Canadian Sport Centre Calgary

Private donation makes Canadian game richer: Former Molson chief has long history of supporting women’s hockey.
(The Edmonton Journal - Source: The Canadian Press)

It’s like Santa Claus has come to town when Dan O’Neill turns up following a Canadian women’s hockey team practice.

The former president and chief operating officer of Canadian brewing giant Molson told the players at a team meeting Tuesday in Calgary that he is making a private donation of $500,000 to the team. “The second we saw him, everyone got kind of excited, not just because he brings money to the table, but because he has been so good to the girls in the past and a big fan of our program,” veteran defenceman Becky Kellar said.

Molson has been good to the Canadian women’s and men’s hockey teams over the years with O’Neill at the helm as the brewery gave a $500,000 gold-medal bonus to each of the men’s and women’s Olympic teams in 2002, and also gave $125,000 to the women’s team just prior to the 2003 world championship in Beijing, which was cancelled by SARS.

O’Neill left Molson last month, but the 53-year-old from Montreal wanted to continue to support the women’s program. “We started something I really believe in, and to walk away now would be the wrong time to walk away,” O’Neill said. “The team needs the money, they need the funding to live on and I’ve been in a personal situation that I can do that.
“The greatest thing would be if it ever started the ball rolling and other people got on board and supported other teams or other sports, especially as we head to the 2010 Olympics.”

Players who are named either to the Olympic teams or the world championship teams, starting with the 2006 Games in Turin until the 2010 Games in Vancouver, will get $5,000 each.

Twenty-seven players are centralized in Calgary, where they are living and training in preparation for the Turin Games. Each player receives $1,500 a month in Sport Canada funding and Hockey Canada also subsidizes their living expenses with $2,550 per month.
Kellar, from Hagersville, Ont., says many of the players who moved to Calgary are paying rent while they also pay a mortgage on their homes elsewhere.

She has her baby son, Owen, with her, and it costs money to take him home to see his father, Nolan. “For myself, I’m flying home two or three times a month, basically taking Owen home, picking him up, flying the nanny home as well, flying her back out,” Kellar said. “That will go a long way in covering the costs of my flights this year.”

O’Neill is chairman of the Canadian Hockey Foundation. He feels the women make a lot of sacrifices to be the best in the world and believes it is important that cash goes directly to the players. “It’s tough when you are doing a full-time job and a full-time profession and you’re not being paid for it,” he said. “It’s not a lot of money per player when you look at it, but hopefully it can make a difference.”

The men who play for Canada in the Olympics, World Cups and world championships have their expenses covered by Hockey Canada, but are not paid to play. They are NHL players, however, whose salaries the women can only dream of earning.

The men put the bonus from the Salt Lake City Olympics and any prize money won at world championships back into Hockey Canada’s grassroots programs. They are in a financial position to do that, while the women, who don’t win any prize money at world championships, are not.

“One of the keys here is there’s no question when you go to the world championship or the Olympics, men’s or women’s, you want to win gold,” Hockey Canada president Bob Nicholson said.