COLUMBUS, Ohio — Television actor Rick Mercer received a phone call from Brian Burke last summer asking him to take a walk in downtown Toronto.
The two men formed an unlikely friendship more than a decade ago through Burke’s late son, Brendan. Mercer knows little about hockey. Little about “truculence and pugnacity.” Little about how Burke wanted to rent a barn in Upstate New York and stage a fight with former Oilers’ general manager Kevin Lowe after the two hockey executives had a public falling out over an offer sheet tendered to Dustin Penner in 2007.
It was Brendan who had urged his father to reconsider the outlandish challenge and mend his relationship with Lowe. It was Brendan who was on the mind of his father last summer when he made the call to Mercer.
The global pandemic had turned the annual Toronto Pride parade into a virtual event. That wasn’t good enough for Burke, who’s been a staunch ally of the LGBTQ community since Brendan came out to his father in 2007 and was killed in a car accident three years later at age 21.
“A day after the funeral, we had a family meeting,” Burke recalled. “I told his brother and sisters, ‘We can either sit down by the side of the road and hang our heads and mope and mourn or we can march.’ I told them, ‘I’m marching ahead, and so are all of you. We’re going to figure out a way that Brendan’s passing is not forgotten and overlooked.’”
Burke was brimming with that spirt on the day he met Mercer for their walk along the parade route. They had participated in previous marches together when thousands of participants filled the streets, but there had been nothing as tranquil and as poignant as this one.
“It was just the two of us,” said Mercer, the 51-year-old Canadian who had come out years earlier. “It gave us a chance to catch up, but obviously this walk was to honor his son.”
Brendan will be in the thoughts of the Penguins’ president of hockey operations on Saturday afternoon as his new club travels to Buffalo for a nationally televised game agains the Sabres. The teams are co-hosting the NHL’s first joint Pride Game, which aims to celebrate LGBTQ communities by sharing stories of acceptance and hope.
The occasion had been planned long before Burke joined the Penguins’ front office Feb. 9. But it was You Can Play — the social activism campaign to promote inclusion and eradicate homophobia in sports — founded by Burke’s son, Patrick, that has spurred such events around the league since 2012.
Burke is dedicated to the cause and proud of the progress made in combating anti-gay sentiments in hockey. The self-proclaimed “most macho man in the NHL” is vigilant in confronting homophobic action and language. He’s been known to pull aside fellow hockey executives at league meetings when he hears the occasional slip of the tongue.
"Having a personality as big as Brian's behind this and talking about it constantly and talking about it with passion because it means so much to him personally and professionally, is instrumental to how successful the movement has become," NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said.
Burke has marched in Pride parades in Toronto, Ottawa, Calgary and New York, and intends to do the same in Pittsburgh.
“He’s from that blue-collar, 1960s upbringing in Minnesota that I think will resonate in Pittsburgh,” Patrick said. “If there is someone out there of similar age who thinks an old dog can’t learn new tricks or, that ‘Hey, that’s not me, that’s for the younger generation and it doesn’t matter how I feel about these things,’ I hope they look to Brian Burke as an example that you can open your heart to this community.”
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Brian Burke
‘EMBARRASSED AND ASHAMED’
Brendan Burke quit his high school hockey team during his senior season of 2005-06. There were several factors in his decision, and the one he initially shared with family had to do with a lack of playing time.
The other he kept hidden away for another year.
“Part of the reason was he was feeling uncomfortable in his locker room because of all the gay jokes that were being thrown around and he didn’t want to be discovered,” said Patrick, now the NHL’s senior director of player safety. “He didn’t feel he fit in, so he left his team. I can’t think of anything sadder than having to leave a team that you love for something like that.”
Patrick, 37, had played on the same prep team five years earlier. He was the product of a similar culture, making crude remarks, using homophobic slurs and “thinking nothing of it.”
His father was no different, growing up a “Harley-riding, pickup-truck driving, tobacco-chewing” hellion from Edina, Minnesota. Burke played forward at Providence College in the 1970s and two years of minor-league hockey before attending Harvard Law School.
“We used all those words interchangeably,” he said. “We used homophobic language on an hourly basis. I’m embarrassed and ashamed of who I was back then.”
Burke has spent the past 40 years around the pro game as a players’ agent, team executive, general manager, league executive and television analyst. He believes a lot of the insensitive locker-room talk is “habitual” and not the result of deep-seated hatred for gays. Nevertheless, it needs to be rooted out, he said. Burke is pleased that homophobic slurs now can result in suspensions.
That was hardly the case more than a decade ago as Brendan grappled with his decision of whether to come out to his family and college mates at Miami University, where he served as the hockey team’s student manager. His reveal was met with overwhelming support from the Burkes in 2007 and the Miami hockey program in 2009 — the same year he went public with his story to ESPN.
Not that he wasn’t a bit concerned with how his father might react.
“I was surprised, I will tell you that,” Burke said. “I had no inkling that Brendan was gay. I was the last family member he came out to. . . . I said, “are you sure?’ He said, ‘yeah.’ I just reached out and hugged him and said, ‘you’ve given us a million reasons to love you, and this is one of them.’”
Burke believes there are gay players in the NHL today, and that they have been part of pro hockey’s fabric for more than a century.
The day is coming, he said, when there will be openly gay players in the league and they will find a welcoming environment. In talking with people in LGBTQ circles, Burke thinks the trepidation is not due to potential backlash from teammates, coaches and sponsors.
“I hear people say, ‘When do you think a player will have the courage to come out?’ The people who say that don’t understand the issue,” Burke said. “The part that makes it complicated is that a close family member is going to be devastated by this news. So your dad’s brother has made it clear he hates gay people, and rather than destroy the family, the young gay person will keep quiet.”
High-profile female athletes continue to come out at a time when societal views on homosexuality are shifting. Patrick uses his alma mater, Xaverian Brothers High School in suburban Boston, where Brendan quit the hockey team, as an example.
“They have become very inclusive and I’m very proud of them,” Patrick said.
The Burkes realize there’s plenty of work ahead in cleansing the hockey world of racial and homophobic language.
Andrew Shaw was suspended for a 2016 NHL playoff game for uttering a gay slur and Ryan Getzlaf was fined $10,000 the following season for similar conduct. Two years ago, USA Hockey stiffened penalties to include suspensions, a decision borne out of growing concern about the number of incidents involving verbal abuse.
“Are we at the point we need to be with the LGBTQ community? No, we are not,” Burke said. “These aren’t words you can kick in. These are mud walls that were built up over centuries of ignorance, bias and hate. It will take time, but we’re in a much better place than we were 10, 20, 30 years ago.”
BURKE FAMILY
Patrick Burke, Rick Mercer and Brian Burke march in a Toronto Pride parade,
LIKE THE WINE, NOT THE LABEL
Several years ago, Burke was attending a premier at a film festival in Toronto, where he met a young Canadian actor-producer-writer. They only spoke for several minutes, Burke said, and neither mentioned their LGBTQ advocacy.
“We didn’t talk about this stuff, but I was really impressed with him,” Burke said. “He’s such a nice man. He knew who I was and knew a little bit about me. Very charming guy.”
It was Dan Levy, the co-creator and star of Schitt’s Creek.
Levy plays the pansexual character David Rose in the Emmy Award-winning sitcom in which homosexuality is never a punchline. The riches-to-rags-to-riches tale spanned six seasons and ended with David’s marriage to his partner Patrick Brewer.
Burke is a big fan of Schitt’s Creek and what it represents.
“That show has a theme of acceptance,” he said. “So many shows try to grab the low-hanging fruit. ‘Let’s do one show where we look friendly to the gay community so we’re on the right side of the ledger.’ It’s like they do with racial issues, tangentially. But for a show to have it as a central theme — acceptance and inclusivity and diversity — it’s remarkable, it’s groundbreaking.
“To us fighting this fight, we’ll take anything. For a show to make that its central theme, we’ll take that and run with it.”
After Brendan’s death, Burke knew he needed allies in his campaign. One problem. He had no gay friends or acquaintances. Enter Mercer, who had written Brendan a letter after reading his story on ESPN.com
Burke made contact with Mercer and the two men decided to meet. Mercer vividly recalls their first march together in 2010 when Burke was Maple Leafs’ president and general manager.
“It was very difficult for him, but nobody was going to stop Brian Burke,” Mercer said. “I don’t want to say he was stepping outside his comfortable level in wanting to honor his son’s legacy, but it wasn’t a world he was familiar with. The Pride parade in Toronto is quite the spectacle and for someone who’s not used to being in it, I’m sure there was all sorts of sensory overload going on. And I can tell you a vast majority of people who attended the parade or were in the parade knew who he was and why he was there. It was very moving.”
The You Can Play project, which Patrick ran from 2012-17, has made considerable inroads with the NHL. Pride Nights have become commonplace in arenas around the league, and Daly estimates at least one player from almost every team has taken part in LGBTQ events in their city.
Goaltender Braden Holtby walked in the Washington D.C. Pride parade in 2016. Defensemen Roman Josi in Nashville and Morgan Rielly in Toronto also have taken part in marches.
Burke likes the direction the country is headed, but know supporters must marshal their forces to stand up in the face of intolerance. There are 33 states in which anti-transgender legislations is being introduced.
“That’s very discouraging because it’s been a steady string of victories for the LGBTQ community,” he said. “It’s important that people vote and they get behind these issues. They need to vote for the people who are on the right side of these issues.”
HAVING 'EVERYONE'S BACK'
Mike Marsico and his husband Adam Knoerzer are among four members of the Pittsburgh Tigers hockey team headed to Buffalo for Saturday’s game. They play in a local beer league, representing the LGBTQ community, and also participate in international tournaments.
They were honored the Penguins highlighted their club, now in its 10th season, in press releases promoting the Pride Game.
“Having Brian Burke lends gravitas to the whole effort, and the Penguins have done a really good job of putting their money where their mouth is in terms of not just saying the right things and doing performative allyship,” Knoerzer said. “It’s not just with us. It’s inclusion across the spectrum with the Willie O’Ree Academy, the hiring of really important women and women of color to help within the organization. All these things fit together. The addition of Brian Burke lends a personal touch to it.”
Patrick wants one point made clear: The LGBTQ community has done more for the Burke family than the Burke family has done for the LGBTQ community.
The work doesn’t end after the final whistle Saturday.
“We are not proud of jokes we made in the past,” Patrick said. “We are trying to make sure the next generation of hockey players isn’t saying those things so the LGBTQ community feels welcomed in hockey. Whether that’s in the stands and nobody is yelling homophobic slurs at the ice or whether that’s in the Penguins’ dressing room. I guarantee you Brian Burke is going to have everyone’s back in this cause.”
Years ago, Brendan heard his father ripping Lowe in a phone call, referring to the former Oilers’ general manager as a “no good bastard.”
The son asked Burke how he could carry a grudge for so long.
“It’s easy, I’m Irish. We can carry one for centuries,” Burke said in recounting the story to The Score in 2011.
The Penguins’ executive is proof that people can change their worldview. But at age 65, he’s still got plenty of fight in him, especially in his crusade to end LGBTQ harassment.
If you want to make something of it, just remember he’s always willing to rent a barn to settle differences.
