FIGHT OF HIS LIFE

George Chuvalo, former Canadian heavyweight boxing champion and contender
for the world championship, sat alone in the spotlight at the Sid Williams
Theatre Thursday night and told his story.

Not the guts and glitter story of his quest for the heavyweight championship
of the world which brought him toe-to-toe with Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier,
and George Foreman, but the terrible story which unfolded after he retired
from the ring in 1979.

"I lost my wife and three of my sons to drugs," he said. "My beautiful sons
... What happened to my family shouldn't happen to any family."

Chuvalo's youngest son, Jesse, the first and youngest to die, shot himself
in the family home after he failed to shake an addiction to heroin.

A few years later, days after getting out of jail for armed robbery,
Chuvalo's second son, George Lee died of a heroin overdose. Two days after
George Lee's funeral, Chuvalo's wife, Lynn, unable to face the grief of
losing two sons, deliberately took an overdose of prescription drugs and
died.

Then, in 1997, his son, Steven, died of a heroin overdose at age 35.

"My son Steven, when you see him in the video (of a prison interview), he
looks like a good person, and he loved his young family, but when you are
addicted to drugs, the family takes second place to drugs," Chuvalo said.

Steven was released from prison between Christmas with a $10,000 settlement
cheque from Workers' Compensation. Instead of going home to his family, he
went looking for drugs. He was arrested five days later.

When he went to jail, he had $5 in his pocket and no memory of the previous
five days or what happened to the remaining $9,995. "If my son could have
seen himself that way in the future, he would never, never have done drugs,"
Chuvalo said.

"If my sons could have known ..." Chuvalo said again and again. "If they
could have known ... if my sons could have seen their families crying over
them in the funeral home ... they never, never would have done drugs.
Never!"

Films and television tend to glamorize drugs and seldom show the degradation
of a heroin addict's day-to-day life, Chuvalo said. "My sons would go to buy
heroin and ... they would both be so wired, because they were craving heroin
so badly, that when they saw the heroin in the dealer's hand, they would
defecate in their pants. They would go to the men's room and shoot heroin
into their veins, and excrement would be running down their legs inside
their pants"

Chuvalo made many late-night trips to dangerous and seedy neighborhoods in
Toronto looking for his sons. One night, he found Steven trying to break
into an animal hospital in search of drugs.

Another late-night search ended when he found his son face down in a snow
bank in subzero weather at 4 a.m.

Chuvalo's sons were jailed many times for theft and drug charges. One night,
they went into a pharmacy with a hatchet and a butcher knife, drove the
hatchet into the counter and demanded drugs.

As they fled, they stuffed handfuls of pills into their mouths. They ran
more than two miles, climbed onto a bus, swallowed more pills, and finally
passed out on a curb, where police found them.

They were sentenced to 18 months in prison.

No-one starts out to be a crack or heroin addict, Chuvalo said.

"It happens step-by-step and by the time you get to number 12, it doesn't
look so steep. And the decisions are made when you're a teen-ager, or
pre-teen."

The decision to smoke cigarettes is often the first step toward more serious
addictions, Chuvalo said.

"Not all smokers become heroin addicts, but heroin addicts smoke. When a
person smokes, they disrespect themselves, and some of those who smoke will
be the ones who drink. Then they will smoke a joint, and then it may be
pills."

There is also a desperate need for drug and alcohol programs in prisons,
Chuvalo said.

"My son was in prison for 10 years, and there was no treatment for drug
treatment programs, and no treatment for alcohol either. Governments need to
spend more money so people who are in jail don't come back to jail."

Chuvalo was invited to Courtenay by the Community Drug Srategy Committee,
who, last week, invited former heroin addict Jade Bell to speak at several
schools. Read Bell's story in last Friday's Record.