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Why Joan Carson packed up her life and her son and left Penticition was never fully explained to Tom. With no legal marriage or extended family to keep them rooted it was all too easy to start again somewhere else.

Two years later Tom’s memories of his hometown and his father were beyond his reach and his mother they would settle them in Northern Ontario. Tom quickly learned the meaning of independence while Joan worked to support them more than she was at home. Tom was little more than six years old when he was first enrolled in local hockey to take him off his mother’s hands. A decision she would quickly regret by the time the expenses of Tom’s game would stretch beyond his family’s means.

Tom was scarcely a teenager when he began taking odd jobs, and learning skills beyond his years to keep himself on the ice. Tom’s early talent for the game propelled him easily through the A divisions. Unhappy at home in a family that now included his mother’s new partner, the chance to be a billet player became Tom’s next ticket to premature adulthood. He was transplanted to Sault Ste. Marie to play every level of the game from Bantam to Junior A, until a permanent mark on his criminal record would set Tom back a season and send him home.

Tom was well into his teens when his mother officially married in time for the birth of his half sister. By the time his half-brother followed Tom was barely finishing high school. Determined to return to the standing he’d earned, Tom would return to the Junior A division for another season under a new Coach and within a year he had secured his place on the roster of an NHL team through their AHL affiliate. As a noteworthy defensemen and prized enforcer, Tom's NHL career isn't exactly how he imagined it. But if you ask him, he'll tell you he's just never been good at much else.

A man of few words and meagre aspirations, there's a lot in Tom's life that never panned out and a lot more he's still not convinced could ever be worth fighting for.