We gotta’ learn to fight through it and eventually you are gonna’ find that one person and that’s all you need sometimes. Just that one person who believes in you.”

Laurentian University presented Nolan with an Anishnaabe medallion for his message about resilience.

“It’s not always right to just share our trauma,” said Dominic Beaudry, LU’s vice-president of Academic and Indigenous Programs.

“We also need to begin to share some of the success stories and some of the leaders in our community and I believe Ted Nolan is an exceptional leader and wanted to ensure his story was shared here.”

Nolan said his coaching philosophy is that everyone deserves equal respect. It’s a message he hopes resonates with people on National Indigenous Peoples Day -- and every day.