History In The Making 

TORONTO – History has a way of catching up with Jamie Oleksiak, whether slipping into his father’s home office to peruse books as a child or sliding the puck across to defensive partner Brandon Montour the other night for one of his record-setting hat-trick goals.

And when he isn’t helping make Kraken history on the ice, such as scoring one of a franchise record five goals by defensemen in Tuesday’s win over Montreal, the 6-foot-7, 255-pound Oleksiak can often be found partaking in historical literature. It’s a hobby he got serious about while growing up in this hockey-rabid city, where his Kraken face the hometown Maple Leafs on Thursday night and where Oleksiak’s television writer father, Richard, still works out of the family home with an office stacked with books on a variety of historical topics.

“My dad’s a writer, and so he always had books around and was always kind of into older movies and historical stuff, so it just kind of came naturally for me,” Oleksiak, 31, off to one of the better starts of his career, said ahead of visiting with his family on the team’s Wednesday off-day in his native city. “He’d always be in his office typing away at something. And he’s got a stacked shelf of books, so it was kind of fun to go in and see what he had on there.

“There was always something new and exciting to find.”

And what Oleksiak eventually found was a true affinity for historical nonfiction about World War II and the American Civil War. He’d read up on both, even do book projects for school on military figures related to the conflicts and later – armed with an NHL salary – work at visiting some of the spots he’s read about.

Oleksiak said he’s always been interested in history of all kinds. As a child, he was fascinated by dinosaurs and kept various miniature models and figurines around the house. The pull towards war-related history, he said, wasn’t so much about the battles themselves but trying to grasp what living through them was like for soldiers and civilians.

“It’s about the humanizing and seeing how it affected people day-to-day,” he said.

His father, Richard Oleksiak, said he encouraged his son to read his books as he pursued his writing and editing career.

“Jamie has always been a real reader,” he said.

By the time his future NHL son was just a toddler, the elder Oleksiak had penned episodes in the 1980s and 1990s for popular Canadian series such as Counterstrike – starring the late Christopher Plummer – PSI Factor, Street Legal and E.N.G. He'd mainly worked for and closely with producer Sonny Grosso, the onetime New York police detective whose takedown of a major heroin ring inspired the iconic movie The French Connection, and quickly gained expertise on all things law enforcement.

“Sonny had connections all over the law enforcement business, so I knew a lot of Secret Service guys,” Richard Oleksiak said. “I knew guys in the private security business. Also, some judges. Just various kinds of law enforcement personnel.”

And he rapidly amassed an impressive collection of books on topics stretching beyond the law enforcement shows he’d mainly worked on. As his scripts and screenplays began expanding to other topics, so did the books.

“When you do a script, you do a lot of research,” Oleksiak’s dad said. “I read a lot of history. I read a lot of everything.”

At one point, the TV writing was going so well that Oleksiak’s dad was offered a position in Los Angeles writing for American-based shows. But he opted to remain in Toronto, figuring it a better place to raise his young family.

And in staying put, he ensured history of his own as the patriarch of one of Canada’s premier sports families. Not only did growing up in Toronto expose Jamie Oleksiak to hockey and a lengthy NHL career for the former 14th overall pick by the Dallas Stars in 2011, but it also was where his youngest sister, Penny, 24, became the country’s all-time Olympic medalist -- garnering seven of them for swimming at the 2016 and 2021 Summer Games in Rio and Tokyo.

In fact, Jamie Oleksiak might not even rank in the top two for athletic prowess among his immediate family.

His mother, Alison, nearly represented her native Scotland in swimming at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow before a U.S.-led boycott over the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. A middle sister, Hayley, 29, rowed for Northeastern University and was a competitive figure skater. Oleksiak’s half-brother, Jake, 47, from his father’s prior marriage, was recruited for NCAA Division 1 hockey at Clarkson University before an injury while his half-sister, Claire, 42, skied competitively.

Meanwhile, his father, the TV writer and original Oleksiak history buff, is in the sports Hall of Fame at Buffalo’s prestigious Nichols prep school and played rugby and lettered in track at Colgate University. And he’s even a full inch taller than his son, officially the NHL’s biggest player.

Oleksiak’s dad isn’t sure when his son developed a fondness for war history. He remembers his initial dinosaur fascination as a child.

“He used to know the name of every type of dinosaur that you could imagine,” he said. “And he had a whole collection of tiny dinosaurs.”

His father suggested that a family trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, may have sparked the Civil War interest.

“They have this thing they do in Gettysburg where the tourists join these re-enactments of the battle,” he said. “And we did that, and he really loved it. Then, later on, he was in Canada but he would write book reports and do school projects on American Civil War generals. He really got into it. He became a real Civil War buff. He got really involved with studying it.”

One of the young Oleksiak’s favorite Civil War leaders to study was Union Army General George B. McLellan, a controversial figure because of his brilliant organizational skills but indecisive battlefield tactics.

“I remember he wrote a paper on McLellan,” his father said.

As Oleksiak got older, his hockey career taking off in the junior ranks and for a season at Northeastern University, his focus on Second World War literature also grew.

One of his favorite books is “Beneath A Scarlet Sky” by author Mark T. Sullivan, partially based on a true story of Italian teenager Pino Lella joining an underground railroad to rescue Jews by transporting them over the Alps after his family home is destroyed by Nazi bombs.

“I think it’s a great read that really got me into the genre,” Oleksiak said.

He added: “There’s so much about World War II, but when you kind of sit down and just focus on the people who lived it, there’s a lot you can relate to. I think there’s perspective to gain from it.”

Another favorite author is Erik Larson, who’s written several WWII books, including “The Splendid and The Vile” on former British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill during the London Blitz by German bombers. Oleksiak has also read Larson’s book “Dead Wake” on the sinking of the RMS Lusitania by German U-boats. Larsson’s most recent book, which Oleksiak plans to read, is “The Demon of Unrest,” about Fort Sumter during the dawn of the American Civil War.

“He kind of jumps around a bunch of historical times, but I definitely take to his writing,” Oleksiak said.

This past summer, Oleksiak visited the Hungarian capital of Budapest, where he did some additional historic tourism.

“I saw the shoes on the canal there,” Oleksiak said of the Shoes on the Danube Bank memorial created to honor Jews massacred by pro-Hitler fascist militia. “That was really interesting to see and learn the history of that.

“Also, learning about how you had the Allies and the Axis countries on opposite sides of the (Danube) river and how they kind of engaged from there. I mean, in Europe, there’s so much history. You just turn the corner, and there’s something new to learn.”

Oleksiak, later in the summer, traveled with his parents and siblings to Paris to watch his sister Penny compete in her third Olympics. During some downtime, he and his father visited the city’s Catacombs, ancient ossuaries used by French Resistance fighters to hide from the Nazis in WWII.

Shortly before Oleksiak made the trip, the Kraken announced they’d signed free agent Montour away from the Florida Panthers on a seven-year contract. Before long, the Kraken broke up Oleksiak’s prior pairing with Will Borgen and placed him alongside the team’s newest defender.

Oleksiak is just a year and a few months older than Montour, meaning this will be the first time since some of his better years in Dallas – which included going to the Stanley Cup Final in 2020 – that he’s been paired with somebody roughly his age and not significantly younger. After a tough opening game in which he was beaten for a pair of goals, Oleksiak appears to have taken to his new partner while locking opponents down in his typical shot-blocking, hard-hitting fashion.

And he’s contributing to the offense as well. Against Montreal on Tuesday, Oleksiak made a perfect cross-ice pass to Montour – who’d broken for the net from his right-point position – that enabled him to score his second of three goals.

“He’s got more offense to his game than I thought,” Montour had said of Oleksiak last week. “He can make skill plays. Nice, solid, crisp passes. I think when we’re simple together and play the right way, it turns out well. Obviously, the defense speaks for itself.”

Oleksiak’s goal and an assist against Montreal gave him four points the first ten games after notching just 15 points over the full 82 last season. And there are fewer goals going in whenever Oleksiak is on the ice, which he’s been more often this season in playing nearly 21 minutes per contest – the highest total of his career.

“He’s a guy that likes to get involved,” Oleksiak said of Montour, whose hat-trick and four-point game in Montreal both set team records by a Kraken defender. “He’s always up in the play and I like that, his aggressiveness. He makes other teams have to make plays.”

And the rest, as they say, will hopefully be history. Or, at least, Kraken history, Oleksiak can keep making small contributions on the ice while continuing to soak in larger-scale historical events whenever afforded a breather.