RETIRED FROM THE RING, BUT STILL FIGHTING

George Chuvalo is 71 years old, but he looks like he could still
defend his title as Canadian heavyweight champion.

The retired boxer is short and stocky, but so muscular, with forearms
as thick as many a thigh, that even a tall, strong man might feel
weak beside this son of Croatian immigrants who was born and raised
in west Toronto - the rough end of town.

Chuvalo, who says (only half-joking) that he became a professional
boxer even before he was a teenager, was never knocked out in his
long career and had been a contender for the highest boxing
championships in the world. He has stood in the ring against men like
Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, giving them all what
were likely the hardest fights of their lives.

Chuvalo's fierce will to win shines from his eyes and even into his
70s he will not concede defeat on matches he thinks were awarded
unfairly to his opponents.

There's amusement in his voice, as if he's still getting satisfaction
from landing punches, when he talks about one of his bouts with
Muhammad Ali. Even though the Great One was declared the victor,
Chuvalo says he, as the loser, was the one who went dancing with his
wife, while Ali had to go straight to the nearest hospital for urgent
treatment.

Several dozen Grade 3 and 4 students from Sheshatshiu and North West
River listen with rapt attention as Chuvalo speaks to them in the
cozy theatre at the Labrador Interpretation Centre. From their
questions about his years as a famous boxer (it helps that they
already know Ali's name) and the way they line up for his autograph
afterwards, the students appreciate they are meeting a living figure
of Canadian history.

They are suitably impressed and also a little awed.

However, while his legendary boxing career helps him get their
attention, it's not why Chuvalo is in town. He has a darker message
for the children - one he's been delivering across Canada for many
years - and it is a message not lost on his audience, many of whom
may already have similar tragedies in their young lives.

Chuvalo tells the bitter story of how three of his sons became
addicted to heroin and died through overdosing.

He also tells the students how his wife, the mother of those boys,
committed suicide after their second son died because she could not
stand the grief.

Chuvalo starkly describes what happened in some detail and with
measured emotion, but he isn't looking for sympathy.

He is fighting still - no longer against other men, but now against
death itself: the pointless end of young lives. He is fighting to
stop any of the children he meets in all the towns he visits from
following the same road as his sons. He wants them to live drug-free
lives and to spare their parents from unbearable sorrow.

Chuvalo's advice is simple and boils down to the old common sense
solution (minus the politics): Just say no.

But he says it's not enough to say no to drugs like marijuana,
cocaine and heroin - by then it's too late. Chuvalo draws the line at
tobacco - tracing a straight path of addiction from a child's first
cigarette to an empty needle dangling from a lifeless arm.

The students at the Interpretation Centre have heard messages like
this before. Teachers, police officers and some television
commercials have been telling them similar things for years, but it
looks like the message sinks a bit deeper into them when Chuvalo says
it.

He's not like the other messengers they've known. The kids know he's
not just reading from a pamphlet. They know he's speaking from his
heart.

When Chuvalo was asked which he found harder, his career as a boxer
or what he is doing now (trying to convince young people to stay off
drugs), he didn't hesitate in his answer. Compared with having to
deal with the tragic loss of his loved ones every day, taking
punches from Foreman and Frazier was easy.