Kamloops Blazers’ legend and mental-health advocate Corey Hirsch gets back to the Tournament Capital about once a year and, during his latest visit, he had a message for a packed room of listeners.
The Memorial Cup-winning goalkeeper made the Tournament Capital one of his latest stops of speaking engagements with the Independent Contractors and Business Association, sharing with the Canadian Home Builders’ Association-Central Interior on Sept. 14 his story of struggling with mental health and the need for early education to end its stigma.
“That’s really how we’re going to make change,” Hirsch told the crowd at Colombo Lodge. “My generation, most of your generation, we’re not educated. Mental health was something that wasn’t talked about, which is something that led to my issues. We need to educate our kids. You know how easy it would have been to tell me about obsessive-compulsive disorder in high school?”
In 1992, a teenaged Corey Hirsch backstopped the Kamloops Blazers to the team’s first-ever Memorial Cup championship. He went on to earn a Stanley Cup in 1994 with the New York Rangers, who drafted him, and took home an Olympic silver medal that same year.
But while Hirsch’s hockey career was flourishing, below the surface he struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder that went undiagnosed for years.
Read more…
