SOLID AS LAROCQUE
FROM DECEMBER 2019 ISSUE OF WEST END PHOENIX
Team Canada anchor and the first Indigenous woman ever to play hockey at the Olympics, Jocelyne Larocque came of age in the sport with few peers and a burning determination to make an impact
Jocelyn Larocque is a veteran hockey player from Sainte-Anne, Manitoba (population 2,114). She’s 31 years old and the kind of player that, whenever she touches the puck, her team breathes. What happens next is usually something they’ve learned from a chalkboard diagram: go there, not there, and the puck will arrive because Larocque will get it to you. In a game where the action can spin wildly like a set of clock hands in a movie, Larocque skates inexorably. The game flows at her pace, rather than the other way around.
Larocque is tall and broadly built, with generous eyes that flare, when required, into hot cinder points. She is Team Canada’s jagged anchor and veteran of two Olympics, the last of which saw her remove her silver medal by its ribbon moments after it was slung around her neck in the wake of Team USA’s OT victory. Larocque, who is Métis, is also the first Indigenous woman to compete in hockey at the Olympics. “I didn’t find out about it until someone from the network told me live during an on-air interview,” she says, astonished at the memory. “I was speechless. I always thought my proudest moment would be playing in the Olympics, but this was bigger than anything else.”
Some of professional hockey’s greatest players have had Indigenous roots: New York Islander Bryan Trottier (Val Marie, Sask.) is one of the greatest two-way players in NHL history; Flyer Reggie Leach (Riverton, Man.) won multiple Cups and is one of the most explosive scorers in post-season history; and Hab Carey Price (Anaheim Lake, B.C.) has been the league’s best goaltender for the past 10 years. But their stories – and the stories of other First Nations athletes – are often buried beneath the colonial history of the game. If this is true of the men’s game, history is twice as neglectful when it comes to women’s hockey, which, until recently, was a footnote at the back of the sports section. The recognition of female hockey players is only now resulting in waves of young women playing. There was very little representation when Larocque was growing up, short of a few local heroes, or rumours of better players farther away.
Despite being female and small for her age, Larocque was determined to make an impact in the game. It didn’t help that she was skating in the shadow of her uncle – who passed away when he was 19 and whose sweater hangs in the town’s community centre – and her sister, Chantal, who was a powerful skater. “I knew my Métis background and my Métis history at a young age,” she says. “My dad is Métis and he made sure I knew where I came from. He taught me the Seven Sacred Teachings, and he and my mom made sure I took pride in who I was. We used to look at a scrapbook with pictures of my dad’s grandfather and his great-grandfather. They were all around me – strong people, determined people – and it helped when I finally decided what I wanted to do.”
The year she turned 13, Larocque grew five inches. “That was a game changer. I made the A team and was so proud, and I remember shaking when I broke the news to my parents. Unlike some kids, who get awkward when they grow, the stronger my body was, the more my confidence built. I really took off.” This resulted in a move as a 16-year-old to Calgary, where she played in a women’s program that featured a host of stars in their relative twilight, including Hayley Wickenheiser and Danielle Goyette. Larocque lived with her aunt, “so it wasn’t as hard as it could have been, but [Team Canada defender] Cassie Campbell was really good to me, too. If I wasn’t having a great day, she’d ask what was wrong. If I needed lifting up, she’d take me out for coffee. If things were getting too intense, she’d make everyone laugh. She taught me how to be a professional.”
Larocque broke through playing Division One college hockey at the University of Minnesota Duluth at a time when the women’s game was exploding across the U.S., and in 2018 she won the Clarkson Cup with the Markham Thunder, a professional team that featured three Indigenous women, including Brigette Lacquette and Jamie Lee Rattray. Not nearly enough has been made of this milestone, perhaps a reminder that women’s hockey still isn’t front-page news. But the fact that three elite female hockey players with Indigenous roots were the stars of a league-winning team is a substantial achievement, a signal that change is coming to a game that has been traditionally resistant to any kind of ripple in its waters.
The Thunder, like every other team in the CWHL, has since shuttered its operations to give way to a prospective new women’s pro hockey league – currently a work-in-progress, with no clear leadership or timetable for launch – leaving Larocque and hundreds of other players without work or a regular team. But Larocque found a way through it, using the opportunity to start a business with two friends, opening a gym in a local Hamilton rink, where she can be on the ice seven days a week, and take time to train with the national team at regular intervals. “It’s a lot easier to get time off when you don’t have to ask your boss if it’s okay,” she says, laughing into the phone. “I mean, I want to stay on top of it, stay in good shape.”
The laughter ends.
“I want to keep my spot.”