Quebec nurse had to clean up after husband's death in Montreal hospital
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
As arguably the greatest women’s hockey player of all time, Hayley Wickenheiser spent two decades carving up the ice, racking up Olympic medals and handling the challenges that professional sports had to offer her.
Now her accomplishments include graduating from medical school and achieving an M.D. during a global pandemic, all while still working in player development with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Wickenheiser, speaking to CTV News Channel on Sunday about her new book ‘Over the Boards: Lessons from the Ice’, acknowledged that it sounds like a lot when you lay it all out.
“But it’s just really the evolution of my life,” she said. “I had a long career — 23 years — in hockey, and then like most athletes, that ends and you have to figure out what you’re going to do next with your life.
“It was a very natural progression for me to go into medicine,” she added.
She said that anyone who has known her since she was “about 10 years old” would’ve known that she wanted eventually to go into medicine
“Spent as much time in the training room with the doctors and trainers as I did in the dressing room, probably,” she said.
Wickenheiser is known best for her historic run as a hockey player, achieving four Olympic gold medals with Canada’s women’s team and seven World Championship gold medals.
She was also the first woman to play full-time professional men’s hockey in a position other than goalie.
Wickenheiser officially retired from playing hockey in 2017, but she didn’t slow down from there. In 2018, she was hired as the assistant director of player development for the Toronto Maple Leafs, while also making her way through medical school.
But what she couldn’t expect was that just as her journey as a medical student was coming to an end, a huge curveball was just around the corner: COVID-19.
“Like everybody in this country and around the world, in the span of about 24 hours, 20 months ago, my life as I knew it was over,” Wickenheiser said. “I was pulled out of my last rotation as a medical student, just finishing up school, because they were worried about lack of PPE. I was working in the NHL, commuting between Calgary and Toronto for the Leafs, and that suddenly stopped, and so I found myself just sort of sitting, thinking ‘what am I going to do?’”
But giving up wasn’t an option. Wickenheiser was dedicated to continuing her career in medicine, despite having to start her residency at the height of the pandemic.
Understanding the weight of the situation, she even helped head an initiative in 2020 to try and help front-line workers across Canada get personal protective equipment.
“When we went back into the hospital for our rotations, I was coming home everyday and have a 21-year-old son who is crippled with anxiety over ‘Mom, please don’t kill Grandma and Grandpa”, because my Mom and Dad live right next door to us,” she said. “So there was that sort of fear at the start of the pandemic.”
She now works in the emergency department at a Toronto hospital, and says that the struggles she went through in her career as a hockey player helped to strengthen her for this type of stress.
When Wickenheiser first started playing hockey as a young girl in Saskatchewan, she played exclusively on boys’ teams and had to change clothes in places like the boiler room because there was no locker room for her.
“As a young kid growing up, I didn’t know any differently, so it was just like, this is what you’re going to have to endure if you want to play the game,” she said. “Now that I look back, I’m grateful for all of the adversity that I have had through my career and my life, just because I feel like I’ve developed a lot of resiliency and ability to cope with difficult things, with criticism.
“When you’re going through medicine, you hit your residency, every day you go into work, someone’s telling you something to do better or what you’re doing wrong, and if you aren’t able to handle that it can be a soul-crushing experience.”
She added that she is glad that the sport has come farther now, and that young girls no longer have the same hoops to jump through that she did.
“You can walk in a rink with a bag and a stick over your shoulder and nobody’s looking twice like they did when I played the game, so it’s come a long way,” she said.
Wickenheiser said that the high-pressure situation of a hockey game was not so different from working in the medical field.
“It’s the same kind of pressures. The stakes are much higher in the hospital for sure, when you have people’s lives in your hands, but everything I learned in sport I use every single day in the hospital,” she said.
Since the pandemic started, Wickenheiser has been promoted to senior director of player development for the Leafs, continuing to juggle her work with the team with her medical work.
Her new book detailing her journey came out earlier this week. And her current, ongoing goal? Helping to campaign for Canadians to get their shot.
“Everyone: get vaccinated, and then we’ll get through this,” she said.
It's just one more mission for this unstoppable Canadian.
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
A North Bay, Ont., lawyer who abandoned 15 clients – many of them child protection cases – has lost his licence to practise law.
Members of the Bank of Canada's governing council were split on how long the central bank should wait before it starts cutting interest rates when they met earlier this month.
Brad Marchand scored twice, including the winner in the third period, and added an assist as the Boston Bruins downed the Toronto Maple Leafs 4-2 to take a 2-1 lead in their first-round playoff series Wednesday
Cuba's foreign affairs minister has apologized to a Montreal-area family after they were sent the wrong body following the death of a loved one.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
The federal government's proposed change to capital gains taxation is expected to increase taxes on investments and mainly affect wealthy Canadians and businesses. Here's what you need to know about the move.
Canada's Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was among the 1,700 delegates attending the two-day First Nations Major Projects Coalition (FNMPC) conference that concluded Tuesday in Toronto.
The daughter of a New Brunswick man recently exonerated from murder, is remembering her father as somebody who, despite a wrongful conviction, never became bitter or angry.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.