Base Cards for Kids

In April of 2021, I put out a request to the hobby community via my social media platforms on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. I wanted to be able to share the hobby with Indigenous youth across Canada and asked if collectors could make donations of base cards of Indigenous (First Nations, Mêtis, and Inuit) NHL & any other pro players who are Indigenous. It was my hope to distribute them to Indigenous youth via mail who were attending hockey camps and seminars in anticipation of restrictions being lifted on gatherings and events following the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The main purpose for making this ask was because I wanted youth to see these hockey players as role models, to see the great representation of Indigenous Peoples in the game of hockey, and to promote the hobby of collecting hockey cards.

In 2018, I started a similar project and thanks to donations from collectors, I was able to gather over 300 base cards of Jonathan Cheechoo and send them to the Little Native Hockey League (LNHL) Tournament who then distributed them to youth who attended their tournament. The goal was to be able to give kids an opportunity to get them signed by Cheechoo who was the Honourary Chair of the Little NHL Tournament in 2018.

Over the years, almost 3000 hockey cards of NHL players who have Indigenous ancestry were donated by collectors and distributed to Indigenous youth across the country. The hockey cards dated from all the way back in the 1950s to the present and featured many amazing hockey cards that I was not expecting to see. The project is still ongoing as I continue to work with several hockey camps and hockey events that are directed toward the Indigenous community. Thankfully, this initiative was also picked up by several media outlets including Indigenous-led Windspeaker and GlobalTV Saskatoon which spread the word to other collectors and people who wanted to donate to the cause.