Hon. Katherine Hay: Honourable senators, I might bring it down a little bit, but you get me twice in one week. Whether that’s good or bad, I leave that up to you.

Today I would like to speak to an inquiry that I have no doubt resonates with us all in one way, shape or form. I acknowledge and I’m so deeply grateful to Senators Marty Deacon, Marnie McBean and Chantal Petitclerc for their inquiry on the vital role of physical activity and sport. I’m extremely humbled to be sharing my experience in sport and being an athlete in an inquiry with these Olympic-level public servants. I thank them for their leadership here in the Senate and for their Herculean, heroic efforts in Olympic sports and sports across our great country. You inspired the nation time and time again, each of you, so thank you.

For me, where to begin? It’s a tough one for me today. I will be a bit more personal, and I am not comfortable. Sport has been a part of my life — family life, community life, work life — through the darkest of times to many euphoric times and some of the more challenging times.

I would like to frame what I will speak about in advance so you know what is coming; you can make your judgment now. I promise not to speak too long, but chatty Kathy will probably rule.

Today I want to lean into leadership as a beginning. I would like to then jump into community and sport and share a story about a community that I will never ever forget. I would like to run full steam into the empowerment of sport and being an athlete myself, in my own little sort of way. Finally, I would like to cycle through the impact of sport on health and well-being. That’s as funny as I am going to get. You got it with the other senator.

For leadership, I’m simply going to use quotes here. How about, “It’s a team sport”? I overuse these four words all the time. The Senate is a team sport. Family is a team sport. Marathoning is a team sport. Team sport is how life is lived, whether you know it or not. When it is not a team sport, I think that’s when it can be hard.

Here’s another quote: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” Thank you, African proverb, because that describes the epitome of team sport. I have this bracelet that I wear all the time — it is not a prop, it is just a bracelet. It is a gift from an amazing team where we worked together many years ago, and we chanted that proverb. On the inside it reads, “FAR TOGETHER.”

“The hardest part is getting to the start line. Then trust in your training to get to the finish line.” As a former marathoner, that was my mantra — in running and also in all the work I’ve had the privilege of doing in my lifetime. Trust in your training. Do the work to get to the start line. Do the due diligence to get to the start line. The race is to the start line. The rest is strategy and some added fuel and adjustment along the way.

Let’s do some sports quotes, too. Pat Burns said, “You don’t cry because it’s over, you’re happy because it happened” — unless you are a Leafs fan; then you are just crying. I know. “Hockey is a metaphor for life. You have to be willing to get knocked down and get back up.” I say that’s what bravery is: getting up.

Or how about a quote from the great Paralympic athlete Senator Petitclerc:

To me, this is the ultimate proof that if you have a strong commitment to your goals and dreams, if you wake up every day with a passion to do your job or your sport, everything is possible.

That’s grit and determination that are in your hands.

How about we hear from Olympic athlete Senator McBean, and I love this one, short and to the point, about how hope is an attitude? Here is the quote: “It’s a good day to have a good day . . . .”

And then there is Olympic chef de mission Senator Deacon:

Failure is not a weakness but a process. Failure is feedback. The goal is to fail in practice, learn what happened, fix it and show up better the next day. . . .

“There is a lot of remarkableness in the unremarkable.” My dad used to say that all the time, and then he would say, “Just look for it.” Too bad he didn’t say, “Just do it.” We could have coined that phrase.

Here is the thing about sports quotes: They’re all about courage, grit, team, humility and seeing beyond yourself.

Okay, so now I have pumped myself up with some encouraging quotes. I’ve given myself some confidence. I will move to the personal side of sports and me. I’ve said 14 times I’m not comfortable. However, it’s a good day to have a good day, and I’m going to jump into community and sports.

My dad was transferred from Winnipeg — Blue Bombers all the way — to a small town. Sorry, folks from Saskatchewan and Hamilton, but I moved to a small town outside of Hamilton called Dunnville. I always hated that name, but I lived there. We settled there for a quite few years.

As a side note on politics and team sport, my dad ran to be a candidate for the Haldimand—Norfolk riding, a Conservative candidate, and I was a self-appointed brand and marketing manager. I was 10. I had an excellent chant and song in my marketing strategy — remarkable, really — thanks to Aerosmith. You may remember the song; I changed the words a little bit. It was: “Walk this way, vote Jack Hay.” And he lost.

Now I want to introduce you to my brother John Douglas Hay, a kind, shy, not-so-great student, my older brother. I was bossy; he was patient. We went everywhere together. We lived in the country, so our bikes were everything to us. The cornfield was an amazing place for hide-and-seek.

When John started high school, he was not very big, tall or confident — he was an even-keeled kind of kid and plodded along — but he was fast. I was faster, but he was pretty fast. He was humble, so me talking about him here? Not good.

In Grade 9, he tried out for the high school football team, the Dunnville Panthers. It is a big deal in Dunnville. It’s not exactly “Friday Night Lights” but a big deal. He almost made the cut.

Then something happened between Grades 9 and 10. John had a growth spurt. If any of you met my son at my swearing-in, John got that tall and big in a year, and he was still pretty fast.

School was not easy for John. He kept pushing forward. He had a great work ethic — he had that in spades — so he made his way through.

He tried out again, and he made the cut. John was a running back, number 11, third string. John was still shy, a quiet teen. Sport gave him something that unlocked so much. It gave him a community. It gave him permission to take risks. It gave him confidence. In that, the no-so-great student found something in school that he was really great at: computer science in those very early days of the computer. Hold on to that thought for later. Perhaps that is why I love the down-and-out, underdog sports stories. We lived it.

The Panthers were average: win some, lose more. The coaches, a high school football coach and two community members — Dan Dulmage, a former Ti-Cat and dentist, and, yes, Jack Hay — never gave up. I offered to do the marketing for the team. The reply was a polite, hard no.

John was never a star, not a popular jock. He was a workhorse player. He did catch a few in the end zone. In Grade 13, yes, the underdog Dunnville Panthers beat their nemesis, the Cayuga Wildcats, for the championship. This was something. My brother was on a championship team with my dad as the sidekick coach. There was even a parade.

John tried out for the Ti-Cats summer camp that summer. He didn’t make it but, as you can imagine, John didn’t fuss about that kind of stuff. He always dusted off and kept trying to get into the next play.

Sport had done something for him that shaped him so well: He belonged to this community, and he had confidence. He got accepted into Western University, one of the first computer science programs ever there, and he absolutely thrived.

In the second year, he was well beyond what was being taught in the class, and he was already working in research design labs. He made the varsity football team, the Western Mustangs, third string.

At the end of the second year, on May 23, John died in a car crash on his way back to work from having lunch with his girlfriend. A family devastated, a community shocked and a community that rallied around them. That is why I wanted to tell this story.

I rarely ever talk about this, not publicly, anyway. Here is what I will never forget. As my brother’s funeral was ending, and it was that heart-wrenching moment when we all had to leave and follow John out. I remember that being so hard and terrifying, thinking, “He can’t go, not alone.”

The community of sport took care of that. Every single one of his Dunnville Panther teammates from Grade 10, with their jackets on, came up the centre and both aisles of the church. All of them walked in front and walked us out. He wasn’t alone.

His footprints through his short life on and off the field mattered. His footprints remain. I have never, ever forgotten how a community of sport unlocked all of my brother’s potential, and I have never forgotten how that community of sport was there for him until the very end.

On a side note, many years later, I was at Western University for a meeting a couple of years after the Pan Am Games in 2001. They built this amazing sports stadium. I was wandering about.

For their campaign, they sold bricks for $2,001 for the year. I thought that was smart. It had finished. It was a few years after that. I asked if I could buy one and put my brother’s name on a brick in this stadium where, theoretically, he had played. They couldn’t. Everything was complete. They didn’t know where the bricks were.

Here is the thing about the community of sport. A few months later, out of the blue — I totally forgot — the Western University team called to say that they had figured out how to get a brick and that they could do it. Did I want it? I said, “Yes, I want it.”

My mom, sister and I figured out what we wanted on the brick, and now my brother’s name lives there. Here is the fun fact. Remember, he was an early adopter of the world of computer science. Remember, the campaign was already closed. John had died 20-plus years before then. There would have been no way for this to have been orchestrated, none. It is just serendipitous. It is how things happen.

When we went to see it, there was “John Douglas Hay,” his brick, with two pretty large bricks on each side: one was Microsoft and the other one was IBM. I smile when I think of that.

Now I am going to go fast, because that took up a lot of time, but thank you for letting me share my brother with you.

I am going to jump into empowerment. I always use sports as my adrenaline rush. I like goals. I like start lines. I like finish lines. I didn’t know what I was thinking back then — maybe it was my brother — but I decided to run a marathon. My first was Chicago.

I was at the start line, with all my chants. The hardest part is getting to the start line. Trust in your training: I used many words of profanity as I chanted that until the 35-kilometre mark. Then I knew I would make it. I had seven kilometres to go. I could run seven kilometres. That’s the empowerment of sport.

In Chicago, the last 500 metres are lined with stadium seating. There are hundreds of people in the stands. I remember turning that corner into that last 500 metres and hearing so much insane cheering, crazy cheering.

I literally looked around and wondered: Who are they cheering for? Who is back here with the slow pack, at the back of the pack? Then it hit me. They were cheering for me, an athlete among thousands. That is the empowerment you get within a community. That is what I say sport is.

Finally and briefly — I am looking at my time — I want to cycle into impact and well-being.

There is no question that any and all sport — from walking to cycling to running to gardening — plays a vital role in one’s well-being. That is a one-to-one ratio. It’s indisputable. My running and tennis — I long gave up basketball — were anchors to my well-being in life, for hard days, good days and challenging days. It also ended up saving my life.

The Hon. the Speaker: Senator Hay, I will have to interrupt. Would you like more time?

Senator Hay: Yes, please. I would ask for leave.

The Hon. the Speaker: Is leave granted, honourable senators?

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

Senator Hay: Thank you, colleagues.

I was training again to do the work and to get to that start line. I got a bib for Berlin. I knew how to train. My body knew what to do. I had run at least 100 half-marathons, 10 full ones, Dublin being my tenth. That city knows how to party when they do marathons.

I thought, “Maybe I’m working too hard. Maybe my shoes need to be replaced.” The days were cold. Something was off. I wasn’t right. I used to leave my home in Mississauga and run to Union Station and take the train back. That was training. Now I was struggling to get my groove going. I even had to take the train back from Long Branch. Those of you in Toronto know that’s only two or three stops from my home.

I couldn’t go further. That’s when I decided to get checked, to go to the doctor, get a blood test or something. Nothing much came of it. I was now starting to not even run seven kilometres, which was always my marker in a race, if you remember.

After another couple of trips to the doctor and a few more tests, my marathoning days were definitely over. To be honest, at that moment, I went, “All right. I’m done with that. Thank you.” But my health journey began.

Had I not been training, I may have not noticed that things were not right. I may have not made it, actually, to the fall of that year, according to my doctors.

Training for a marathon probably did not save my life — my doctors did that — but I always wondered, “If not for sport.”

Now I run a much more normal distance. My long runs are — you guessed it — seven kilometres or so. My chronic health issue is now part of my life, and that’s totally okay because I know intimately the vital role that physical activity and sport will have on my well-being today and hopefully long into my future.

When someone asks if being appointed to the Senate is a lifetime appointment, I always say, “I sure hope not.”

Thank you for indulging me in my journey with sport. I thank Senators McBean, Deacon and Petitclerc for your leadership and kindness. I’ve never really shared much of this with anybody outside my tribe. My advice to all of you is to get out there, get moving, lean into something, run, walk, jump, cycle or garden. I guarantee you will find community. You will feel better. You will thrive. It will impact your life. Thank you, chi-meegwetch.

Hon. Senators: Hear, hear.