Maurice Richard and Canadian Culture

Maurice Richard and Canadian Culture

Has ice hockey in Canada achieved "mythical cultural status," as Neil Earle's quotation suggests in the article by Howard Ramos and Kevin Gosine? Has hockey in Canada served as a "primal source of identity-reinforcement" for citizens? Those are the pertinent questions raised by the authors, but moreover the point of the article is that hall of fame player Maurice Richard raised the consciousness of French-speaking Canadians and gave them an icon / hero that was similar to what African-Americans felt when Jackie Robinson made the Major Leagues. And the newspaper coverage of Richard's death is interesting: French-language papers gave it far more prominent albeit English-language papers went more in depth. Additionally, the Richard "riot" was more than just anger over Richard's suspension, but rather it was a place for "sociopolitical tensions" between Quebec and the rest of Canada to be "symbolically played out" (Ramos, et al., p. 418). The incident allowed the oppressed francophone community to rage and let out their frustrations. Sports in this case served as a social release value for tensions that had built up over generations. The article explains very specifically that French-speaking Canadians needed a boost (socially and politically) and they got that boost through Richard's awesome talent and his take-no-prisoners approach on the ice.

It is a bit hard to believe for a non-Canadian that prior to the advent of Maurice Richard as a superb hockey player of French ethnicity, that French Canadians were thought of as "Hewers of wood?" Were they downtrodden, simple farmers, under the thumb of the English-speaking establishment? The article certainly portrays that image. No doubt there is truth to this assertion, but Americans are not aware of that dynamic. That's a failure on the part of Americans but in fairness there is so much history associated with the U.S. And Americans are so wrapped up in their own issues they barely know any of the Canadian provinces let alone ethnic and cultural issues within Canada itself. Still, hockey fans south of the Canadian border certainly know of Richard although the fact that he was a giant cultural icon in the francophone community is not well-known, but it should be known.

Review of the Article: It is a measure of what an enormous impact Richard had on the Canadian people -- francophone and Anglophone alike -- that such a huge fuss was made following his death, 40 years after he retired. There are many questions raised in the article that are interesting and worth expanding on; but one in particular goes to the heart of the issue of Richard as a giant sports hero. Was he just a huge hockey hero to English-speaking Canadians -- but was he also a social, ethnic, and cultural giant (along with being a hockey superstar) to the francophone community? That seems to be well established in the article. And yet, was the mass media responsible for taking Richard's legacy and constructing "a national identity or imagined community where such an identity or community may not have existed before"? (Ramos, p. 429).

That having been said, indeed much of this article is an examination not just of the dynamics of Richard's impact 40 years after he retired, and not just of the historic and ongoing tension between the French-speaking community and the English-speaking community, but rather of the power of the media to shape opinion and present reality through a particular social and political prism.

If the assertion by Benedict Anderson is correct, the media -- the Quebec media in particular -- basically took a man (Richard) who was "politically hollow" and perhaps "apathetic" to a degree and created a giant cultural symbol for the sake of promoting French-speaking Canada. And by doing so the Quebec media "reinforced" a sense of community, or "unity," and played this as a "shared experience" among francophone Quebecers (p. 429).

On the other hand, on page 430 the authors assert that the English-Canadian media were perfectly content to "surrender the Rocket as a symbol of Quebec identity." And in addition, while the Quebec newspapers and periodicals quoted Quebec politicians and French-connected celebrities to "encode the rocket with a more nationalistic meaning," the Anglophone newspapers apparently tried to balance that editorial slant with an angle of their own. To wit, in order to either "mitigate" (Ramos' reference) or otherwise water down the impact of the francophone-leaning newspapers, the English-language newspapers interviewed celebrities and politicians (Federalist politicians) about Richard's career. The English-language papers were out to "counterbalance" (Ramos, p. 430) the effect of the francophone emphasis on Richard as a cultural giant -- and they did so by interviewing "apolitical athletes."

It wasn't that the English-speaking media were overtly trying to play down Richard's impact on the Canadian sporting and social scene, it is just that they were coming from a place that was anti-separatist and they did not want to raise Richard's legacy higher than simply a great hockey player who skated with a vicious abandon and made all of Canada proud.

On page 430 the authors point out that the Quebec newspapers were not only celebrating Richard as an hero for French-speaking citizens -- left on the sidelines while much of the glory for Canada is based on English-speaking institutions -- but they were in effect the good old days of Canadian hockey before the "influx of European and American players." There was a double whammy in that kind of coverage of course; we miss our greatest athlete and greatest hope for French-speaking Canada, but we also miss the days when hockey wasn't watered down with franchises in such odd places as the American desert (Phoenix) and of all places, Los Angeles (Kings and Ducks). The fuss that Quebec media made over the death of Richard in a way was also linked to the anger many Canadians (not just the francophone community) felt when Wayne Gretzky fled to Los Angeles for the big, big money, after marrying of all people, an American.

On pages 427 and 428 the authors point to another of the aspects of Richard's legacy that allowed the two factions -- English language newspapers and French language newspapers -- to face off just like hockey players do on the ice. The anger aspect of Richard's career and the aftermath during the days after his death cries out for examination. There is no doubt that Richard was hostile on the ice. Hockey players are supposed to be hard-nosed, aggressive and even violent. And Richard was the very epitome of that style of play. But he also had a seriously violent temper. That's not an opinion by the authors -- it is a fact of reality, and anyone can research Richard's career in objective publications and learn the truth about his terrible temper.