Montreal Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki has endeared himself to fans by recently flexing his French-speaking skills in an interview.David Kirouac/Reuters
When Montreal Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki gave his first interview in French this preseason, after six years with the club, it lasted barely a minute. His answers were short, stilted and clearly rehearsed. Still, his performance was hailed as a breakthrough in the francophone media and cheered even by language stickler and Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon.
The grace afforded Suzuki for his belated attempt to communicate with fans in their language was a sign of the almost delirious optimism and goodwill surrounding this Canadiens team. No Habs season in 30 years has been awaited with as much excitement as the one about to begin against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Wednesday. With a young core of ultratalented players, a charismatic native-born coach, and a low bar for recent achievement, Montreal fans are generally suspending their self-protective cynicism this fall.
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Suzuki’s stab at French also underscored a paradox of this hopeful moment: les glorieux have rarely been so far removed from their historic role as the national team of Quebec. As Brendan Kelly writes in his new book, Habs Nation: A People’s History of the Montreal Canadiens, few teams in professional sport have forged such a strong link between a society and a club.
French Canadian superstars wearing the red-white-and-blue jersey incarnated Quebec for generations: first, the fiery, indignant, Maurice Richard, embodiment of his people’s prideful anger at their economic subjugation in the 1940s and ’50s; then the elegant and self-possessed Jean Béliveau skating with long graceful strides as francophones came into their own during the Quiet Revolution; and Guy Lafleur, thrilling, bold, and carefree as the Parti Québécois leading the province towards independence.
At a time when French-speaking Quebeckers lacked many heroes, homegrown Habs players provided them. Remarkably, as Kelly chronicles in his book by interviewing former players, the slights and resentments of the nation fuelled some players on the ice. The added fuel seems to have contributed to the team’s unrivalled 24 Stanley Cups, almost all of them won with a native player at the helm.
The closest analogy to what the Canadiens accomplished was probably the storied bond between Catalans and the FC Barcelona football club, which helped keep the nationalist fires burning under Franco. A pro sports organization acting as the tribune for a people has no obvious parallel in North America.
The Montreal Canadiens pose with the Stanley Cup following their 4-1 victory over the Los Angeles Kings in Montreal in June, 1993.FRANK GUNN/The Canadian Press
For the last three decades, however, that tradition has been allowed to founder. The Habs parted bitterly with their last franco superstar, Patrick Roy, after a clash with his coach. He brought the team its last Cup in 1993, then went on to win two more with the Colorado Avalanche, while Montreal continues to wait for its return to glory.
Meanwhile, the NHL globalized. A smaller share of Quebec players came down the pipeline, and a series of general managers neglected the team’s historic formula of cornering the market in Québécois talent. Fans became jaded as memories of francophone saviours receded into the past, and young athletes took up different sports.
A watershed moment came on a Monday night in the spring of 2021, when, for the first time, the Canadiens had no Quebec players in their lineup. The following night, the Toronto Raptors had two.
Kelly tells this story – at once familiar and somehow still exciting, like any good national myth – largely through interviews with people who lived through it, including team legends Serge Savard, Scotty Bowman and Bob Gainey. A bilingual anglophone Montrealer born in Glasgow, Kelly originally wrote the project as a yet-to-be-released TV documentary, then wrote it up as a French book published last year, and has now had it translated into English. (Only in Montreal.)
As a long-time hockey and music writer for the Montreal Gazette, he is a keen interpreter of the Canadiens’ operatic relationship with Quebec. Unlike some English-speaking fans, he doesn’t think of the connection between francophones and the team as a relic or a frill. Instead, he recognizes it as the lifeblood of the club – not unlike another anglophone, J. Ambrose O’Brien, who founded the Canadiens in 1909 to cater to French-speaking Montrealers.
The Habs have been most beloved, and most successful, when the stewards of the franchise understood this. English-speaking stars like Gainey and Ken Dryden used to work hard at their language skills out of respect for the fans. Suzuki’s six-year journey to Ontario elementary school French shows how far those standards have fallen.
The standards for success on the ice have declined as well. Well into the 1990s, the Canadiens were expected to compete for the Cup almost every year. If this generation’s carefully built team of Ontarians, Americans, Russians and Slovaks can defy history and bring those days of perennial contention back to Montreal, fans probably won’t care much what language they use to address the championship parade.