‘Life is hard. We just have to keep going’

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This article was published 28/09/2022 (721 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On the most famous street in Winnipeg, Alan Young stickhandles past invisible defenders. He dekes left, he dekes right, accelerating like the semi-trucks that speed past him before stopping gracefully at Portage Avenue and Sherbrook Street.

He stands out, not just because he’s six-feet tall, wearing Rollerblades, holding a beat-up hockey stick, and moving around effortlessly.

Young is impossible to miss because of his orange, black and white attire.

From far away, it looks like a Philadelphia Flyers jersey is clinging to Young’s frame, but that’s not it. There’s a much more serious logo on the front, and a much more solemn message on the back.

Across his chest is the black facade familiar to anybody who’s seen a photograph of the residential school in Cross Lake. Across the black facade are three digits: 215. On the back, where a player’s name is normally stitched, are three capital letters: R.I.P.

Young, 42, is the son of residential school survivors, and growing up in Cross Lake and Bloodvein, the horror stories written at those institutions were both quiet and loud, known and unknown, unspoken yet heard. So when the potential unmarked graves of 215 children were uncovered in Kamloops, B.C., last year, Young was not surprised. Records revealed last year that 84 children had died at Cross Lake Residential School, confirming what had long been known by many Indigenous people.

“I’d known about that since I was in my 20s,” Young says. He’d heard terrible stories about what happened to the children.

As public awareness grows, Young wanted to pay his respects to those who survived, those who didn’t, and those who still feel the effect of residential schools by wearing orange, while simultaneously crafting another narrative.

His father was a good hockey player. His grandmother once carried hundreds of pounds of flour on her back in a local competition. The NHLer Brady Keeper comes from Cross Lake, too. On the ice, Young faced racism from opponents, but persevered.

“Our people are strong,” Young says. “Our people are athletes.”

So at 9:15 a.m., Thursday, Young left his house in Windsor Park and tied the orange laces on his Bauer Rollerblades. He grabbed a well-loved stick, stepped onto the road, and in his thrifted jersey, emblazoned with a hand-drawn logo and nameplate, went off.

He zoomed around in traffic as he made his way through the city. At his former workplace, he grabbed an orange bandana. From a bush by a bridge, he snatched an orange blossom, tucking the flower into his hair. By 10:30 a.m., he was twirling at Portage and Sherbrook.

Blink, and Young was gone. He dashed between Corvettes and Nissans, past pedestrians and cyclists — a whir of orange on a concrete speedway. He hardly took a moment to breathe.

Outside Polo Park, he passed a city bus. “WOOOOOOO,” one rider screamed through an open window. Young flashed a thumbs-up.

Near Sargent Sundae, at around 11, he tossed his stick playfully around a telephone pole, catching it with his left.

Cutting across lanes and using the blade of his stick as a turn signal, Young disappeared into traffic.

Around noon he made it to the Perimeter Highway, before turning around to go back, saying hello to “brothers and sisters” downtown, where the intergenerational trauma caused by residential schools is on clear display.

By the time he made it home, Young was exhausted, having skated for almost five hours and still having to walk to school to pick up his son, AJ.

“Life is hard,” Young says of the message behind his rolling journey. “We just have to keep going.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com