Dead Ends (7 page)

It wasn't surprising Brashear was a fighter. His childhood was grim. He was born in Indiana, with an African-American father and a mother from Quebec. He was abused and beaten, abandoned for a time by his mother, and ended up in foster care in Quebec. He discovered hockey, and sold bread and garbage bags door-to-door and delivered papers to cover the costs. The toughest
NHL
bad man wasn't likely to scare him after his real-life battles.

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*
  
*

The Bruins and Canucks were both struggling to make the playoffs when they played on February 21.

McSorley thought his team seemed listless, and needed a spark. Two minutes into the game, he decided to provoke a fight with Brashear, the Canucks' enforcer. That was part of his job.

McSorley cross-checked Brashear from behind, a challenge. The two threw off their gloves and started fighting.
Brashear—twelve years younger and bigger—won, finishing with a powerful body punch that left McSorley in obvious pain and then tossing him to the ice. The Canucks' fans loved it.

Enforcers know they'll lose fights. They trade punches with other big, strong, and skilled brawlers, whose livelihoods depend on their ability to inflict pain.

But losers have to show they aren't intimidated. That they still are the intimidator, still ready to battle.

After the fight, Brashear broke one of the rules in hockey's mysterious, unwritten code of conduct, skating past the Boston bench and dusting off his hands as Canucks' fans cheered. Showing up your fellow combatant is bad.

So McSorley had at least two reasons for wanting a rematch. Ten minutes later, he cross-checked Brashear, knocking him to the ice, then shoved at him several times, grabbed his sweater, and refused to back off when the linesman intervened and the fans screamed for action.

“Come on, Don, you have to fight me again,” McSorley challenged.

“No Marty, I'm not going to fight you,” Brashear said. “We're beating you four-nothing.” (The first-name friendliness is a reminder that hockey violence, particularly between enforcers, is usually just business.)

McSorley's attempt hurt his team, as he received a pair of two-minute penalties and a ten-minute misconduct. While he was off the ice, Brashear fell on Bruins goalie Byron Dafoe during a melee, and Dafoe left the game clutching his knee. Another violation of the code.

Later, after another Bruin was penalized for slashing Brashear, he taunted the Bruins again, striking a muscleman pose on the bench.

With a minute to go, the Bruins were ahead five to two. McSorley was sitting on the bench, waiting for the buzzer.

But with about twenty seconds left, Boston assistant coach Jacques Laperriere ordered him on the ice.

The order was clear, McSorley said. Fight Brashear again. (Laperriere was not known as a fighter in his long career with
the Montreal Canadiens, and quit his first coaching job in junior hockey because of the goon tactics dominating the Quebec league.)

Brashear didn't want to fight, and actively avoided McSorley.

McSorley wanted to do his job, and maybe boost his team's confidence. Time was running out. So he decided to slash Brashear to provoke an unavoidable confrontation.

With three seconds left, he hit Brashear in the side of the head with a two-handed swing. The Canuck's helmet flew off, and he fell unconscious to the ice, striking his head. He lay unconscious, legs splayed, eyes open, experiencing a seizure as fans booed and threw trash, trainers rushed to his aid, and the players on the ice brawled. The concussion kept him from any physical activity for a month.

The fight was over on the ice. Off the ice, it was just beginning.

The
NHL
always argued that hockey existed in a separate world and criminal laws should not apply. The leagues would use suspensions or fines to keep order. Players would impose their own violent retribution on those who broke the unwritten code that defined acceptable and unacceptable violence. It had been twelve years since Minnesota's Dino Ciccarelli was sentenced to one day in jail and fined $1,000 for hitting Toronto defenceman Luke Richardson several times in the head with his stick.

Vancouver Canucks' general manager Brian Burke, even though his player Brashear could have been killed, said police should stay out of it. “Leave this stuff on the ice; leave it to the National Hockey League,” he told a radio station. “We don't need the Vancouver police department or the
RCMP
involved in this.”

CBC
commentator Don Cherry said the head shot was wrong, but Brashear caused the problem by ridiculing McSorley. “If you want to play with a bull, you're going to get the horns.”

McSorley quickly apologized and said he hadn't meant to hit Brashear in the head. “I embarrassed my hockey team,” he said. “I got way too carried away. It was a real dumb play.”

But the devastating video had been seen by millions, and the league suspended McSorley for a year, the longest suspension in its history.

Police and British Columbia Crown prosecutors didn't back off. And on September 26, McSorley walked into a Vancouver provincial court with his two lawyers to face a charge of assault with a weapon.

Both McSorley and the
NHL
'
S
culture of violence were on trial.

Especially the unwritten code that, despite the official rules, sanctioned slashing and fighting and brawls in some circumstances.

McSorley's defence team advanced two arguments.

First, that slashing is accepted, under the unwritten code of conduct, as a way to start a fight. Brashear knew that, and thus implicitly consented to being hit with a hockey stick, even with a blow aimed inches from his head.

Second, that McSorley had swung his stick at Brashear's shoulder, not his head. His only offence was inaccuracy.

A parade of hockey celebrities testified. The referee, Brad Watson, and linesman Michael Cvik described their practice in enforcing both the rules and hockey's unwritten code.

Brashear was a sullen, monosyllabic witness. He acknowledged he did not consent to be hit in the head, but made it clear he didn't want to be in court and didn't think McSorley should be either.

And McSorley, with his friend Gretzky there to provide support, said he was sorry, but insisted he hadn't been angry and hadn't meant to hit “Donald” in the head. He was sent out to fight, Brashear was reluctant, and a two-handed slash to the shoulder was an accepted way to force the issue.

Judge Bill Kitchen called McSorley “bright and articulate” and “a likeable personality.”

But he wasn't convinced McSorley had missed his target.

“He slashed for the head. A child, swinging as at a Tee ball, would not miss. A housekeeper swinging a carpet beater would not miss. An
NHL
player would never, ever miss. Brashear was
struck as intended,” Kitchen said. “Mr. McSorley, I must find you guilty as charged.”

“Everyone must understand that this type of violence won't be tolerated, either on a street or in a hockey arena.”

Hockey wasn't on trial, said Kitchen, a fan. But McSorley's slash to the head should prompt fans and players to consider the role of violence in the game.

“There is work to be done,” he suggested. “The game deserves it.”

McSorley never played in the
NHL
again, but worked as a minor-league coach,
TV
commentator, and sometimes actor, including a role on
CSI: Miami
.

Brashear played another nine seasons, fought 160 more times, and was paid another $12.8 million before his
NHL
career as an enforcer came to an end.

P
oor Bob McLelland. The popular provincial cabinet minister was a little drunk when he picked up the phone in his Chateau Victoria hotel room and called Top Hat Productions.

The name suggested a film company. But Top Hat offered different, more specialized, entertainment.

McLelland asked if a “girl” could be sent to his room, how much it would cost, and—unfortunately—if he could pay with his Visa card.

Arlie Blakely, the forty-two-year-old mom who ran Top Hat, happily obliged.

Neither of them knew, on that February night in 1985, that Victoria police,
RCMP
, and prosecutors had launched an extraordinary effort to bust Blakely, with wiretaps, surveillance, and spy cameras pushing the boundaries of privacy laws.

McLelland's $130 tryst landed him in the middle of the mess. Even though he had broken no law, since paying for sex was, and is, legal in Canada.

McLelland was a terrifically popular Social Credit
MLA
from Langley. He had served thirteen years in the legislature and held some of the toughest cabinet portfolios. He even finished second in the 1973 party leadership race that crowned Bill Bennett as the successor to his father, the legendary W. A. C. Bennett.

Twice married, the father of two children, McLelland was handsome, with dark hair, tanned skin, and an easy smile. His resonant voice betrayed his past work as a radio announcer.

He had style and liked to have fun. For the Socred's giant final rally for the 1975 election campaign, McLelland entered the Vancouver arena riding an elephant named Tina, despite party honchos' fears of the havoc an out-of-control elephant could wreak on the crowd of supporters.

After his night with the escort, McLelland headed off the next morning—February 27—to Government House, where he was sworn into a new cabinet post by the lieutenant-governor.

He had no idea that everyone would soon be talking about his night of paid sex.

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On May 6, Crown prosecutors charged Blakely with nineteen prostitution-related offences—procuring illicit sex, aiding and abetting, and living off the avails of prostitution. While prostitution itself was and is legal, all the activities around it are against the law.

She went out the next day and hired a feisty young lawyer, Robert Moore-Stewart.

As the charges hit the news, rumours about the huge police operation and high-profile clients started sweeping through the city. Victoria was a company town, and government was the company. Politicians and government employees made up a large part of the population. Gossip travelled fast.

Moore-Stewart planned to use the most obvious defence.

Blakely was just arranging appointments, he would argue. She didn't know what McLelland and the other clients got for their $130. She was simply answering the phone and arranging meetings.

When he learned police had found Bob McLelland's Visa slip in the Top Hat files, Moore-Stewart saw an opportunity.

He talked to Blakely and the escort who had sex with McLelland, and decided the cabinet minister could be a helpful defence witness.

McLelland could testify that sex was never discussed with Blakely, supporting the argument that she was just arranging a meeting. The rest was up to the escort and the client.

And it almost certainly crossed Moore-Stewart's mind that Crown prosecutors might be a little reluctant to pursue a case if a cabinet minister was going to be embarrassed on the witness stand.

Meanwhile, the buzz of rumours about high-profile clients was becoming a roar, with lightly veiled references to politicians paying for Top Hat sex in a popular newspaper column. Tales of a list of prominent clients and special protection for the powerful by police and prosecutors spread through the city.

Reporters called Moore-Stewart throughout that summer, sharing what they had heard and pumping him for information. Prosecutors and police spokesmen and politicians stuck to a terse no-comment policy.

Moore-Stewart heard another cabinet minister, Terry Segarty, had been with McLelland earlier that evening.

He decided to go before a justice of the peace and obtain subpoenas to call Segarty and McLelland as defence witnesses at the November trial.

He had to move quickly.
MLAS
could ignore subpoenas served less than forty days before a scheduled legislative sitting, and the Socreds had announced a fall session. (The law was intended to prevent unscrupulous political parties from using subpoenas to deplete the ranks of their opponents. It was a legitimate concern in the days when travel by horse or coach could take days, but an anachronism in 1985.)

The justice of the peace accepted Moore-Stewart's statement that he believed the two ministers might have useful information and issued the warrants.

But the case was sensitive. No leaks, he warned courthouse staff. Absolutely none.

He got home that evening, turned on the
TV
, and saw that the subpoenas were already big, big news. Moore-Stewart was the most likely source.

It was an intriguing tactic, if Moore-Stewart was behind the leak. Send the message that the trial wouldn't just focus on Arlie Blakely's escort business. The clients, perhaps police and prosecutors, could all face unwelcome attention and uncomfortable questions.

And there were uncomfortable questions. The police had spent $50,000 on the investigation. They had drilled holes through motel walls and, without a search warrant, videotaped hours of activity—sex—in the next room.

Officers spent eight weeks capturing wiretap recordings and videos and keeping up a massive surveillance effort. They threatened clients—testify against Blakely, or the videos of your paid sex will be shown in court.

And they had singled out Top Hat, even though there were a half-dozen escort agencies advertising in the Yellow Pages and Victoria newspapers.

All to charge one mom with minor offences.

And the prosecutors, despite eight weeks of surveillance, chose to lay charges relating to one week—February 14 to February 21. The time frame excluded McLelland's order for a “girl.” Why so few charges, people wondered in the coffee shops and at the cocktail parties, and why pick that one week? Who were the clients in the other seven weeks of surveillance?