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“Hockey is as important for [the children of Nunavik] as it is for those growing up in Montreal. They might actually love it more here than the kids down south.”
As any hockey fan will tell you, the most exciting part of any game usually takes place during the third period. The same can be said for Joé Juneau's life so far.
Following a journeyman career in the NHL and a post-hockey stint as an engineer, the former centre made an unexpected career change—teaching hockey and life skills to children in Nunavik. For the past two years, the Quebec-born Juneau has been living and working in the Inuit homeland located on the upper third of the province where he oversees an innovative youth education program.
The philosophy of the program is simple: The students get to play organized hockey with a pro as long as they go to school, obey their teachers and get good grades. It’s a simple idea that has become a smashing success.
“Hockey is as important for [the children of Nunavik] as it is for those growing up in Montreal. They might actually love it more here than the kids down south,” Juneau says on the phone from Kuujjuaq (pop. 2,132), the largest of Nunavik’s 14 communities. “It’s not like the old days when they didn’t have television up here. They have cable TVs and satellite TVs; the kids watch NHL games every night.”
Situated about 1,500 kms north of Montreal, the region—which spends much of the year under snow cover—would appear to be a natural environment for hockey. But the lack of an organized program had left many kids with too much spare time on their hands, contributing to boredom, monotony and in many cases, substance abuse and crime. Juneau’s love of hockey and his passion to help youth came along at just the right time. Though his transition from professional sports star to educator seems unlikely, Juneau’s dedication to the power of learning started from an early age. Growing up in Pont-Rouge, a small community west of Quebec City, Juneau was as adept in school as he was on skates. In 1987, when he attended New York’s prestigious Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to study aeronautical engineering, Juneau couldn’t speak English. With help from tutors, it took him less than a semester to learn it.
Juneau led Rensselaer’s powerhouse hockey team in scoring from his freshman through senior years. After graduating with a 4.0 grade point average, he played for Canada’s men’s hockey team at the 1992 Albertville Olympic Games. He scored the most points there too, helping the squad to a silver medal finish.
Upon entering the NHL, Juneau set a league scoring record during his rookie campaign (1992-93) with the Boston Bruins. He quickly became known for his work ethic, his humble demeanour and his studious mind—sportswriters dubbed him “the smartest player in the NHL.” After being traded by the Bruins in 1996 (and playing in the Stanley Cup finals in 1998) Juneau bounced around the league, from Buffalo to Ottawa, before ending up in Montreal. He retired in 2004, following his third season with Les Canadiens.
In the winter of 2006, Juneau, his longtime girlfriend, Elsa Moreau and two of their friends embarked on a 10-day camping expedition in Nunavik’s snowy backcountry. Near the end of their trip the group visited Kuujjuaq.
“We saw beautiful things out in the wilderness,” he says. “When we came back from the mountains and got into the village, we got the chance to meet some of the [local] kids. I went to their school to see how things were going. That’s when I found out about their reality—I heard about the tough parts of life up here.”
In Nunavik, like many parts of the distant north, the youth population had extensive experience with drug and alcohol abuse and juvenile crime. School dropouts were entirely too common; suicide seemed an ever-present possibility. Juneau recognized few motivations for the kids to keep within the lines of authority: Kuujjuaq had an indoor skating rink, but disorganized shinny was the only game anyone played. On his flight home from the trip, the ex-NHLer devised a way to change all of that.
Within weeks, Juneau met with a Quebec political attaché who arranged his introduction to officials in the Kativik Regional Government, Nunavik’s legal authority. When Juneau offered to develop an education-based hockey program, the KRG leapt at his offer.
In mid-2006, Juneau, worried that his employer was more interested in his name than his mind, quit his job at a Quebec engineering firm. He then signed a two-year agreement to run Nunavik’s pilot program—dubbed the Nunavik Youth Hockey Development Program—to be funded at the provincial and federal levels to the tune of $1.2 million.
For a few months, Juneau tried flying in and out of Nunavik’s 14 villages, but soon decided that to keep things running well he had to be there full time. In September 2007, he moved to Kuujjuaq along with his girlfriend and their young daughters, Ophélie and Héloïse. Both girls have recently enrolled in their dad’s hockey program; their mother home schools them in French, which is otherwise unavailable in the region.
Juneau typically works 10 to 12 hours a day. He often arrives at his office at the local rink before 6 a.m. He’s on or near an ice surface most afternoons at 4:30—sometimes coaching, but more likely facilitating the relationships between his players and the local adults he’s brought on board to mentor them.
“When I was 15, 16 years old, at the critical age when you start having girls and all kinds of things in your life, everything seemed like a big party,” he says. “But for me to play high-calibre hockey, I needed to achieve in school first. It was the condition for being on those teams. That concept worked for me. It worked for a lot of friends I’ve had as teammates. Now I see that it’s working here too."
In the two years since he established the program enrolment has skyrocketed, from 100 kids in the first year to nearly 1,000 in four communities across Nunavik. Media interest has also flowed in, with everyone from The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star to CBC Television and Sportsnet running profiles on the unorthodox program (in 2007, he was named the La Presse/Radio-Canada Personality of the Year). The attention even prompted a visit from Quebec Premier Jean Charest and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who flew up to Kuujjuaq this past March to inspect the program.
With its initial two-year mandate up this summer, Juneau is in the process of completing a comprehensive report on the program's progress so far. But anecdotal reports show that he is on the right track. More desks are filled in local schools that ever before, a local police sergeant has credited the project with a marked decrease in juvenile crime and countless parents, teachers, political leaders and even some of its young participants have taken him aside to thank him for his efforts.
“If you put in place a beautiful program like we have here, if you put the kids on the ice on different teams with adults taking care of them—as long as they give us an honest effort and they attend school, it’s a win-win situation for everyone.”
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