The Ottawa Journal from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • Page 114

DZ3CX3QCI OD ETJ31 It started with a black boy and a white boy playing hockey. It ended in death and bitterness By Dan Proudfoot THIS STORY is about two boys: Barrie Cobby who died February 18, 1973. and Paul Smithers, 18, who has-been through more than two years of court pro- ceedings as a.result It's about house league hockey, a game played for fun that often becomes something else about black and white boys not getting along as Canadians like to imagine; about frustration and temper and bitterness. There is no happy ending. J': Joyce and Don Smithers were married February 18, -1956, Joyce very much the blushing blonde, Don handsome and black, just in Toronto five years from Truro, Nova Scotia, Neither felt any conflict over the marriage which turned heads then and, indeed, still does.

So, except for a few incidents when looking for apartments, Joyce never really learned how some white Canadians view blacks until their, son, Paul, got into school and started excelling at sports. Brenda and Leonard Cobby left England in 1957 with Barrie, their second-born, a toddler. As he grew up in Canada, Barrie naturally took to hockey and lacrosse. At one point Len and Brenda were sure he was on the track that leads to the National Hockey League. But then the top calibre Dixie midget team dropped him and Barrie was content to play house league with his friends.

He had the firm ambition had discussed it fully with his steady girl, in fact to become a chartered accountant and had saved $600 for his education before he died. Paul and Barrie met in the 1972-73 hockey season, in the Mississauga Hockey League. Paul was the best player for Cooksville, a gangly left wing orcentre at 5-foot-ll and 160 pounds or so- Barrie was the best for Applewood, a S-foot-7. 175-poond centre. They met only four times, twice in league games, once in an all-star game, and then finally that Sunday, February 18.

Joyce Smithers still remembers-vividly Paul's first big blowup, when he was 12 and playing sand-lot-baseball in East York, ihe downtown part of Toronto where the family lived most of Paul's first 16 years. Paul was at bat, a good hitter. Some of the boys on the opposing bench started yelling, naturally, to ruin the batter's but they were yelling nigger, and when the boys' coach joined in, that's when Joyce got mad. She had heard the word before, but not like this. "I went right out into the middle of the diamond, and held up the game," says Joyce.

"I really embarrassed that coach, and then I went to the head of the baseball association. If the coach hadn't been yelling it would have blown right over because mosl of those kids were together all the time and no way was the name calling going to go on until the coach Rave his support. "You soon learn the kids get it from the adults, you know. When Paul was small and he'd be crying about Ihe names, we would never talk to the kids who did the name-calling, we'd go straight to the parents and ak them to slop it. It usually worked, too, but if it didn't.

we wouldn't bother going back and asking.