NHLer, advocate, educator: RRU grad Jim Kyte Order of Canada recipient

Learn more about the Master of Business Administration.

Jim Kyte, like his father, was an elite athlete.

Like his father and brothers, Kyte is deaf.

The story of his life is what happens when drive meets opportunity and defies others’ notions of what people with different abilities can do.

Kyte was a National Hockey League first round draft pick by the Winnipeg Jets and went on to a 15-year pro career. With stints in Pittsburgh, Calgary, San Jose and his hometown, Ottawa, the left-handed, stay-at-home defencemen remains the only deaf NHLer in the league’s history.

Kyte learned to do things differently from his hearing teammates as he’s considered “profoundly deaf.” With a 100 dB hearing loss, Kyte wears hearing aids and can read lips. During practices, he would always go third in a drill because, while he couldn’t always hear the coaches’ instructions, he could watch others and learn from them before completing drills himself. Another adaption Kyte employed was glancing at the reflection in the glass above the end boards when skating down an iced puck in a game because he couldn’t hear an opponent bearing down on him from behind.

“I did things differently,” Kyte says. “And I tell that to organizations today about people with disabilities: they are differently able… so, you just have to give someone an opportunity to prove that they can do the job.”

That approach stems from the words of his father, John Kyte, a former college athletic star and St. Francis Xavier University's Athlete-of-the-Half-Century: “Yes, you have a challenge to overcome, but it shouldn't disable you from doing whatever you put your mind to and work hard.”

His father would also say: “If you believe you can or if you believe you can’t, you’re right.”

Kyte’s life off the ice is equally remarkable, growing out of his experiences as an athlete with a disability. He led hockey schools for deaf players and co-founded a hearing-impaired hockey association, doing everything from raising money to hiring coaches. He has pushed for athletes with physical disabilities to have better accessibility in sports as well as for the rights of people with disabilities. 

Kyte also helped start the sports management program at Algonquin College of Applied Arts and Technology, later becoming dean of the college’s school of hospitality and tourism. He believed he could contribute to a post-secondary institution despite only having a high school education and he made that happen. And when an opportunity arose to become a department chair at Algonquin — a job that required a candidate with a master’s degree — he made that happen, too. In 2012, he earned a Master of Business Administration from Royal Roads University.

“It opened doors for me,” he says of his time in the MBA program, where he was awarded the RRU Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal. “It gave me much more confidence in having conversations with my colleagues.”

It also gave him a skillset that has served him in his work as well as his volunteer service on a number of boards, plus a set of lifelong friends from his cohort.

For his leadership and advocacy, Kyte was named a member of the Order of Canada. 

“I was gobsmacked,” he says of receiving one of the country’s highest honours. “I was a bit stunned and obviously extremely honoured to receive this.”

He also confesses to “a bit of imposter syndrome” and notes, “You just go about doing the work that you do on a daily basis, and you don't do it for any accolades.”

Learn more about the Master of Business Administration.