Les Canadiens: The Politics of Pucks

On the sixth floor of a Masonic temple, at the intersection of Sherbrooke and St. Marc in Montreal, actors wielded hockey sticks as they rehearsed a play called Les Canadiens. The author, Rick Salutin, sat to one side, commenting on his work with noncommittal tenderness.

"There are some effective scenes. Sports and politics. Hockey and the elections. We begin long ago on the Plains of Abraham, with General Wolfe wearing a Maple Leaf uniform. Wolfe dies and a French farm boy throws away the gun that killed him. The boy doesn't want war any more. When he throws the gun, it becomes a hockey stick and we are in the present."

Politicizing sport, a dangerous business, is never more seductive than when one wanders in Montreal. In suburban Verdun, swarms of children trying to win a midget hockey tournament skate under a flag showing white fleur-de-lis on a field of blue. The flag symbolizes Quebec and French Canadian nationalism. In the Forum, one finds Les Canadiens de Montreal defending their National Hockey League championship in a setting that proclaims elan. Forum announcements on goals are bilingual. Always the French--"Montreal but par Yvan Cournoyer "--comes first. Watching Canadiens named Guy Lafleur and Jacques Lemaire outskate visiting players named Cameron and Maloney, bringing a certain sense of history to the place, one can confuse a hockey team with a political movement. That makes as much sense as confusing war in Viet Nam with the Cotton Bowl, which may be what Lyndon Johnson did.

Proud Traditions. As Salutin's play suggests, there was a time when Les Canadiens worked as a symbol for Quebec spirit. The French of Canada, proud of their traditions and staunch in their Roman Catholicism, felt repressed by Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. In 1955, when Maurice Richard, the great Montreal forward, was suspended by Clarence Campbell, the league president, for scuffling with an official, French fans smashed shop windows along Rue Ste. Catherine. Although this was a melee, not a rational debate, popular sociologists went as wild as the fans. Les Canadiens, they suggested, were not merely a hockey team. Rather they embodied all that might have been had Montcalm, not Wolfe, carried that September day in 1759.

Last spring, after some uneven seasons, Les Canadiens returned the Stanley Cup to Quebec by sweeping the Philadelphia Flyers. This season Les Canadiens have outdistanced the rest of the league. On one November night when they were playing St. Louis, the Parti Quebecois, which supports independence for the province, swept an election. The temptation to see Les Canadiens as symbolic of the independence movement stirred again. Again, Les Canadiens were more than a hockey team. Now they represented political activism. Such theories are impervious to everything but facts.

Doug Risebrough, out of Guelph, Ont., is a gifted center who rooms with Mario Tremblay, from Alma, Que. "Our team is about half French," he says, "and people from the media sometimes look for strains. But there aren't any Election night you heard some jokes. The Anglos were through here. The next day we'd have to play for Ottawa. Jokes were all these were. I mean the record sort of indicates that we get along."

Serge Savard, a tall, black-haired defenseman who was raised in northern Quebec, says most of his French friends in and out of hockey are having second thoughts about Quebec independence. "I would say on the team nobody really supports it." Scotty Bowman--William Scott Bowman--the coach, is bilingual. In French and English, he is preoccupied with theories of hockey. "We're winning 80% of our games," he says. "It's almost frightening. We skate well, but I think we begin with defense. A fine goalie, good defense." The elections? "We won that night. We beat St. Louis." Bowman is simply not a political man.

Ken Dry den, the goal tender, has a law degree from McGill. Tall and intellectual, Dryden sees his team as a duality "First," he says, "is what we are: a hockey team that wins. That's what we are and all we are, really. But beyond that, there's the way people perceive us. More than a hockey team. That sort of thing. If you think about it enough, you can ask yourself which are you, the team that is or the team that people perceive?"

"They're both," suggested Salutin, an existentialist. I polled his cast. Every actor supported Quebec independence. I polled more hockey players. Well nourished and prosperous, Les Canadiens like Quebec as it is.

Home Ice. The actors played a symbolic scene with intensity. The athletes talked about endurance. The director smoothed some rough spots. Scotty Bowman discussed "home ice advantage." Les Canadiens represent good hockey The Parti Quebecois represents French Canadian political protest. The two meet only in Salutin's play. One can appreciate the intensity of hockey in Quebec, deeply and pleasurably, without having to see slapshots as metaphors.

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