CANADA'S BEST KNOWN BOXER BATTLES ON

He is Canada's most famous boxer, the heavy weight champion who went
15 rounds with Muhammad Ali.

But when Sports Hall of Fame's George Chuvalo spoke to a gym full of
H.D. Stafford students last week, he didn't speak about his boxing
career. The message he had for students packed a very different punch.

Chuvalo told the students, in detail, how he lost three sons and his
wife to the perils of drug addiction.

When Chuvalo retired from boxing, he was on top of the world, with
five healthy children, a wife and his name in Canada's Sports Hall of
Fame.

But then his whole world came apart when three of his four boys
started experimenting with drugs. Experimentation lead to full out
heroin addiction for his sons Jesse, Georgie Lee and Steven.

"My two sons asked to borrow my car one day. They were back in 45
minutes and in that time they had robbed three drugstores. My trunk
was full of drugs," he said.

They received two years for those crimes.

He's seen his son Georgie Lee beg for drugs, with tears streaming down
his cheeks and vomit on his face.

"He was wearing only a T-shirt, crying over the toilet bowl, begging
for drugs, his whole body shaking," he said.

Jesse, his youngest, was the first to die. He shot himself in his
bedroom, Chuvalo told the audience.

"When you lose a child . . . I'd look at my wife and see him in her
and she'd see him in me. Soon we didn't sleep in the same room. I
started sleeping in my son's room where he shot himself," he said.

Then in 1993, three days after being released from jail, his second
son Georgie Lee was found dead of a drug overdose in a 'grungy hotel
room.'

His wife Lynn took her own life shortly after that. She overdosed on
pills, unable to stand the pain of losing two children.

"My son Steven found her suicide note and lost it; he went screaming
into the streets," he said.

"I was in bed for a month and a half when my wife and son died within
a four day period of each other. I don't remember even getting up to
go to the bathroom but I do remember my family members coming by, my
daughter, my son . . ." he said. "Their love is what got me through."

In 1997, Chuvalo planned to take his family's story to the youth of
North America to warn them of the dangers of drugs.

He was going to speak to them with the help of his son
Steven.

But then Steven was found dead with a needle in his arm.

Before Chuvalo spoke to Stafford students he showed a video prepared
by CBC's Fifth Estate. It shows Steven in jail talking about his
future with his dad when he gets out.

"I begged rehab to take my son Steven but the director there told me
there was a line-up 10 miles long. He said 'bring your son back clean
in three months then we'll let him in.' If he was clean I wouldn't
need rehab.

"By the next month Steven was in jail. He was so out of
control."

"Doing drugs is like hating yourself. If my three sons could have had
a glimpse of their future, they would have never become dope addicts,"
he said.

Chuvalo warned the students that smoking is a rebellious act that
leads to other rebellious acts.

"If you have five smokers at a party and five non-smokers at a party
and you introduce alcohol, which group is going to try the alcohol?"
he asked.

"It's always the five who smoke. These are preliminary steps [to other
drugs.]

"When I go to speak to young offenders I see the same two things: they
smoke and they're no good at school. It's tough to find an honour role
student in trouble with the law."

So how do teenagers stay away from the temptations of smoking,
drinking and drugs?

"The most important thing is your family," he said of his children and
grandchildren who supported him. He told the teens they should go home
and hug their parents, do chores and stay focused in school and sports.

"Love your parents, respect them and then you'll want your parents to
be proud of you," he said. He told them to stay clean for "your
children, for your grandchildren, think of them."

"If you are thinking of doing drugs or even flirting with the idea, I
hope you think of me," he said at the end of his talk. The students
gave him an instant standing ovation. His gut-wrenching story seemed
to get through to a lot of the teenagers, many of whom waited to speak
with him personally after his talk.

"If I didn't get positive feedback, I'd stop doing it," he said in
response to how he can continue to go to schools re-telling his tragic
story. "If I know I've made a difference in just one teen's life, it
keeps me going," he said in a later interview with The Times.

Principal Wendy Johnson said Chuvalo had such an impact on the
students that kids lined up for more than an hour to talk to him or
get his autograph afterwards.

"One student told me he went home and hugged his dad," she
said.

The reason Stafford had such a well-known speaker in Langley is
because of one concerned parent who was worried about drugs in the
City.

"He told me had some connections in the boxing community," Johnson
said of how this parent brought Chuvalo to Stafford.