TORONTO \u2014 The self-proclaimed \u201cgreatest moment\u201d of Francois Gagnon\u2019s life involved ice.<\/p>\n
And the hockey world.<\/p>\n
Only not in the way you might think.<\/p>\n
Yes, Gagnon will be honored by the Hockey Hall of Fame on Monday as the 2025 recipient of the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award, which recognizes distinguished members of the hockey-writing profession whose words have brought honor to journalism and to hockey.<\/p>\n
But if there was a Hero Hall of Fame, he\u2019d have been inducted into it almost four decades ago.<\/p>\n
Just like anyone should who has helped save a life.<\/p>\n
Like Gagnon did on one particular frosty morning in January of 1988.<\/p>\n
At that time, Monique Boudrias, sister of then-Montreal Canadiens assistant general manager Andre Boudrias, was driving over an icy bridge connecting the Quebec communities of Gatineau and the one then known as Hull.<\/p>\n
During the overnight hours, a vehicle had slid off that same bridge and into the ice-covered river, where the male passenger subsequently had been rescued from the frigid water by firefighters. Frankie, the name his friends and colleagues call him to this day, was a young reporter covering traffic for the morning show on Ottawa radio station CKCL at the time and was on the scene reporting on the remnants of that first accident when he suddenly \u2014 and shockingly \u2014 witnessed Monique Boudrias\u2019 Jeep do the exact same thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was live on radio, and I saw her vehicle go off the bridge and down,\u201d Gagnon recalled. \u201cAnd so I called the Fire and Emergency and said, ‘This is not a joke. It happened again. It’s right in front of my eyes.’ So I did my report.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I saw the woman come out of the water in the middle of where the ice had been broken by her truck. And I just hung up and said, ‘I’m going on the ice. I’m going to try to get her.'”<\/p>\n
Fortunately, someone in the area had heard Gagnon\u2019s report on the radio and came running onto the ice to join him carrying a big rope. The ice was thick enough that Gagnon could get close enough to the hole where the woman was churning in the icy waters after escaping her vehicle.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy hands were frozen, her hands were frozen,\u201d he said. \u201cI passed the rope into her arms, and I said to her, ‘We’re probably going to break both of your arms, but we’re going to get you out of there.’<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we did.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Andre Boudrias heard about how Gagnon helped save his sister\u2019s life, he offered the fledgling journalist his tickets for a Canadiens game at the fabled Montreal Forum.<\/p>\n
Little did Monique and Andre Boudrias know that young Frankie years later would go on to become one of the most respected voices in the sport of hockey, let alone cover that same Canadiens franchise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO \u2014 The self-proclaimed \u201cgreatest moment\u201d of Francois Gagnon\u2019s life involved ice. And the hockey world. Only not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5103],"tags":[265,5,264,21,5147,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-290683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-montreal-canadiens","8":"tag-canadiens","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-montreal","11":"tag-montreal-canadiens","12":"tag-montrealcanadiens","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115512264846324170","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}