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Travis Hamonic’s arms are an ink-filled flesh canvas — a colourful collection of images, words and numbers — condensed stories of his life journey, a road map of happiness and heartbreak.
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All the tattoos have significant meaning for the Ottawa Senators defenceman, representing, among other things, his faith, family, friends and his love for the Tragically Hip.
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The ink is his narrative, the things he holds closest to his heart, the good, the bad and the worst — the sudden loss of his father, Gerry, who died when Travis was 10 years old.
On his left arm, there are images of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, with the Holy Trinity on his elbow. There’s the 204 area code because he’s from Manitoba.
His dad’s signature has been copied onto his right arm. There are lyrics (Like a Needle Needs a Vein) from a Tim McGraw song, I Need You — an homage to the love of his life, wife Stephanie.
There are lyrics (“With illusions of someday cast in a golden light”) from Ahead by a Century, a song by The Tragically Hip.
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There are the words Hope, Trust and Joy.
There are the birth dates of his mom, Lisa, his dad, brother Jesse and sisters Melissa and Carly. One day soon, he plans to add those of his two children — his daughter Charlie and son Henry — to the meaningful ink.
To understand the tattoos, to get a peek into the window of Travis Hamonic, you need to understand a bit more about him.
In his 14th NHL season, Hamonic is still pushing himself to be a better hockey player. At 6-1 and 200 pounds, his game isn’t fancy — last season with the Senators, he had six goals and 15 assists. He’s a leader who plays with grit and heart.
What happens on the ice matters. But that’s not what defines him; there are many more layers. Being a good husband, good father, good son, good brother, good friend, good teammate, good Christian — that’s what’s really at his core and in his heart.
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“Faith … family … friends … those will be the pillars of your life when all this goes away,” Hamonic said. “What I do for a living, I’m very proud of it and I’m appreciative. But there’s more to me than being a hockey player.
“When your life is done, you can’t take anything with you. Materialistic things are just that. It’s more about the friendships, the bonds you can forge and the time you can have with your family. I haven’t been successful enough as a hockey player so people would know who I am a couple of years after I’m done. That’s OK. I can go back to just being Travis, I can just be my kids’ dad.”
Hamonic grew up in rural Manitoba: St. Malo, a small everybody-knows-everybody farming community where many of the residents have francophone and Métis heritage. There was no stoplight, just a church, bank, gas station, a couple of convenience stores and a popular provincial park with a nice beach and campground. The town has grown since.
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“It’s a very special place, a neat way to grow up, an idyllic storybook childhood,” Hamonic said. “Kids would drive their quads up and down the main road. I don’t know if small towns are like that anymore.”
There is so much of his dad in the fibre of Hamonic, now 33. There’s also a lot of his mom, who became a single parent so suddenly. And that’s where we go — Sept. 15, 2000 — so you can understand what impact the loss of a father had on a youngster’s life. And, how the kid pushed forward.
While Lisa took care of the paperwork on the wheat farm, doing the daily grunt work at Hamonic Farms fell on the shoulders of Gerry, with help from his kids. The days were long. The boys would be doing “s—-y jobs,” picking rocks out of the fields to make sure they didn’t get sucked up in the combines, cleaning bins, even on the hottest of days.
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“Farm life is the best,” Hamonic said. “You’d see how hard my dad worked, how he handled the stress. Technology was different, life was different. I grew up thinking my dad could do anything, fix anything. I want my kids to think of me that way.”
Gerry was a superhero to Travis. But on that day in September, Melissa ran into Travis’ bedroom, yelling for him to wake up. When the 10-year-old rushed out of his room, Gerry was being wheeled toward an ambulance. His father couldn’t talk, but he clutched his youngest son’s hand. One last time. Gerry, who’d had a massive heart attack, died that night in hospital.
Was it a bad dream? How could it happen? Not to his dad, the president of the minor hockey association, the rugged, larger-than-life, do-everything handyman who was loved by everyone.
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“I try not to think about that day,” Hamonic said, lowering his eyes. “As a 10-year-old boy, you’re in shock. It took a couple of years to realize my dad wasn’t coming back. You come home from school one day and finally you’re not looking at the chair or looking to see if he’s coming in from the field.
“As a father now, I wonder what my dad must have been thinking, watching me watch him die, not being able to anything to stop what was happening. I believe my dad was still concerned about us right up until the last second. My biggest fear as a father is not being there for my kids.”
With Gerry gone, Jesse and Travis brought in the crops one last time, and a year later, Lisa, a nurse, sold the farm. The family moved to Winnipeg.
“I remember my dad’s kindness, his patience, his work ethic, his parenting,” Hamonic said. “He brought my brother and me everywhere. I brought my son to the John Deere dealership, I hadn’t been to one in years, I couldn’t believe the technology. When we were younger, the cabs were small, there was no AC and my brother and I were always fighting and bickering. We’d be in there, eight or nine hours straight. The patience (my dad) showed with us …”
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And that brings us to religion, a topic we sometimes find weirdly uncomfortable to talk about. But to Travis Hamonic it’s a big part part of who he is.
“My Catholic faith is the biggest part of my life,” he said. “I’m thankful for what I was taught at a young age by my parents and, as a father, it’s the most important thing I can teach my kids.”
There’s a Christian poem, Footprints in the Sand; the words hold great meaning for Hamonic, who said: “When you’re going through hard moments, there are two footprints in the sand. The man said, ‘I only see one set of footprints, where are you?’ And God answered, ‘I was the one holding you. I was the one carrying you.’
“I firmly believe God shines light on the good and the bad. When times are good, you feel like you’re walking alone. You don’t realize somebody is carrying you. For me, it’s God. Internally, when things are going bad, when there are hard times, maybe you’re thinking, ‘Where is He now while I’m going through these hard times?’ Maybe what you think is a hard time is a moment you can use to grow.”
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That takes us back to the hockey side. When Gerry died, Travis wasn’t as interested in going to the rink, or doing much else, really.
“Hockey was something my dad and I really shared,” said Hamonic, who was the subject of a touching ESPN E:60 feature, In the Name of the Father, seven years ago. “The first year and a half, two years after he passed, I didn’t much want to play hockey. My mom never pushed. If I decided to keep playing, it was up to me. It was hard at times, it brought up bad memories.
“Everyone handles it in a different manner, there’s no right or wrong way. You come around to being yourself again and you start doing things you love.”
The drive returned. He played junior for the Moose Jaw Warriors, then was dealt to the Brandon Wheat Kings. The New York Islanders selected him in the second round (53rd overall) of the 2008 National Hockey League draft. He made his NHL debut on Nov. 24, 2010, and scored his first NHL goal Feb. 1, 2011, against the Atlanta Thrashers. He was traded to the Calgary Flames in 2017 and signed to play with the Vancouver Canucks in 2021. In 2022, he was traded to the Senators.
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“I never thought I needed to make it to the NHL to make my dad proud,” he said. “If it made me happy, he was happy. If anything, I felt like I had an opportunity to make my mom proud.”
His father is still in his thoughts. Before every game, Hamonic gathers his emotions, looks up to the upper left corner of the rink, where his dad sat at all those minor hockey games, and says a prayer.
“I envision my dad pulling up a chair and being able to watch,” Hamonic said. “I would trade every game I’ve played or will play in the NHL for him to be able to watch me play one shift and be able to talk to him about it after the game.
“There are plenty of days, still — it’s been 23 years — where I wake up and wonder why. You wonder what life would be like. I believe I wouldn’t be in the NHL. I’d be working on the farm with my brother and my dad. That would have been a great life, too. I valued that life and that lifestyle.”
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And, that brings us back to Lisa. The kids are all successful. A mother is proud and Gerry would be, too.
Asked what’s special about his mother, Hamonic said: “Compassion, strength, knowledge, kindness … I don’t think I appreciated enough what my mom had to go through.”
And that’s where this story turns to Stephanie, who grew up in another small town and was dating somebody else when she met Hamonic in Grade 12. They talked briefly, then parted. When Hamonic came back from a season of junior hockey, he found out she was single. They went on a date — a summer fair and to St. Malo — and, all these years later, the love connection is strong.
“Anybody that spends two minutes with my wife notices how kind she is, how compassionate she is, how smart she is, how beautiful she is,” Hamonic said. “She’s funny … we make each other laugh. I learned early that life is short.
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“One of the biggest accomplishments would be to be 90 years old and be able to say, ‘We’ve been together for 70 years.’ What an amazing accomplishment it would be.”
Being a father — it’s tough for Hamonic to find the words for something that has enriched his life so much.
“It’s the best,” he said. “When you’re younger and blessed to find someone, you start planning your lives together. You love your spouse more than anything. Then you have kids. Anyone with kids can speak on this, the love you feel for your kids is a love that’s undeniable. The joy they bring us, the happiness … My mom watches me with my kids and she can see how happy and proud I am. She says, ‘That’s what I feel about you even now.’
“There are ups and downs (as a hockey player) because what we do is a very public thing. When you’re a younger player, you can have a bad day at work, go home and really sit on it.
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“(For me), you can have the worst game of your life … I’ve had a couple of games this year where I haven’t played well … but I live five minutes from the rink and when I get home and both kids are up coughing and puking, I barely have time to take my tie off and I’m helping. I take my job (as a hockey player) very seriously, but there’s a time to park it. Whatever happens on the ice, I deal with it when I get back to work. I’m very fortunate to have my family to snap me back to reality.”
Christmas is a big deal for the Hamonics.
“Kids are kids, they love Christmas,” he said. “We want the kids to enjoy the nostalgia of Santa Claus and Christmas. But we also want our kids to understand why we’re celebrating. It’s the birth of Jesus. It’s an important day for us, a day to be celebrated and to be joyful.
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“We also want the kids to understand how fortunate we are. Our kids are young, but we try to instill in them there are plenty of people who need help. It’s important they understand acts of charity. It’s not lost on my kids that we’re blessed. We’re very fortunate, not everybody is this world is. It’s always been important to my wife and I to help. I want my kids to understand that.”
And that takes us to the charity work that has been done by Travis and Stephanie over the years.
Charlie’s Children, named after their daughter, supports low-income families or single parents expecting a newborn, offering resources and supplies.
There’s D Partner, which helps grieving children and families.
And, there’s Northern Project, which provides Indigenous youth from the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon with opportunities to experience the benefits of sport and education in their communities.
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It’s not just about helping fund the projects for Hamonic, he gets personally involved. In 2017, he won the NHL Foundation Player award, honouring perseverance and teamwork in the community.
“At the ends of our lives, no matter how much we have, we’re going to wish we had more time,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, there are moments where you need financial means. But the biggest act of charity, the biggest currency, is time. So the biggest thing we try to do as a couple for a lot of these charitable things is give our time. At a young age, I learned some people are dealt a tougher hand.
“Whatever you do in life — doctor, dentist, teacher, construction worker, hockey player, whatever it is — there’s a duty to be a good person and to help others.”
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Love. Being appreciative of those around you. In this Christmas season, that’s where this story starts and ends. For Hamonic, it ties in with faith, family and friends. It ties in with giving and caring and being a good person.
“If you can do a good job, where your kids really feel the love in your household, my wife and I really try to show that,” he said. “I came from that, she came from that. Love is the most important thing, it’s everything.”
Everything.
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