The Ottawa Journal from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • Page 119

"It has affected lis all," said Mrs. Cobby. "Brett here, was threatened at school. We got anonymous phone calls." Brett, who remembers Barrie telling him some big black was bugging him game after game, explains his own threat "It was some cool cat from grade 13, just saying something in the hall. They're all the same thing, they think they're so good." Mr.

Cobby: "Why, do you know that I got a copy of the story the Star printed about Barrie, mailed to me with 'Bullshit' scrawled across the top, and 'He learned his prejudice at home, signed. Another The Cobbvs are considerina movine back to Ens- land. Meantime, they're noticeably absent from hockey activities of any kind. "No longer any interest in hockey, no," says the father. "Hockey has cost us dearly." Paul mitheirc iwiwmlwR nrtt hnnfl ahl tn (loAn Still, Paul expected the appeal to fail, and the family stance as it waited for the much postponed appeal to- come up was that even if it was successful it wouldn't make up for the impact the case has had on Paul's life.

By fall, 1974, with the appeal still upcoming, the Smithers had started to lose faith in Maloney, suspecting the great criminal lawyer had been too conservative to make racism the issue it should have been. Maloney, for his part, had been confident of success in the trial itself, after he had a doctor testify that Barrie Cobby's death due to asphyxiation wasn't necessarily caused by Paul's kick. On May 7, the Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal. Maloney immediately filed an appeal with the Supreme Court of Canada. So no one is satisfied.

Courts, after all, don't guarantee satisfaction. They only dispose of crimes for society in a formal, civilized way. The courts and the Crown went on to other cases while the people around Barrie Cobby's death grew more and more bitter. The Cobbys, for their part, found it impossible to believe as the months rolled on, Barrie dead and Paul apparently living a normal life. They were shocked, for instance, when they heard late in the fall of 1973 that Paul and some friends were renting the Cawthra rink once a week for shinny.

"How could he go back there, even if it had been an accident," Brenda says. "Thafs when I sent the Christmas card." The card arrived in the mail, at the Smithers' home, just before Christmas, 1973, and contained this handwritten verse: So fovea' fie sleeps so profoundly So young unworn by the strife While near him full of hopes nectar Stood the goblet of life His future crushed o'er it came to bloom By a hand that he doth know That they are marked for eternal doom He waits for the death that you owe. It was signed, Barrie's mother. Civility between the families had disappeared following the last formality between them, Mr. and Mrs.

Smithers' visit to the funeral home to pay their respects, after a telephone call from Mrs. Cobby asking them to come. "He just showed no remorse, that's what upset us so," Mrs. Cobby says. "He came out of that preliminary hearing one day, laughing and joking, and I said to my husband, 'He just shows no remorse at all, I'm going to drive around to their And Mrs.

Cobby parked near the Smithers' house and just sat there, watching coolly. Both families still lived in Mississauga at the time, although both have moved since to nearby communities. Mrs. Smithers, frightened, called her lawyer and eventually there were no more contacts with Mrs. Cobby.

Mrs. Cobby's nerves were burnt, and still are. She has been on medication since Barrie's death. She says she tried going back to her part-time job, but it was no good and she hasn't worked since. Through all the court proceedings, Len Cobby had the galling experience of helping produce thousands of words a day, as a pressman with The Toronto Star, that he thought to be unfair to his dead son.

Finally the Cobbys complained and the Star sent a reporter to write a story about their side of things, but it didn't take away the hurt Oh, the reporter talked to a black friend of Barrie's they sent him to, and the impression came out that perhaps Barrie hadn't meant so much with his usage of the word nigger. "I am colored and I got along fine with him' Larry Robin- after Barrie died, slumbering only to jerk awake with a vision of Barrie. And driving at night the summer after the tragedy, he would spot Barrie at the side of the road staring out of the darkness at him. He often gets twinges, just hearing the word "kill" or "murder" and, to his day, he says he feels strange walking around Mississauga if, for instance, he goes there to visit an old friend. "What I may need," he says, "is a year away from everything to get to know myself." His mother, a week later, says he's thinking he might try to continue school so he can stay at home.

He played juvenile hockey for nearby and mostly it has been fine, nice and rough but with nothing racial most of the time. "I'm not fighting any more, I just don't have it in me to do it. I still have a bad temper, I won't deny that, but the fighting isn't in me any more." Paul's personal record for the season included more than 40 goals, no fights and four days in the hospital after an incident that was purely accidental. A teammate's stick, raised after a goal, 'caught him in the eye, and the time in the hospital bed was necessary to clear the inflammation. Some day Paul Smithers may have a son of his own.

"I don't know what I would tell him. I wouldn't want him to be a suck, I wouldn't want him to try fighting the world. I'd want him to accept being black like there was a time when I was 13 or 14 when I didn't want to be black, I couldn't accept the idea, and I have a young cousin going through the same thing right now. He's really light, lighter even than me, but I tell him 'It doesn't matter what color you are, if you're black, you're and he won't listen. If he doesn't learn ifs going to be really tough for him, going through the same things I had to go through." Paul Smithers laughs when he encounters a white, girl, out on their first date maybe, asking him about being a black militant.

As long as people remember Barrie Cobby, Paul realizes he's going to be known as all sorts of things he doesn't believe he is. "How do I think of it?" he says. "As the freakiest son told the Star. "Oh, sure, he called me a nigger and things like that But it was only joking. And when someone is playing hockey and he is checked by a colored guy and hurt, it is only natural to call him a nigger." Mrs.

Cobby: "You see, it doesn't matter to us what color Smithers is, he killed our boy. The papers, oh, they made me ill the way they turned things around. One paper quoted Marilyn Dickson as testifying she heard Barrie call Smithers a stupid nigger, when actually it was 'Ifs only a game, play hockey you stupid nigger Now to me thafs the key phrase, it shows Barrie only wanted to get down to playing hockey, and Smithers wouldn't let him. But everything was turned around in' the papers to make Smithers look good." Mr. Cobby: "It was so slanted.

I mean, we know one of the jurors, she lives near here, who said she knew after two or three days of the trial that the -'Black Baskef was guilty. But anybody reading the papers bloody well wouldn't have been able to come to that conclusion." Mrs. Cobby: "We didn't actually know this lady on the jury, it was nothing improper at all, but she's a cashier at a food store and one of my friends was talking to her about the case." Mrs. Cobby: "Did you hear about young Smithers getting three standing ovations at one of the black rallies? Did they think that by killing a white boy he had done something wonderful for them all?" Mr. Cobby: "Apparently they think they can fight differently.

At the races at Woodbine I saw a fight, one white guy and a whole gang of blacks, and one leaped in and took a kick at the white guy I mean, is mis how they fight? To us the lowest thing a man can do in a fight is kicking." Barrie Cobby hated fighting, perhaps, but the chippy Mississauga house league hockey brought it out in him. Smithers' teammates remember Barrie Cobby as being as chippy and foulmouthed as any player on a chippy, foulmouthed Applewood team. "Paul does have a temper," says Rick Bailey, the goaltender on Smithers' Cooksville team the night Barrie died, "there's no denying that But I would be fighting the same as him if I took what he has to take. I'm no fighter, either, I never fight, but I know I would have done the same as him. It just came to a head, he took so much." i The Cobbys and their three surviving sons now want to live as a normal family.

They wonder if they can, as long as reporters are calling, or perhaps as long as there's anything to remind them. of freaks. I'm sorry Barrie died, but, to this day, I'm not sorry what I did." So this long, long story ends as it began, with bitterness. Dan Proudfoot is a Toronto writer. His most recent article in weekend Magazine was on the circus.

WEEKEND MAGAZINE nwin mm in. imm (Mm ktt tmm: M1BWM IMr JOMI MtSUFni MimiwriMiitrTiMiim iiiiwiii I (umiiini I nwrmtmm. nm iiu.n 8 WMkand Mmuhm. July 12, WIS.