sports can mean so much more than a game

Forty-five, maybe 60 seconds later — at 9:11 p.m. — the bomb exploded. Twenty-five feet to Campbell’s left, a canister of tear gas detonated by Latreille’s group from the auto repair shop. The acrid smoke in the building gnawed the throats and scorched the eyes of those nearby. Suddenly, fear gripped the crowd. What next?

The people of Montreal took Campbell’s punishment personally. A French-Canadian in the offices at The Montreal Gazette wept openly. A city bus driver was so distraught by the ruling he missed a flashing railway signal and almost killed his passengers. “No sports decision ever hit the Montreal public with such impact. It seemed to strike at the very heart and soul of the city,” Sidney Katz observed in Maclean’s.

After three and a half hours, Campbell dismissed them all. Reardon maintained the hearing was all a sham, that Campbell had already told the governors his plan to suspend Richard. At least two of Richard’s teammates and legions of fans believed this conspiracy theory.

He would then decide Richard’s fate.

Yet Richard had a dark side. His intensity sometimes provoked violence. His tantrums had become as legendary as his goals.

“Hockey in Canada was bigger than the church, and Rocket Richard was bigger than the Pope,

In 1939, when war broke out in Europe, the 18-year-old Richard tried to enlist for active duty, but military doctors determined his wrists and ankle — already broken during hockey games­ — had not healed properly. He tried to enlist again the following year, but was again turned away. So he applied as a machinist but was ineligible even though he had been working as one for years because he had did not have a high school diploma. He began training at the Montreal Technical School to get a certificate that would allow him to serve, but the war ended before he completed the four-year course. He married his teenage love, Lucille, in 1942, when he was 20 and she was 17, the same year he joined the Montreal Canadiens. He broke his ankle and was able to play in only 16 games. The critics thought he was fragile. The following season, 1943-44, he answered them with 32 goals and 22 assists.

You’ve never seen a hockey player like Maurice Richard. Not Crosby. Not Gretzky. Not Orr, Beliveau, Howe. None of them had the talent, the intensity, the will to take over a game like Richard. And none of them meant to their fans what le Rocket meant to Canadien fans.

Once the officials finally subdue Richard and Laycoe, the referee, Frank Udvari, sends Laycoe to the penalty box with a five-minute major for drawing blood. When Laycoe throws a bloody towel at him, he adds 10 minutes. The punishment is worse for Richard. Udvari kicks him out of the game.

Incensed, Richard swings his stick with two-fisted fury at Laycoe. He hits him with such force across the shoulders that his stick splinters. Laycoe sheds his gloves and rushes at Richard, who drops his gloves. The two thrash at one another with their fists.

In the second period, the Canadiens’ star tripped Laycoe and sent him spinning across the ice but escaped a penalty. Richard was further aggravated by the fact his team was losing 4-1.

Laycoe

Maurice Richard­-le Rocket, Montreal’s homegrown French-Canadian star from the city’s blue-collar Nouveau-Bordeaux neighborhood, the world’s greatest hockey player to that time — carries the puck in the Boston zone.

"Sport is part of culture and a good way to learn about another country… To discover why people are so passionate about it, it's like, 'Tell me what your sport is and I'll tell you who you are,' " he said.

"Charity has been the function of the church. Now it's the team who is taking charge of the social life, visiting children in hospitals, inviting children to see a game or giving money to charity… Does that mean they have kind of a religious role?" he asked.

"Maybe invite Guy Carbonneau to speak at your church, or maybe you can create a hockey team in your church. Maybe organize a hockey tournament with different ethnic or religious communities," he said.

adding that those who don't believe the team is a religion can still earn high marks.

In Bauer's class, students will compare and contrast the Montreal Canadiens and other religions.

"If they can make connections between religion and sport, it helps get people involved; there will be a lot of diversity."

In addition to the class, Bauer has launched an essay contest asking the question, "Are the Montreal Canadiens a religion?"

In Prof. Olivier Bauer's class at the Université de Montréal, worshippers can argue that their team is their religion.

Fans of the Montreal Canadiens pray that the sacrifices made on the ice of blood, sweat and tears will lead them to glory.

first NHL game thatnight

An instant after the slap, Orlando spun the fan aroundand socked him in the jaw, scattering teeth like jujubes.

He got a slap in theface

Montreal was aghast.

Smoke from a tear-gas canister haddriven thousands of hockey fans into the streets, sparking afour-hour rampage that yielded the requisite fires, shatteredwindows, looted stores, overturned cars and 137 arrests.

There are moments when life gets in the way, when sports and thereal world collide at some intersection--

After the riot, the NHL began to crack down on all-out brawls (especially carrying your stick into one),

Catherine, featuring overturned cars, smashed windows, a shot fired from somewhere and 137 arrests.

smeared a tomato on Campbell

Either way, Maurice Richard was in trouble.

became the first to score 50 goals in a season (in 50 games, no less)

, "hockey was bigger than the Church, and Rocket Richard was bigger than the Pope.

Sticks were high, fists flew, blood often smeared the ice, and the owners thought this was all manly and a great way to sell tickets.

Maurice Richard said many times that, in order to understand the events leading up to the riot of March 17, 1955 that forever bears his name, it was crucial to know how violent the National Hockey League was in those days.

Maria seated by the little window fixed her unconscious eyes upon the sky and the fields stretching away whitely to the environing woods, and of a sudden it was borne to her that the question she was asking herself had just received its answer. To dwell in this land as her mother had dwelt, and, dying thus, to leave behind her a sorrowing husband and a record of the virtues of her race, she knew in her heart she was fit for that. In reckoning with herself there was no trace of vanity; rather did the response seem from without. Yes, she was able; and she was filled with wonderment as though at the shining of some unlooked-for light.

Maria was leaning against the door, a hand still upon the latch, her eyes turned away. Eutrope Gagnon had just this and no more to offer her: after a year of waiting that she should become his wife, and live as now she was doing in another wooden house on another half-cleared farm ... Should do the household work and the cooking, milk the cows, clean the stable when her man was away—labour in the fields perhaps, since she was strong and there would be but two of them ... Should spend her evenings at the spinning-wheel or in patching old clothes ... Now arid then in summer resting for half an hour, seated on the door-step, looking across their scant fields girt by the measureless frowning woods; or in winter thawing a little patch with her breath on the windowpane, dulled with frost, to watch the snow falling on the wintry earth and the forest ... The forest ... Always the inscrutable, inimical forest, with a host of dark things hiding there—closed round them with a savage grip that must be loosened little by little, year by year; a few acres won each spring and autumn as the years pass, throughout all the long days of a dull harsh life ... No, that she could not face ... "I know well enough that we shall have to work hard at first," Eutrope went on, "but you have courage, Maria, and are well used to labour, as I am. I have always worked hard; no one can say that I was ever lazy, and if only you will marry me it will be my joy to toil like an ox all the day long to make a thriving place of it, so that we shall be in comfort before old age comes upon us. I do not touch drink, Maria, and truly I love you ..."

I had not been back in this country, and I was thinking what a miserable place it was to live in, that the men were a lot of simpletons who had never seen anything and the girls not nearly so quick and clever as they are in the States

you have not the faintest idea! As yet, the most wonderful things you ever saw were the shops in Roberval, a high mass, an evening entertainment at the convent with acting. City people would laugh to think of it! You simply cannot imagine ... Just to stroll through the big streets in the evening—not on little plank-walks like those of Roberval, but on fine broad asphalt pavements as level as a table—just that and no more, what with the lights, the electric cars coming and going continually, the shops and the crowds, you would find enough there to amaze you for weeks together. And then all the amusements one has: theatres, circusses, illustrated papers, and places everywhere that you can go into for a nickel—five cents—and pass two hours laughing and crying. To think, Maria, you do not even know what the moving pictures are!"

Maria did not for a moment dream that life for her was over, or that the world must henceforward be a sad wilderness, because Francis Paradis would not return in the spring nor ever again. But her heart was aching, and while sorrow possessed it the future held no promise for her

Eutrope Gagnon it was in truth. Entering, he bade them all good evening, and laid his woollen cap upon the table. Maria looked at him, a blush upon her cheek. Custom ordains that on the first day of the year the young men shall kiss the women-folk, and Maria knew well enough that Eutrope, shy as he was, would exercise his privilege; she stood motionless by the table, unprotesting, yet thinking of another kiss she would have dearly welcomed. But the young man took the chair offered him and sat down, his eyes upon the floor.

Outside, the neighbouring forest, and even the fields won from it, were an alien unfriendly world, upon which they looked wonderingly through the little square windows. And sometimes this world was strangely beautiful in its frozen immobility, with a sky of flawless blue and a brilliant sun that sparkled on the snow; but the immaculateness of the blue and the white alike was pitiless and gave hint of the murderous cold.

After the bustle of summer they relapsed into easy-going ways, for the summer is painfully short and one must:-not lose a single hour of those precious weeks when it is possible to work on the land, whereas the winter drags slowly and gives all too much time for the tasks it brings.

The yield of grain was poor enough, yet the hay-crop had been excellent, so that the year as a whole gave occasion neither for excess of joy nor sorrow. However, it was long before the Chapdelaines, in evening talk, ceased deploring the unheard-of August droughts, the unprecedented September frosts, which betrayed their hopes. Against the miserly shortness of the summer and the harshness of a climate that shows no mercy they did not rebel, were even without a touch of bitterness; but they did not give up contrasting the season with that other year of wonders

She seems to remember someone long since whispering in her ear that the world and life were cheerless and gray. The daily round, brightened only by a few unsatisfying, fleeting pleasures; the slow passage of unchanging years; the encounter with some young man, like other young men, whose patient and hopeful courting ends by winning affection; a marriage then, and afterwards a vista of days under another roof, but scarce different from those that went before. So does one live, the voice had told her. Naught very dreadful in the prospect, and, even were it so, what possible but submission; yet all level, dreary and chill as an autumn field. It is not true! Alone there in the darkness Maria shakes her head, a smile upon her lips, and knows how far from true it is. When she thinks of Paradis, his look, his bearing, of what they are and will be to one another, he and she, something within her bosom has strange power to burn with the touch of fire, and yet to make her shiver. All the strong youth of her, the long-suffering of her sooth-fast heart find place in it; in the upspringing of hope and of longing, this vision of her approaching miracle of happiness.

but since the coming of François Paradis the long weekly vigil was very sweet to her, for she could think of him and of herself with nothing to distract her dear imaginings. Simple they were, these thoughts of hers, and never did they travel far afield. In the springtime he will come back; this return of his, the joy of seeing him again, the words he will say when they find themselves once more alone, the first touch of hands and lips.

Maria sat very still, delighting in the quiet and the coolness, while a thousand vague dreams circled about her like a flock of wheeling birds.

And he set himself to telling of the great American cities and their magnificence, of the life filled with ease and plenty, abounding in refinements beyond imagination, which is the portion of the well paid artisan.

But whoever was right she well knew that not one of the well-to-do young fellows at St. Prime, with his Sunday coat of fine cloth and his fur collar, was the equal of Paradis in muddy boots and faded woollen jersey.

It was the everlasting conflict between the types: pioneer and farmer, the peasant from France who brought to new lands his ideals of ordered life and contented immobility, and that other in whom the vast wilderness awakened distant atavistic instincts for wandering and adventure.

"How nice it would be to live in a country where there is hardly any winter, and where the earth makes provision for man

infant Jesus

His amazed sister-in-law gaped at him for a moment before it stole upon her that this was his way of asking for bread. A little later he attacked her with another question:—"Is your pump working well?"

pea-soup

was brighter with a new promise, by virtue of something sweet and gracious that the future had in its keeping. Perhaps the coming springtime ... perhaps another happiness that was stealing toward her, nameless and unrecognized.

seven years

A fine hearty girl!

living far apart on the worst of roads, see one another but once a week.

Thadee Pesant the blacksmith, was already in light-coloured summer garments, and sported an American coat with broad padded shoulders; though on this cold Sunday he had not ventured to discard his winter cap of black clo

The snow lay deep upon road and fields, for the April sun

It will not be inappropriate to add, in this Chapter. the letter which the Father who had charge of that Mission writes to the Reverend Father Hierôme [page 211] Lalemant, Superior at Kebec, since it gives us a more ample knowledge of the state of that Mission.

where our confidence in God

Before their death, both their hearts were torn out, by means of an opening above the breast;

if I [32] should relate the effects of grace upon these poor Savages

We tried to assist them out of our poverty,—to clothe the naked, and to feed those poor people, who were dying of hunger; to mourn with the afflicted, and to console them with the hope of Paradise. If only God receive his glory from our losses they will always be a source of gladness to us; and that is enough for us, whatever it may cost us, provided that we see the number of the Elect increase for eternity, since it is for Heaven that we labor, and not for the earth.

manner of baptizing which is called " by aspersion."

set fire to all the huts. They proceeded to vent their rage on those two Fathers; for they took them both and stripped them entirely naked, and fastened each to a post. They tied both of their hands together. They tore the nails from their fingers. They beat them with a shower of blows from cudgels, on the shoulders, the loins, the belly, the legs, and the face,—there being no part of their body which did not endure this torment

''an exaction of 20 sols on each passenger ticket

Savages from Tadoussac also bring items of information which they have gathered from the fishermen on the coast.

Andaerraehaan

Yes, since it is a very clear token of the hope of a future life that nature herself seems to furnish us in the minds of these Tribes, as a most fitting means to get them to taste the promises of Jesus Christ.

You will see them often, in the depth of winter, almost entirely naked, while they have handsome and valuable robes in store, that they keep in reserve for the Dead; for this is their point of honor.

They believe that the Sky is angry, when any one is drowned or dies of cold; a sacrifice is needed to appease it, but, good God! what a sacrifice, or rather what a butchery! The flesh of the dead man is the victim who is to be immolated. [112] A gathering of the neighboring villages takes place; many feasts are made, and no presents are spared, as it is a matter in which the whole Country is interested. The dead body is carried into the cemetery, and is stretched out on a mat. On one side is a ditch, and on the other a fire for a sacrifice. At the same time, some young men chosen by the relatives present themselves, and station themselves around the corpse, each with a knife in his hand; and the protector of the dead person having marked with a coal the parts which are to be cut, they vie with each other in cutting the body, tearing off the fleshiest parts. At last they open the body and draw out its entrails, which they throw into the fire with all the pieces of flesh they had cut off, and throw into the ditch the carcass quite stripped of flesh. I have observed that during this butchery the women walk around them several [page 163] times, and encourage the young men who cut up this body to render this good service to the whole Country, putting Porcelain beads into their mouths. Sometimes even the mother of the deceased, all bathed in tears, [113] joins the party and sings in a pitiful tone, lamenting the death of her son. That done, they firmly believe they have appeased the Sky. If they fail in this ceremony, they look upon all the disastrous changes of the weather, and all the untoward accidents which happen to them afterwards, as so many results of its anger.

we are among Peoples who are astonished when you speak to them of God,

Sorcerers, but had always asked us to make it rain. They believe that nothing is impossible for us. I told them that neither we nor any man could bring rain or fine weather; that he who made Heaven and earth alone was master of them

HAPPY DEATH OF SOME HURONS

Part First

savage neophytes

The missionaries are compiling a grammar and dictionary of the Huron dialect;

The "sorcerers," or medicine men, practice all their arts to bring rain, but without success, and attribute their failure to the cross erected by the missionaries