Fighting Back

After losing 3 of his sons to heroin addiction and his wife to suicide after the second, George Chuvalo is still fighting back literally influencing and trying to prevent thousands of young people from the ensnaring world of substance abuse.

He speaks to children at his alma mater, St. Regis Catholic School in Toronto, about his sons' addictions:

"My sons would go to a place called Parkdale down on Queen Street, West end of Queen Street; that's where my sons would go to connect, to get a hit of heroin. To connect with heroine; to get heroin.

"This was some time after my son Jesse died, my first son to die from heroin. He actually shot himself but he was a heroin addict for nine months. And two of my other sons, Georgie Lee and Steven, would go down to Parkdale, and they would tell me about that; they would get down there, they would go to Parkdale Hotel.

"They'd go in to see the dealer at the bar and they would ask the dealer if he had, and the dealer would show them the white stuff in the palm of his hand: smack, the heroine. And both my sons would be craving heroin so badly, both my sons would be
shaking, both my sons would have tremors, both my sons would have body cramps; and they'd be feeling so badly, and they'd be craving heroin so badly wanting it so badly that upon the very sight of seeing heroin in the dealer's hands, within the flash of a single second, the first single second, both my sons, on cue, would [sound] would defecate in their drawers; they'd crap their pants, as soon as they saw the heroin, the heroin that they'd been craving for so long.

"And with the feces, that's another fancy word for crap, streaming down their legs they'd make the necessary exchange...65, 70, 75 dollars for the heroin, and then they would amble into the restroom of the Parkdale Hotel. They'd roll up their shirtsleeves they would heat up the white stuff in a teaspoon. They'd heat it up, and then they'd suck it up in a syringe and then they'd shoot it into a waiting vein, and only then would my handsome sons clean themselves off. And every time I tell that story I get sick to my stomach. Every time I tell that story, I get sick to my stomach because I realize all you beautiful young men and women will have images of my handsome sons as you leave this audience, of my handsome sons shooting heroin in their veins with excrement still lumped in their pants. My Handsome Sons."