It would be a safe place, somewhere where I could complain and talk about what was happening to me, and it not be investigated by the people I was complaining about. That's how it works. When I was growing up in the skating system, Skate Canada used to have this program called “monitoring”. I wasn't quite at the level, but my sister was. If you were a national team athlete back then, you had a monitor assigned to you who was supposed to be taking care of your interests. These monitors would come and see the abuses at our club. If my abuse was bad, I cannot even speak to what my sister went through being at a higher level than I was, and what it did to her. This person would see it and basically say, “Okay, well, that's sport”. It was the mindset of, ““ell, I had to live through it, so now it's your turn”.
With Athletics Canada and my experience there, I should not have been deemed the athlete responsible for Peter Eriksson's getting fired. I definitely played a role, I'll acknowledge that, but I ticked all my boxes. I did everything I was supposed to do, and I almost got left off a second Olympic team. I didn't get to go to the 2012 Olympics because of politics, so for 2016, because my name was more known, and because at that point I was the fastest woman in Canada, I had the community speak up for me. Even behind closed doors, right up until I toed the line at my first Olympic event, he was trying to get me removed from the team. In what world does an athlete get to thrive under those conditions, where your head coach does not even want you there?
I don't know if what happened out at the University of Guelph is on the record here. Dave Scott-Thomas was the coach there, and he was also the high-performance distance coordinator for Athletics Canada. It was known that he was carrying on inappropriately, raping an underage athlete for years. The first national team I was on was with her and Dave Scott-Thomas and his wife. I cannot imagine the terror and horror that she had to go through knowing that everybody called her crazy. She was so gaslit. It took over a decade for him to be pushed out of the sport and for someone to believe her story.
What I want, and what I think every athlete wants, is to be believed and to be heard. We don't want someone to push it under a rug or say, get to the next race, get to the next event, or do you know what? Even this allegation against this person could damage their reputation and their career.
I didn't even get my Olympic ring. When you compete at the Olympics you get a piece of jewellery; mine got lost in the mail. I did not even ask for them to send me another one for years afterwards, because I didn't want anything to do with my Olympic experience. It had nothing to do with the running—I'm proud of the running. It had to do with everything else that got me to that start line and through those races.