2001 Harmony Award Recipient

Herbert Carnegie was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1919 to Jamaican immigrant parents, who arrived in Canada in 1912. He married Audrey Carnegie in 1940 and has been married for more than 60 years.

Mr. Carnegie has been a resident of North York for 79 years. He purchased property from his father where he helped build his family home and raised his four children in the same block where he grew up as a child. He is a grandfather of nine and a great-grandfather of four.

In his youth, Mr. Carnegie was a talented athlete who enjoyed an outstanding career in the Ontario Hockey Association and Quebec Hockey League. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s he played amateur hockey; his talent was recognized by the media, his fellow players and confirmed by statistical data. But he couldn’t fulfill his dream of trying out for the National Hockey League because of his race. One team owner even proclaimed he’d give $10,000 to anyone who could turn Carnegie white.

At the conclusion of his hockey career, he started the first hockey school in Canada, Future Aces Hockey School. Mr. Carnegie’s vision of fair play, justice and equity of opportunity resulted in a remarkable code of ethics. In 1956 he wrote the Future Aces Creed as a method of self-reflection and healing.

The creed is a document of twelve positive statements that was designed to heal his soul and give direction to the young boys he mentored when he started the first hockey school in Canada. For more than four decades he has been a leader in the community, sharing his vision of how all people can live in harmony.

Ninety schools have been introduced to the Future Aces Philosophy. A significant number of these schools use the philosophy as part of their daily curriculum in an effort to encourage, inspire and guide young people. Mr. Carnegie’s message touches the lives of more than 50,000 children annually.

Schools in five boards of education have embraced the Future Aces Creed: Toronto District, York Region, Peel, Durham and York Catholic. The Toronto District School Board has an initiative to introduce the Future Aces Philosophy to forty new schools during 2000 and 2001 as part of their Safe Schools Program. The creed has also been introduced to youth leaders at the NHL/USA Diversity Task Force Summit and to several schools in Hong Kong and South Africa.

Mr. Carnegie also established the Herbert H. Carnegie Future Aces Foundation in 1987. Under his leadership, the organization has financially helped civic-minded high school students. Each year 25 students are honoured with a Future Aces Citizenship Award and Scholarship of $1,000.