Maurice Richard, Hockey, and French Canadian Identity

Introduction: Hockey and Canadian Identity

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 the central point of the article is that Hall of Fame player Maurice Richard raised the consciousness of French-speaking Canadians and gave them an icon and hero — comparable to what African Americans felt when Jackie Robinson broke into the Major Leagues.

The newspaper coverage of Richard's death is revealing: French-language papers gave it far more prominent placement, while English-language papers went into greater depth. Additionally, the Richard "riot" was more than just anger over Richard's suspension; it was a space 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 release frustrations that had accumulated over generations. Sports, in this case, served as a social release valve for tensions built up across centuries. The article explains very specifically that French-speaking Canadians needed a boost — socially and politically — and they found that boost through Richard's extraordinary talent and his take-no-prisoners approach on the ice.

Maurice Richard and the Francophone Community

It is difficult for a non-Canadian to believe that, prior to the advent of Maurice Richard as a superb hockey player of French ethnicity, French Canadians were thought of as "hewers of wood." Were they downtrodden, simple farmers living under the thumb of the English-speaking establishment? The article certainly portrays that image, and no doubt there is truth to this assertion. Americans, however, are largely unaware of that dynamic — a failure on the part of American cultural awareness, though in fairness there is so much history associated with the United States that Americans are often wrapped up in their own issues, barely aware of the Canadian provinces, let alone the ethnic and cultural tensions within Canada itself.

Still, hockey fans south of the Canadian border certainly know of Richard. The fact that he was a towering cultural icon in the francophone community is not well known, but it should be. It is a measure of the enormous impact Richard had on the Canadian people — francophone and Anglophone alike — that such a significant response followed his death, forty years after he retired.

Media Coverage and the Construction of Identity

There are many questions raised in the article that are interesting and worth expanding upon, but one in particular goes to the heart of Richard's status as a sports hero. Was he merely a great hockey hero to English-speaking Canadians, while simultaneously serving as a social, ethnic, and cultural giant to the francophone community? That distinction appears well established in the article. Yet a further question arises: 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).

Much of the article is therefore not simply an examination of Richard's impact forty years after his retirement, nor only of the historic and ongoing tension between French-speaking and English-speaking communities. It is also, fundamentally, an examination 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 — and the Quebec media in particular — essentially took a man who was "politically hollow" and perhaps "apathetic" to a degree, and created a giant cultural symbol in the service of promoting French-speaking Canada. In doing so, the Quebec media "reinforced" a sense of community and unity, presenting Richard's story as a "shared experience" among francophone Quebecers (p. 429).

Conclusion: Sports as Social Release

Could it be that each time Richard viciously and ruthlessly attacked a player on the opposing team, the frustrated francophone community watching the game on television or in person was vicariously venting its own anger at the English-speaking power structure? It seems very likely that this was indeed the case — just as it was in the United States when Jackie Robinson first broke into the Major Leagues. Robinson would steal home, and many white players and spectators would be furious at his audacity, while African Americans in the stands loved every second of it and took pride in their icon.

Richard's story, as examined through Ramos and Gosine's analysis of media coverage, ultimately illustrates how sport can function as far more than entertainment. For the francophone community, Richard's ferocity on the ice was inseparable from their own collective struggle for recognition and dignity within Canada. The media — French and English alike — recognized this power and wielded it, each in its own way, to serve distinct cultural and political ends.

Works Cited

Ramos, Howard, and Kevin Gosine. "The Rocket: Newspaper Coverage of the Death of a Quebec Cultural Icon, A Canadian Hockey Player." In Nation and Society: Readings in Post-Confederation Canadian History, edited by M. Conrad and A. Finkel, pp. 416–431. New York: Pearson Longman, 2004.