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

The arena is their temple, the players are their saviours, and those who worship them pray that the sacrifices made on the ice — of blood, sweat and tears — will lead them to glory.They are the fans of the Montreal Canadiens.

heriot was a harbinger of the 1960 election of Quebec premier JeanLesage, which gave Francophiles a greater sense of empowerment,and the so-called Quiet Revolution, in which French Quebecoisbegan asserting greater control over their lives

And no defeat was as personal, as galling, as the suspensionthat NHL president Clarence Campbell had handed Richard the daybefore all hell broke loose.

Good to his word, though, Richard returned the next season to lead the Habs to the Stanley Cup championship, the first of five consecutive championships they would win before Richard retired in 1960 — a convincing vindication.

“If they hadn’t pampered Maurice Richard, built him up as a hero until he felt he was bigger than hockey itself, this wouldn’t have happened.”

The men overwhelmed law and order. They pulled down road signs. They smashed windows of the congested streetcars. They toppled telephone booths and lit newspaper kiosks on fire. They heaved bricks from a nearby construction site through the Forum windows. When one young man was arrested and taken into a police car, the protestors began rocking the car, and the police officer feared they would flip it.

But many stayed in the streets, where first, a spontaneous celebration broke out. A pair of young men perched in a tree’s branches to observe the scene. People disembarked the streetcars that couldn’t push through and joined the party, lighting bonfires, dancing and singing — what else to do on the night of St. Patrick’s when you unexpectedly find yourself with a large crowd of fellow Habs fans?

Campbell pushed the man away with his foot.

On physical injury, he took his chances, came through a gentleman, whom you couldn’t help but admire.”

He remained steadfast in his seat, even smiled.

Yet if he did not go, he feared people would see him as a coward, his own pride trumping common sense.

Some of them, like the Robinson brothers, Guy, Robert and André, smuggled in a bag of ripe tomatoes.

Gordon had declared he would stand firm with the Queen Elizabeth Hotel.

Without Richard, they might lose their lead and with it home-ice advantage for the playoffs, which could, ultimately, cost them the Stanley Cup.

Richard and pointed out that Laycoe “was no angel,” going so far to suggest that since Laycoe knew “Richard erupts like Vesuvius” his provocation “should be considered an accessory before the fact.”

“Whether this type of conduct is the product of temperamental instability or willful defiance doesn’t matter. It’s a type of conduct that cannot be tolerated.” He suspended Richard for the final three games of the regular season and the entire playoffs.

When asked to comment, he said, “I don’t remember what happened.”

According to Irvin’s son, his father insisted until his death that the officials altered the facts in their account to please Campbell. Irvin defended Richard, saying he was dazed and did not realize what he was doing, that he mistook Thompson, the linesman, for a Bruin.

The Canadiens’ star had gotten too big, they feared, believing he was above reproach. Campbell, sometimes considered the owners’ puppet, certainly would have taken to heart their directives.

“Freedom of speech is no longer mine to enjoy,” he wrote bitterly. “As a hockey player, I am obliged to obey my employer’s orders.” The implication, as a French-Canadian forced to buckle to his Anglo overseers, was clear.

Richard called the decision against Geoffrion a “farce” and wrote that the “dictator” should “not try to create publicity at the expense of a good fellow like ‘Boom Boom’ Geoffrion just because he is a French-Canadian.”

Campbell, noting that Murphy had provoked the incident and committed the “cardinal sin” of using his stick to strike an opponent without one, suspended him five games. But he suspended Geoffrion for his “vicious retaliation” for eight games — the longest suspension for an on-ice infraction in the league’s history to that point.

Now in his ninth year as NHL president, Campbell had a history with Richard. There existed an indigenous antipathy between the two men, the one Anglo-Canadian, the other French-Canadian, exacerbated by Quebec’s resistance to mandatory conscription during World War II, something that incited scorn from the majority of Anglo-Canadians who supported it. Lt. Col. Campbell considered Richard a slacker for playing hockey during the war, despite Richard’s efforts to join up.

So Richard, sensing the lack of fairness in Canadian society at play on the ice, often dispensed his own vigilante justice, as he had done with Laycoe and Thompson.

Before each game, I think about my temper and how I should control it, but as soon as I get on the ice I forget all that.”

During 18 seasons total, he was assessed 1,285 minutes in penalties.

ith blood still spilling down his cheek, he took the puck at his own blue line and headed up ice.

1955,

They want to arrest Richard for assault, to throw him in jail for the night. Montreal coach Dick Irvin blocks the entry to the Canadiens’ dressing room.

For five minutes, the tempest rages. The crowd, on its feet, cannot believe the madness before them. They’ve seen fights over the Garden’s past three decades in the days when players swung their sticks and fists more liberally, but nothing like this, nothing as determined and wild.

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.

ince then, larger thinkers on the Quebec scene have argued whether this was the beginning of Quebec's Quiet Revolution — officially pegged for 1960 with the election of Jean Lesage as Premier — or perhaps just the end of a time when hockey was more important than politics, as the latter began to take hold among French Canadian youth.

Garbage and various fruit rained down on the NHL boss, one man raced up and smeared a tomato on Campbell,

he showed up to the game (10 minutes late) with his secretary (future wife) and took his regular place.

Richard's story had linesman Cliff Thompson holding him back, arms pinned, while Laycoe was allowed to smack away. Rocket said he warned the linesman three times to let him go before he finally clocked the official.

The NHL was a provincial, parochial six-team affair in 1955, featuring barely over 100 players. Many of them hated each other with the type of passion only love can understand, as paleontologist Steven Jay Gould once observed of 1950s New York baseball.

How Richard himself, the Rocket, was so much a part of Quebec society that he transcended even organized religion. Red Storey, a former referee and long-time hockey commentator, once said of him that, in Quebec, "hockey was bigger than the Church, and Rocket Richard was bigger than the Pope." Roch Carrier perhaps explained it best in his famous book The Hockey Sweater.

"Three hundred years ago we came, and we have remained ... They who led us hither might return among us without knowing shame or sorrow, for if it be true that we have little learned, most surely nothing is forgot.

Perhaps, though, one would come to tire of this restlessness, and, yearning some evening only for repose and quiet, where would one discover the tranquillity of field and wood, the soft touch of that cooler air that draws from the north-west after set of sun, the wide-spreading peacefulness that settles on the earth sinking to untroubled sleep.

I began to hunger and thirst for this spot they were talking about, that I had never seen in my life and where not a soul lived, as for the place of my birth ...

Death is but a glorious preferment

Mistook. She corrected herself, and for the ancient Indian name that the people of the country use, gave it the official one bestowed in baptism by the church—St. Coeur de Marie.

A little before daylight they both fell asleep;

The newspaper that spoke of this medicine,

No one answered her. Those living sheltered lives take quick alarm when the mechanism of one of their number goes wrong, but people who wrestle with the earth for a living feel little surprise if their labours are too much for them now and then, and the body gives way in some fibre.

.

By Heaven! I lose heart for you, I who live here no longer, and I ask myself how it comes about that all you folk did not long ago seek a kinder climate where you would find everything that makes for comfort, where you could go out for a walk in the winter-time without being in fear of death ..."

"It is a queer thing," said Conrad Neron, "how every man finds it equally hard to rest content. Here are three who left their homes and came this long way to settle and farm, and here am I always saying to myself that nothing would be so pleasant as to sit quietly in an office all the day, a pen behind my ear, sheltered from cold wind and hot sun."

There was none of the slowness of the Canadian speech, nor of that indefinable accent found in no corner of France, which is only a peasant blend of the different pronunciations of former emigrants. They used words and turns of phrase one never hears in Quebec, even in the towns, and which to these simple men seemed fastidious and wonderfull

A numerous company was assembled under the Surprenant roof: several of the villagers, the three Frenchmen who had bought his nephew Lorenzo's farm, and also, to the Chapdelaines' great surprise, Lorenzo himself, back once more from the States upon business that related to the sale and the settling of his father's affairs. He greeted Maria very warmly, and seated himself beside her.

Love was snatched away, and they forbade remembrance.

Maria was thinking of the priest's words: "If there was affection between you it is very proper that you should know regret. But you were not pledged to one another, because neither you nor he had spoken to your parents; therefore it is not befitting or right that you should sorrow thus, nor feel so deep a grief for a young man who, after all is said, was nothing to you..." And again: "That masses should be sung, that you should pray for him, such things are useful and good, you could do no better. Three high masses with music, and three more when the boys return from the woods, as your father has asked me, most assuredly these will help him, and also you may be certain they will delight him more than your lamentations, since they will shorten by so much his time of expiation. But to grieve like this, and to go about casting gloom over the household is not well, nor is it pleasing in the sight of God." He did not appear in the guise of a comforter, nor of one who gives counsel in the secret affairs of the heart, but rather as a man of the law or a chemist who enunciates his bald formulas, invariable and unfailing. "The duty of a girl like you—good-looking, healthy, active withal and a clever housewife—is in the first place to help her old parents, and in good time to marry and bring up a Christian family of her own. You have no call to the religious life? No. Then you must give up torturing yourself in this fashion, because it is a sacrilegious thing and unseemly, seeing that the young man was nothing whatever to you. The good God knows what is best for us; we should neither rebel nor complain ..."

On this occasion when the mass was ended, instead of paying visits they went to the curees house. It was already thronged with members of the congregation from remote farms, for the Canadian priest not only has the consciences of his flock in charge, but is their counsellor in all affairs, and the composer of their disputes; the solitary individual of different station to whom they can resort for the solving of their difficulties.

Country folk do not die for love, nor spend the rest of their days nursing a wound. They are too near to nature, and know too well the stern laws that rule their lives. Thus it is perhaps, that they are sparing of high-sounding words; choosing to say "liking" rather than "loving" ... "ennui" rather than "grief," that so the joys and sorrows of the heart may bear a fit proportion to those more anxious concerns of life which have to do with their daily toil, the yield of their lands, provision for the future.

Did you doubt of her, O mother of the Galilean? Since that only eight days before she strove to reach your ear with her thousand prayers, and you but clothed yourself in divine impassivity while fate accomplished its purpose, think you that she questions your goodness or your power? It would indeed have been to misjudge her. As once she sought your aid for a man, so now she asks your pardon for a soul, in the same words, with the same humility and boundless faith.

"Indeed that is true. I am not saying that the good God had cause to send him to his death-him more than another. He was a fine fellow, hard-working, and I loved him well. But it shows you ..."

That he return in the spring ... Dreaming of his return, of François, the handsome sunburnt face turned to hers, Maria forgets all else, and looks long with unseeing eyes at the snow-covered ground which the moonlight has turned into a glittering fabric of ivory and mother-of-pearl-at the black pattern of the fences outlined upon it, and the menacing ranks of the dark forest.

The children exclaimed with delight, and followed the preparations with impatient eyes. Molasses and brown sugar were set on the stove to boil, and when this had proceeded far enough Telesphore brought in a large dish of lovely white snow. They all gathered about the table as a few drops of the boiling syrup were allowed to fall upon the snow where they instantly became crackly bubbles, deliciously cold.

"Quite true," her mother reverently answered. "One desiring a favour who says her thousand Aves properly before midnight on Christmas Eve, very seldom fails to receive what she asks."

Through the little window they looked on the gray sky, and found little to cheer them. To go to midnight mass is the natural and strong desire of every French-Canadian peasant, even of those living farthest from the settlements. What do they not face to accomplish it! Arctic cold, the woods at night, obliterated roads, great distances do but add to the impressiveness and the mystery. This anniversary of the birth of Jesus is more to them than a mere fixture in the calendar with rites appropriate; it signifies the renewed promise of salvation, an occasion of deep rejoicing, and those gathered in the wooden church are imbued with sincerest fervour, are pervaded with a deep sense of the supernatural. This year, more than ever, Maria yearned to attend the-mass after many weeks of remoteness from houses and from churches; the favours she would fain demand seemed more likely to be granted were she able to prefer them before the altar, aided in heavenward flight by the wings of music.

pasted upon the wainscotting at the north-west side old newspapers brought from the village and carefully preserved

cypress in the morning, spruce throughout the day, in the evening birch, pushing them in upon the live coals. Whenever the heat failed, mother Chapdelaine might be heard saying anxiously.—"Don't let the fire out, children." Whereupon Maria, Tit'Bé or Telesphore would open the little door, glance in and hasten to the pile of wood.

When we consider their Fathers, still plunged in their superstitions, although recognizing sufficiently the truth, we are afraid that God, provoked by their sins, has rejected them for a time; but, as for the children, without doubt he holds out his arms to them and draws them to himself. The eagerness they show to learn the duties of a Christian keeps us from doubting it. The smallest ones throw themselves into our arms, as we pass through the Cabins, and do not require to be urged to talk and to learn. Father Daniel hit upon the plan of quieting a little child, crying in its mother's arms, by having it make the sign of the Cross. And indeed, one day when I had just been teaching the Catechism to them in our Cabin, this child made us laugh; its mother was carrying it in her arms, and was going out; but, as soon as she reached the door, it began to cry so that she was [page 21] compelled to turn back. She asked it what was the matter. "Let me begin again," [13] it said, " let me begin again, I want to say more." I then got it to make again the sign of the Cross, and it immediately began to laugh and to jump for joy. I saw the same child, another time, crying hard because it had had its finger frozen; but it quieted down and laughed, as soon as they had it make the sign of the Cross. I dwell willingly upon this matter, as I am sure pious souls take pleasure in hearing all these particulars. In the beginnings of this infant Church, what can we speak about if not the stammerings of our spiritual children? We have one little girl, among others, named Marie Aoesiwa, who has not her equal. Her whole satisfaction seems to be in making the sign of the Cross and in saying her Pater and Ave. Scarcely have we set foot in her Cabin, when she leaves everything to pray to God. When we assemble the children for prayers or for Catechism, she is always among the first, and hastens there more cheerfully than many would to play. She does not stir from our Cabin, and does not omit making the sign of the Cross, and saying over and over fifty times a day the Pater and Ave. She gets others to do the same; and, one of our [14] Frenchman having newly come, her only greeting was to take his hand, and have him make the sign of the Cross. Often she is in the field when our Fathers recite their Office there; she stands in the road, and, almost every time they return, she begins to make the sign of the Cross, and to pray to God in a loud voice.

The latter, .as a last resort, appeal to their patron saints; and abundant rains are secured,—in June, by a novena of masses in honor of St. Joseph; and in August, by another novena for St. Ignace.

For the benefit of those of his brethren in France who desire to undertake missionary work in the Huron country, Brébeuf recounts the many perils of the journey hither, and the annoyances and dangers to which apostles of the faith are continually exposed among the savages; but he offers much encouragement and consolation to those who are willing, nevertheless, to brave all obstacles, and to devote themselves to the conversion of the natives.

There is in our village a little Christian girl named Louyse, who at six months began to walk alone; the [page 13] parents declare they have seen nothing like it, and ,attribute it to the efficacy of Holy Baptism. Another person told us one day, with great delight, that his little [7] boy, who had always been sick and much emaciated before Baptism, had been very well since then. This will suffice to show how Our Lord is inspiring them with a high opinion of this divine Sacrament, which is strengthened by the perfect health God gives us, and which he has given to all the French who have been in this country; for, they say, it is very strange that, except a single man who died here from natural causes, all the others, during the twenty-five years or thereabout in which the, French have been frequenting this region, have scarcely ever been sick.

the conversion, baptism, and happy death of some Hurons.