Stroumboulopoulos says "racist" Leafs owner pushed him to Habs fandom
Beloved Canadian media personality George Stroumboulopoulos has worn many hats, working as a MuchMusic VJ, CBC talk show host, and Hockey Night in Canada panellist over the years. But despite being from Mississauga, Stroumboulopoulos has never been a Toronto Maple Leafs fan.
The 51-year-old discussed his passion for the Montreal Canadiens as a recent guest on The Sick Podcast with Tony Marinaro, and explained why he was turned off by the Leafs at a young age.
“My dad was a Habs fan but he split when I was young. My grandfather, who I’m named after, was a Leafs fan. My uncle, who is maybe the most important male figure in my life, who introduced me to all this music, was a Bruins fan. So in my family, we didn’t get together to cheer with each other. We got together to cheer against each other,” he explained.
“We were always pretty adversarial by nature. So choosing the Habs was easy for me.”
But along with choosing an opposing Original Six club to maintain a healthy family rivalry, Stroumboulopoulos, who was born to immigrant parents, said that former Leafs owner Harold Ballard was the one who turned him off from the franchise in his youth.
“At the time, the Leafs were owned by Harold Ballard, who had a pretty strong anti-Eastern European point of view. So we just grew up thinking the team was racist, if I’m being honest,” he explained. “And so I just kind of always sided with the Montreal Canadiens because they seem to be far more open, culturally, far more open to immigrants from our part of the world.”
And to be fair, Stroumboulopoulos is not wrong. Ballard, who was convicted on charges of theft and fraud related to misappropriation of Maple Leafs Gardens funds in the 1970s, was on the record for being opposed to signing any foreign players.
In fact, the Leafs benefitted from his prison stint, signing Swedish forward Börje Salming in 1973 while he was away.
And even though Stroumboulopoulos was too young to remember the Canadiens’ dynasty teams of the ’70s, he had no trouble defending his team among young Leafs fans on Toronto playgrounds.
“We weren’t good, but the Leafs were also terrible. So it made chirping each other in high school, junior high, and grade school, much more fun when you could take the other side.”
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