#important read

Keyboard warriors took to social media after the then-Oilers defenceman turned the puck over against the Jets in Game 4 of the first round of the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs on May 24. The turnover led to a game-tying goal, and the Oilers went on to lose in triple overtime. But for some of those posting, the criticism wasn’t aimed at the on-ice mistake and its consequence. Instead, they mocked and slandered Bear to his very core.

To them, Bear wasn’t an Oilers player who had made an error. He was an Indigenous person who had ruined their team’s season — a season that was hanging on by a thread to begin with.

“It was very hard to go through it,” says Bear, who was dealt to Carolina in the offseason and is scheduled to play his first game back in Edmonton on Saturday. “It really felt like I was left on an island, and there was no way off it.

“Sometimes you have to have those hard conversations. I was always afraid of confrontation. But what I’ve learned is: You’ve got to hold people accountable, and you’ve got to look after yourself.”

It was his family members — particularly his then-girlfriend and now-fiancée, Lenasia Ned — who first noticed the vitriol directed at Bear. It kept coming a day later.

So they decided to do something about it. Ned denounced the comments with a Facebook post of her own, which quickly gained traction.

That led to Bear and Ned creating a two-minute video, which was then posted on the Oilers’ website. They received calls of support from the likes of Avalanche centre Nazem Kadri and Jordin Tootoo, the latter a close friend of Bear’s and the first Inuk to play in the NHL.

Tootoo’s message to Bear was: “We’re not just pigeons. We’re here to make our mark and make a statement.”

Bear has taken that message to heart.

Supporting Indigenous youth athletes is something he’s thought about for a long time. Bear, with the help of his family, Ned, and his agent Jason Davidson, has been pushing forward with a project tentatively called the Ethan Bear Foundation. It aims to help First Nation kids and families pay for elite hockey and elite sports. The financial component is only part of the foundation. There will be a platform where Bear can send videos of encouragement to young athletes and have them reply to him.

What happened after his last game as an Oilers player pushed Bear to take action.

“That was the start of all of it,” he says.

Bear needed to get away for a while after the season. He had felt his love and passion for hockey waning after the playoffs, and that feeling was only exacerbated when 215 buried Indigenous children were found in unmarked graves at the Kamloops residential school just days later. Ned’s paternal grandparents (and her grandmother’s parents) went to that exact school.

He and Ned rented a cabin 30 minutes west of Edmonton to take some time off from it all.

When he came back to Edmonton in June to train, he was determined to put everything behind him.

Then Adam Larsson signed with Seattle before the expansion draft in mid-July, and the belief from the outside was that Bear might become a focal point of the defence again. He never got that impression. It seemed likely to him that he’d be dealt as the free-agent period began on July 28.

That day, Oilers general manager Ken Holland called Bear into his office to deliver the news. He’d been traded to Carolina for winger Warren Foegele. Bear appreciated how it was handled. He didn’t want to leave Edmonton — “asking for a trade is not my thing; I’d rather work my way out of a situation” — but he’s pleased with how everything has turned out.

“Going to Carolina was the best thing for me,” he says. “It gave me that spark again, to want to prove to people that I am a good player.

“Once it happened, it was a relief for me. Going into the season, I don’t know how I would have survived going through all that again.”

Bear certainly isn’t looking back wistfully and thinking about what could have been in Northern Alberta.

After an excellent rookie campaign in 2019-20, when he played almost exclusively on the top pair alongside Darnell Nurse, last season didn’t go according to plan. He was a restricted free agent and trained in Kelowna, B.C., rather than under the watch of the Oilers training staff in Edmonton. He signed just before training camp started.

“I didn’t expect for it to wait that long,” Bear says. “Details and my routine are so important to me. Having that be late and trying to train, it was really hard on me mentally. It felt like I wasn’t important.

“I didn’t understand that’s how contract negotiations are for a restricted free agent. That really educated me on the way things go.”

From there, it was a case of two steps forward and one back — if he was lucky.

Bear started slowly and sat for a game as a healthy scratch early on. He had played in all of Edmonton’s 71 games the previous season. Then, while sitting on the bench in a late January game against the Maple Leafs, Bear was struck in the head by an errant puck. He wanted to get back in the lineup as soon as possible to help his team, probably rushing back sooner than he should have. He didn’t want anyone thinking he wasn’t doing whatever he could to return.

He missed 11 games and eventually found his footing. Though his underlying numbers were quite good, he never felt his game was as good as it was when he was a rookie.

Then came the playoffs.

In the third period of Game 4, Bear attempted a pass up the middle from the right corner of the defensive zone, which was intercepted by Jets captain Blake Wheeler. Within a few seconds, Mark Scheifele scored to tie the game.

Bear put his head down and whacked his stick on the ice in disappointment. He didn’t see the ice again until the third overtime period, when he got one shift just before Kyle Connor ended the Oilers’ season.

By that time, the commenters were already out in full force.

“If you watch that series again, I had a really good series,” Bear says. “I had one mistake on a game-tying goal, and it was like I gave up the whole four-game series. That’s what I’ve never understood. It was the one thing that people wanted to point their fingers at.”

The Oilers returned to Edmonton. With end-of-season meetings and players ready to go their separate ways for the summer, team camaraderie wasn’t running high.

“The one thing that sucked is I didn’t feel like I had much support when it happened,” he says. “It was such a weird thing to go through, and it just felt like I was alone.”

To start this season, Bear was often playing on the top pair with Jaccob Slavin before a six-game COVID-19 absence in late November. He has a goal and six points and is plus-8 in 18 games with the Hurricanes.

Stuck in a San Jose hotel while in COVID-19 protocol, Bear dealt with a cold and the chills during the first half of his 10-day quarantine. He’s played two games since coming out of isolation and feels as though his legs and lungs aren’t quite feeling the same as they were before. He didn’t play in the Hurricanes’ most recent contest, Thursday in Calgary, due to a non-COVID illness, according to head coach Rod Brind’Amour. A few more games, Bear believes, and he’ll be up to full strength.

Aside from dealing with symptoms, Bear had a lot of time to prioritize what’s important in his life while in his hotel room. He spent much of his time talking to family and reconnecting with old friends.

“It was something I kind of needed, in a sense,” he says. “It helped me reflect on a lot of things I never really got to think about and slow down. Ever since the trade, I’ve just been trying to work hard and go, go, go — and just try to have a good season.”

The experience had him willing to share the details of his pending foundation, even though the project isn’t ready to launch.

Bear has been more introspective since his time in San Jose, and it’s hard to blame him, given all that’s happened in the past year.

If he plays, Saturday would mark Bear’s first game in Edmonton since he was traded. Ned will be there, as will Bear’s entire immediate family — his mother, Geraldine; his father, Lloyd; his brother, Everett; and his sisters, Tara and Torie. He has a huge extended family and has no clue how many people will ultimately attend.

His No. 74 jersey with the nameplate in English or Cree syllabics remains one of the most popular choices for fans attending games. There will be even more of them Saturday.

“It’s going to be a really hard game for me, emotionally,” Bear says. “When I first got drafted to Edmonton when I was 18, that’s all I ever knew. That was my life and my home.

“I wouldn’t change it for the world. Honestly, like the way everything happened — the way it started; the way it ended — everything happens for a reason.

“I’m very thankful for the opportunity I had with Edmonton.”

That said, he’s happy to be in Raleigh, N.C., with Lenasia in a more laid-back environment. Away from the microscope, as he puts it. His new hockey home is “perfect,” he says.

Bear had hoped to have his foundation launched in the summer, but getting traded for the first time and trying to get settled in a new place slowed down those plans.

Then, midway through training camp, Bear tied an engagement ring around the harness of the couple’s miniature wiener dog, Flower, and let her run around. He waited until Ned noticed it before he dropped to one knee and popped the question.

He and Ned met more than six years ago when he was playing junior hockey in Seattle. She has helped him grow as a person and learn about his culture. She’s Okanagan from Westbank First Nation in West Kelowna, B.C. As part of her university degree, she has a minor in Indigenous Studies and has taught Bear some of her Native league, Syilx.

Ned has been a driving force behind trying to get the foundation off the ground.

Thinking back to his childhood has provided Bear with all the inspiration he needs.

His parents gave everything they had to allow him to play competitive hockey. They own the only gas station in Ochapowace and sometimes almost had to bankrupt themselves to get the money required to get him — and others — to a tournament. They bought a 15-seat van so they could drive players to the rink who would otherwise be stranded.

“Growing up on the reserve, there’s a lot of poverty,” Bear says. “My parents would literally drive house to house, knocking on doors, because (other) parents wouldn’t bring them (to the rink) because they didn’t have the time or the money. My parents would go take the kids from their house — with gear that they had to fundraise to get them — and we would all go to practice. I remember going house to house for an hour and a half and then getting there 20 minutes before practice. That was the only way we’d be able to practice.”

Bear doesn’t want Indigenous families to incur similar financial hardships the way some of his teammates did. Nor does he want young hockey players or other athletes to quit their sports because they’re the subject of racist intolerance of abuse.

He says he was never close to hanging up his skates despite being targeted numerous times as a child, but he knows of countless kids who’ve stopped playing the games they love.

He wants to be there for them in any way possible.

“You want to inspire kids to give it their all,” Bear says. “Opportunity is the biggest thing this world can give.

“If I can create a foundation where people can donate and help others and give them the opportunity and the motivation, that for me would mean a lot.”

Ned is working diligently on material for the website. Bear has had conversations with the NHLPA and companies looking to support his cause about the best way for a rollout. He’ll soon have a conversation with his cousin, Courage, a respected minor hockey coach in Saskatchewan who also runs an Indigenous hockey academy, to get his thoughts. He’s looking for someone to run the foundation, too.

Bear has been thinking about this for years. But the aftermath of his last game with the Oilers forever changed how much of a priority he views it as.

The goal is to have a reach across Canada. Bear has saved funds from signing sessions, his summer hockey school and appearance fees to put toward the foundation. He believes it will be launched within a year — perhaps as early as the summer.

“I’ve put a lot of money into it,” Bear says. “I want to do it right. We’ve put a lot of work and thought into it.”

It’ll become a reality soon enough.

“I remember how terrifying it was when I first left the reserve,” he says. “I think about all these scary things in life when you don’t think you belong, or you don’t think you deserve to be there, and how easy it is to just give up and go home.

“The reason I continued is I wanted to make a difference for other kids because I know how hard it was for me. I want to try to be there for them as much as I can.