In the sleepy, coastal village of Nanoose Bay, B.C., Joshua Cook wakes early, walks his dog, and then begins a training regimen that would exhaust many professional athletes.
Two hours in the gym. High-intensity skating sessions whenever he can find ice. Drills, recovery, repeat.
At 31, Cook is trying to do something most players his age are long past attempting: breaking into professional hockey.
“It’s not a hundred per cent certain I’m going to make it,” he said. “It’s not a hundred per cent certain I’m not going to make it. But the reality is that every single day I’m pushing myself towards this goal.”
Cook’s pursuit is not just about starting something new. It’s also about leaving a difficult past behind.
Just months ago, Cook was a police officer. A member of the RCMP since 2020, Cook was medically released in January after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Cook points to his years serving in Nunavut as the origin of his mental health struggles.
“It didn’t feel like Canada,” he said, referring to his time in Cape Dorset, a community of about 1,400 people in eastern Nunavut.
“To me, it felt like what I would imagine a war zone to be like” he said, noting that while he developed many strong relationships within the Inuit community, the demands of the job were high.
Cook says he and his fellow officers faced frequent exposure to armed robberies, domestic violence, substance abuse and suicides.
“We bounced from call to call and it was a shared constant feeling of being overwhelmed and just trying to make sure nobody died,” he said in an email.
Cook listed off “multiple traumatic incidents” from his time in Nunavut.
These included “being charged at with a knife … [a] hostage situation where intervention was necessary. Domestic violence directly on my door step where I was living with my fiance at the time …
“Having fireworks shot at our house not knowing if it was our house being shot up … Having to arrest violent suspects off duty at the grocery store on separate incidents … Multiple suicide scenes and at time performing CPR on someone that was dead or dying. Brutal child abuse, sexual assaults, domestic violence cases.”
Cook was awarded a St. John’s Ambulance Life-saving Award and Commanding Officer’s commendation for his service throughout 2022.
But these experiences also pushed Cook to his limit.
“The traumatic events that I experienced in Cape Dorset & Iqaluit were so condensed in time and so many occurrences that it just ended up ruining my head mentally as I was never able to process it,” he said in his email.
An upside, though, is they have spurred him to live life to its fullest, he says.
“ Seeing how short life can be and how quickly it can be taken away. I’ve seen that, and it’s made me realize that I want to make the most of every single second I have.”
Returning to the ice
For Cook, policing had always felt like more than a job. It was a source of meaning and community.
“Our assigned team [in Cape Dorset] was made up of only 4-6 permanent positions and we all supported each other,” Cook said in his email.
“Every single permanent member I worked with in Cape Dorset was amazing. We had relief members flying up to help out, overtime wasn’t mandatory but was expected, as if we didn’t take it then who was going to police?”
When he lost the ability to police, Cook says he initially lost his sense of purpose too.
“When I was first diagnosed with PTSD, I couldn’t police. I felt like I didn’t have a purpose,” he said in an interview. “I couldn’t help people. That’s what I loved to do.”
At his lowest point, he asked himself a simple question: What makes you happy?
“Hockey is what first came to mind,” he said.
As a teenager, Cook had played junior A hockey in Brooks., Alta., with the Brooks Bandits, the same team that produced NHL superstar Cale Makar. In his early 20s, he played at the collegiate level for Vancouver Island University.
Cook decided to get back into the game.
In January 2025, Cook started coaching the Oceanside Generals junior, a junior ice hockey team in Parksville, B.C.
Coaching offered something unexpectedly similar to the life he’d had before: structure, discipline, and a new way to connect with others.
“The brotherhood that we formed on that team … they made me remember what it was like to play,” he said.
The push to shoot for the pros came from his family — particularly Cook’s brother, Mitch.
Initially, Cook planned to pursue his comeback quietly. Train in private, rebuild his game, and reveal the result later. Mitch had other ideas.
“He said, ‘You need to tell people about your goal,’” recalled Cook. “Once you talk about it, it’s more likely to happen.”
Cook has documented his training on social media, developing a modest but fast growing audience. His Instagram account has grown from a few hundred followers to over 6,000 in just a few months.
The comments reflect a mix of encouragement, curiosity and, inevitably, skepticism.
Some have questioned whether a 31-year-old can realistically pursue professional hockey after years away from competitive play.
“That’s a respectable opinion,” said Cook. “Not everyone will do it or can do it.”
The statistics suggest his mission is a long shot. Most professional hockey players make their debut in their early twenties.
But Cook frames it differently.
“There are people who say they want to do something, and there are people who really want it — and they commit every single day to doing it. That’s what I’m doing.”
Cook’s training environment is unusually well-suited to that level of commitment. Cook lives above a gym on his family’s five-acre property, where his brother runs a strength and conditioning business. The setup allows for near-constant access to high-level programming that his brother tailors to his goals.
“I’m very grateful,” he said. “It’s perfect for what I’m trying to do.”
In addition to training alone, Cook also plays on teams with junior and college-level athletes. The routine is rigorous, but Cook says it serves a dual purpose.
“Every single day I’m pushing myself towards this goal,” he said. “And in turn, it’s helping me recover from PTSD.”
The path to pro
Cook describes his work overcoming PTSD — which also includes working with a psychologist — as two steps forward, one step back.
The path into professional hockey is similarly non-linear.
Cook hopes to spend a season playing semi-professional hockey in Europe in 2026–27, followed by an attempt to secure an East Coast Hockey League (ECHL) tryout the following year.
The ECHL is the third-highest tier of professional hockey in North America, one level below the American League, and two below the NHL.
Cook says he has already had discussions with a team in England.
From there, the plan is to produce results overseas: compile game footage and performance metrics; then reach out directly to North American teams.
“I’ll pay for my flight [to tryouts], my accommodation — just give me one shot,” he said, describing the pitch he hopes to make to ECHL clubs next off-season.
Regardless of where his efforts lead, Cook says he is confident he is doing the right thing.
“At the end of the day, if I don’t make it … look at how good I’ve got. Look at all the work I’ve put in. And look at how healthy I am.”
That outlook has already motivated others online, he says. Messages arrive daily: people inspired to return to the rink, to stay sober, to push through their own struggles.
“One guy said he didn’t want to go shoot pucks that day,” said Cook, referring to a recovering alcoholic who also uses hockey as a therapeutic outlet. “But because of my video, he did.”
Those interactions have restored something Cook thought he had lost when he left policing.
“I wanted to help people,” he said. “That’s why I became a police officer.”
Now, he is doing it differently — one training session, one video, one message at a time.
