A week before the school year started, about 50 Nelson High School football players were learning on the field — but not just about football.
On a rainy, Tuesday afternoon, they knelt before Hamilton Tiger-Cats defensive back Stavros Katsantonis as he talked about being a role model and standing up to prevent gender-based violence.
“We may not think much of it, but making jokes or comments that are towards women, that’s really important. And not being someone [who] allows that to happen,” Katsantonis said. “I think that’s pretty common in football. I’m sure we all have all heard someone say something derogatory or something negative towards women. … If someone was saying that about your mom or your sister or your aunt or your wife, how would you feel about that? Probably wouldn’t feel too good.”
The CFL player was at the Burlington, Ont., high school as part of Coaching Boys Into Men, a partnership between Ontario CFL teams and Interval House of Hamilton, which provides emergency shelter and support for women who have been abused.
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Interval House of Hamilton is working with the CFL, Ontario government and local schools to ensure young athletes learn about healthy relationships and gender-based violence. At Nelson High School in Burlington, Ont., Tuesday, football players heard from Hamilton Tiger-Cats defensive back Stavros Katsantonis about the importance of respect.
The Ticats and Interval House of Hamilton have worked on programs to discourage gender-based violence since at least 2017.
Sue Taylor, the executive director of Interval House of Hamilton, said the success of their mentorship program inspired her team to go province-wide, partnering with about 40 violence-against-women agencies, as well as the Canadian Football League’s (CFL) Toronto Argonauts and Ottawa Redblacks. Now, she said, the program is in over 100 schools with over 170 coaches involved.
The program is peer-reviewed, evidence-based, and making an impact, Taylor told CBC Hamilton.
“I’ll never forget a parent who said to the coach that it was the first time they picked their kid up from hockey and the conversation wasn’t about hockey, it was about dating,” she said.
Coaches hold 15-minute conversations in dressing room
The program involves training coaches and giving them a kit with guidance on 15-minute conversations they have with players in the dressing room over 12 weeks. Topics range from healthy relationships to respect.
“Ultimately, the powerful message for us is violence will never equal strength,” Taylor said.
According to research by the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability, 187 women and girls were violently killed in 2024. One woman or girl is killed every other day, on average, somewhere in Canada, mostly by men, the observatory says on its website. It says a woman is killed by her male partner once a week on average.
In August 2023, Hamilton was one of many Ontario municipalities to declare intimate partner violence and domestic violence an epidemic. The City of Burlington, County of Haldimand and Regional Municipality of Niagara are other local governments that have done the same.
Nelson High School football players practice on their field Tuesday. (Justin Chandler/CBC)
“We play a very violent game,” Katsantonis told players. “But when we’re off the field, we’ve got to be able to turn that switch off, and be able to understand that violence isn’t always the answer.”
Zack McGugan, who plays linebacker, running back and long snapper, was one of the Nelson players in attendance. He told reporters hearing from a pro who he and his teammates admire is valuable.
In his experience, McGugan said, the team is already practising what they’re learning from the program.
“Our coaches taught us well. I think we’re a pretty good group here. We take it well on the field and we’re good in school as well,” he said.
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In recent years, much public discussion around gender-based violence has focused on raising young men and boys, and the misogynistic content they’re exposed to online.
The sports world has also been under the microscope in Canada with the high-profile Hockey Canada sex assault trial sparking discussions about consent.
“The online world makes really negative attitudes not just available to youth at the click of a button, but often, algorithms are designed to actually push youth towards that type of content,” Jess Dixon, MPP for Kitchener South–Hespeler said in an interview. “Sometimes it can be cloaked in content about fitness or working out or making money.”
While girls’ bodies are commodified, boys see content selling the idea that “if they’re not rich and strong and tall, no one will love them, which is a really sad thing to teach,” Dixon said.
Working as a Crown prosecutor before she was elected as a Progressive Conservative Party candidate in 2022, Dixon said she saw the negative impacts of that messaging.
“It’s quite dark out there,” she said. “I see it more even now. And that’s why it’s so important to not just leave combating that to chance.”
She said she got involved with Coaching Boys Into Men to see how provincial funding could bring it to more schools, and has helped with its expansion.
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Allison Forsyth, a safe sports advocate with Generation Safe and a sexual abuse survivor, says she’s ‘scared’ of what the acquital of five former Hockey Canada world junior players means for how sports organizations deal with allegations of sexual assault and harrassment in the future.
“The more we get these positive attitudes out there, the impact multiplies exponentially,” Dixon said. “Instead of being in an uncomfortable or dangerous situation and having never thought about how to process it, you’re with people that ideally you’ve had these conversations. You know what you can do in that situation. And I think that shows real promise.”
Over the next year, Taylor said, Interval House of Hamilton wants to double, if not triple, the number of schools it works with.
“We see this as a priority. We need our school boards and our sports leagues to also see it as a priority and to call Coaching Boys Into Men into the solution.”