Kirk Brooks grew up playing hockey in the west end of Toronto. “It didn’t matter where you were from,” says Brooks “in the west end, everybody played hockey.” At 13, Brooks and his family relocated to Scarborough where things changed. “When I told guys I was a hockey player, they kind of laughed at me. So I just quit and started playing football” he says. “I didn’t really think about it again until my son, Nathaniel, was born.” When Nathaniel expressed interest in hockey, Brooks realized there were so few black role models in the game for his son to look up to, so he set out to change that with a training camp for marginalized youth looking to learn about the game of hockey.
Brooks launched his training camp, Skillz Hockey (initially known as the Black Hockey School), in 1992. “Throughout the years, I’ve had 20 National Hockey League (NHL) players come to my program. So most of the black kids that are in the NHL that are coming through Toronto have actually come through my program,” notes Brooks. Among those working in the NHL today is Brooks’s son, Nathaniel, who was named Developmental Coach for the Arizona Coyotes in 2022. Skillz Hockey was making great progress in its goal to bring more diversity to the world of professional hockey with its best year yet in 2019. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“It took us out,” says Brooks “we weren’t allowed to do any sports camps.” Even when restrictions were loosened, the camp was limited to hosting 10 kids at a time and it wasn’t financially viable for the programs to run with so few students. When the camp was finally allowed to operate again at full capacity, Brooks was eager to come back in a big way. Skillz Hockey had reached its 30th year of business and the team wanted to celebrate its anniversary with a week-long training camp, an all-star game, and a party.
That’s when Brooks got an email from the City of Toronto introducing him to the Racialized and Indigenous Supports for Entrepreneurs (RAISE) program. RAISE is a provincially-funded, comprehensive grant initiative that supports Indigenous, Black, and other racialized entrepreneurs in Ontario who are on the road to starting or scaling their businesses. In addition to grant funding, the program provides entrepreneurs with access to business development training, business coaching, and culturally responsive support services through the Parkdale Centre for Innovation’s Early Stage Entrepreneurship Program. It was the perfect opportunity for Skillz Hockey to secure the funding they needed to make their big comeback.
The Skillz Hockey 30th anniversary celebrations were a huge hit. “I ended up with 90 kids [at camp], 40% [of which were] subsidized,” remarks Brooks. “The RAISE grant helped me put that event on, pay for the ice, pay for instructors, and get all the t-shirts and swag.” A 30-year reunion game between members of the Toronto Police and Brook’s All-Star team closed out the week. Brooks started the annual games in 1992 as a way to address the violence between the police and the black community.
With hockey camps back up and running, Brooks is turning his attention to new ventures like the Seaside Hockey Club, a registered non-profit organization, created to provide opportunities for minority youth in the GTA to receive quality instruction and professional coaching, and to gain life skills in a leading-edge hockey-based mentorship program. While Brooks is proud of the progress that has been made so far, he says there’s still a lot of work to be done. “Last year, I [scouted] 30 provincial Junior A teams, and there were maybe eight kids in all of those camps that were of diverse backgrounds,” he observed. “You shouldn’t have that problem, because there are so many kids of diverse backgrounds who are playing these games, but they’re not getting invited to these camps. If you’re Canadianized there’s a pathway for you […], but [for] the kids from diverse backgrounds is not as simple. What I’m focused on now is creating pathways to make that a lot easier.”
