" We Will Remember Them" "Lest We Forget"

History of Hockey Mask

During a game against the N.Y. Rangers in N.Y. on the 1st of November 1959, 50 years ago, Jacques Plante was hit by a puck shot by Andry Bathgate requiring 7 stitches. Jacques told Toe Blake that he would come back to continue the game providing he could wear his practice mask and Toe accepted. There were no back up goalies at the time. The rest is history.

It was not considered matcho at the time to wear a goaly mask but Jacques persisted and revolusionized hockey.

Actually, Jacques was not the first goaly a wear a mask during a regular season This honor goes to a woman, ELIZABETH GRAHAM who was a goaly for the Queen's University, Toronto, on February 1927, who wore a mask under the insistance of her father after receiving dental treatment.

On the 7th of January 1930, goaly Clint Benedict of the Montreal Maroons, during a game against the Montreal Canadiens, was hit by a puck shot by famous Howie Morenz, results, a broken nose. He returned to play on the 20th of February wearing a leather mask.

I have skipped many details from this fine article in yesterday's "La Presse" and wich I have translated.

Guy

 

 

Canadian Winter is Here & here's a Canada's idea of BBQ Season

Except for Diane,the rest of us are headed into winter here in Canada,

 

 

 

 

 

 

               A Canadian Winter Poem:

      

It's winter in Canada !

And the gentle breezes blow

Seventy miles an hour

At thirty-five below.

Oh, how I love Canada

When the snow's up to your butt

You take a breath of winter

And your nose gets frozen shut.

Yes, the weather here is wonderful

So I guess I'll hang around

I could never leave Canada  

I'm frozen to the friggin' ground!

 

 

 

 

 

 

                ..Have Fun and Remember Verdun..

Remembrance Day Coming Soon.......lest we forget

Just got this via email:  You may like it, maybe not,but it's a good reason to buy a poppy.........or at least Remember in your own way:

Her hair was up in a pony tail,
Her favorite dress tied with a bow..
Today was Daddy's Day at school,
And she couldn't wait to go.

But her mommy tried to tell her,
That she probably should stay home.
Why the kids might not understand,
If she went to school alone.

But she was not afraid;
She knew just what to say.
What to tell her classmates
Of why he wasn't there today.

But still her mother worried,
For her to face this day alone.
And that was why once again,
She tried to keep her daughter home.

But the little girl went to school
Eager to tell them all.
About a dad she never sees
A dad who never calls.

There were daddies along the wall in back,
For everyone to meet.
Children squirming impatiently,
Anxious in their seats

One by one the teacher called
A student from the class.
To introduce their daddy,
As seconds slowly passed.

At last the teacher called her name,
Every child turned to stare.
Each of them was searching,
A man who wasn't there.

'Where's her daddy at?'
She heard a boy call out.
'She probably doesn't have one,'
Another student dared to shout.

And from somewhere near the back,
She heard a daddy say,
'Looks like another deadbeat dad,
Too busy to waste his day.'

The words did not offend her,
As she smiled up at her Mom.
And looked back at her teacher,
Who told her to go on.

And with hands behind her back,
Slowly she began to speak.
And out from the mouth of a child,
Came words incredibly unique.

'My Daddy couldn't be here,
Because he lives so far away.
But I know he wishes he could be,
Since this is such a special day.

And though you cannot meet him,
I wanted you to know.
All about my daddy,
And how much he loves me so.

He loved to tell me stories
He taught me to ride my bike.
He surprised me with pink roses,
And taught me to fly a kite.

We used to share fudge sundaes,
And ice cream in a cone.
And though you cannot see him.
I'm not standing here alone.

'Cause my daddy's always with me,
Even though we are apart
I know because he told me,
He'll forever be in my heart'

With that, her little hand reached up,
And lay across her chest.
Feeling her own heartbeat,
Beneath her favorite dress.

And from somewhere here in the crowd of dads,
Her mother stood in tears.
Proudly watching her daughter,
Who was wise beyond her years.

For she stood up for the love
Of a man not in her life.
Doing what was best for her,
Doing what was right.

And when she dropped her hand back down,
Staring straight into the crowd.
She finished with a voice so soft,
But its message clear and loud.

'I love my daddy very much,
he's my shining star.
And if he could, he'd be here,
But heaven's just too far.

You see he is a Canadian soldier
And died just this past year
When a roadside bomb hit his convoy
And taught us all to fear.

But sometimes when I close my eyes,
it's like he never went away.'
And then she closed her eyes,
And saw him there that day.

And to her mothers amazement,
She witnessed with surprise.
A room full of daddies and children,
All starting to close their eyes.

Who knows what they saw before them,
Who knows what they felt inside.
Perhaps for merely a second,
They saw him at her side.

'I know you're with me Daddy,'
To the silence she called out.
And what happened next made believers,
Of those once filled with doubt.

Not one in that room could explain it,
For each of their eyes had been closed.
But there on the desk beside her,
Was a fragrant long-stemmed  rose.

And a child was blessed, if only for a moment,
By the love of her shining star.
And given the gift of believing,
That heaven is never too far.

............................Buy a Poppy  .hf&rv

 

 

 

50 years ago tonight,...........

Fifty Years ago today ,old Jacques Plante decided to save his face ,and wore a mask:

  ..as it turns out it was a very wise move ,that would change 'the face' of Goalies forever...........  ps: a side note, Jacques was not the first to wear a mask,that honour goes to Clint Benedict back in the 30's actually,but why let the truth interefere with a good story...........hahahahahah

Montreal Election today , who will win Thief #1 ,thief #2,...or ???

Montreal is Corrupt.....................No , No, No,.say it isn't so...........hahahahahahah.everyone knows that Montreal has been run by corrupt people forever,,,,,,,including the infamous Drapeau.he filled his friends pockets too.

Macleans Magazine finally has a scathing story,big deal,until the people actually take back city hall,by demanding & outsting the blatant thieves,then nothing will happen,we as usual are all too apathetic to bother. That's why the Voter Turnout is usually so low,we've all come to the conclusion it doesn't matter .....but I still suggest voting or don't complain.....here's the Macleans story:

Montreal is a disaster

FULL STORY: The once-glamorous city is now a corrupt, crumbling, mob-ridden disgrace. What went wrong?

by Martin Patriquin on Thursday, October 29, 2009 1:45pm - 117 Comments

It says something about a city when tales of bravery in the face of organized crime are apparently a prerequisite to governing it. Five weeks into an increasingly bizarre election campaign dominated by scandal, graft and good, old-fashioned backstabbing, Gérald Tremblay wants it known that he is scared for the well-being of his family. Montreal’s mayor and leader of the municipal party Union Montréal (Quebec has parties at the city level) is vying for a third term. He says his decision to clean up city hall during the past four years has made him a target of Montreal’s criminal underbelly. He recently reminded voters of the time police found two fire bombs behind his country house in 2005. Then there was the time when, as Quebec’s industry minister, he denied a liquor permit to a Montreal-area wine producer—who was subsequently found dead in the trunk of his own car. “I’m not naive,” Tremblay told Le Devoir last week. “I’m very well informed. I knew exactly what I was getting into with the city of Montreal.”

Not to be outdone, Tremblay’s opponents offered up their own brave bona fides. Tremblay’s main challenger and leader of the rival party Vision Montréal, Louise Harel, reminded voters that her late husband, journalist and union leader Michel Bourdon, was repeatedly threatened by the Mafia. Richard Bergeron, of the upstart Projet Montréal, says he has requested police protection, though he makes it clear that his crusade against municipal corruption hasn’t garnered him any death threats—yet. “Everyone knows where I live,” he told a reporter recently.

While other cities grapple with garbage collection, snow removal and other humdrum realities of municipal politics, Montreal has, in the past several weeks, become a chaotic and dirty throwback to its bad old days. Allegations of mobbed-up favouritism, brown envelopes stuffed with cash, wildly inflated city contracts, an aggressive blue-collar union perpetually at odds with the mayor’s office: these, not its many charms and joie de vivre, are Montreal’s stock in trade these days.

Just who gets to fix this disaster will be decided soon: Montrealers go to the polls on Nov. 1. All three mayoral candidates—including Tremblay, who claims to have seen and heard nothing of the excesses perpetuated on his watch—have promised once again to clean up city hall. Should Tremblay fall, and there is a growing chance that he will, he will be replaced either by an ardent separatist and former Péquiste minister (Harel) who often refuses to speak English, or a relative political neophyte (Bergeron), whose greenish anti-corruption credentials are undermined by his staunch belief that 9/11 was an inside job perpetuated by the U.S. government.

The winner will inherit a chronically underperforming city burdened by an archaic governmental structure, a bloated public sector (Montreal’s city council has twice as many elected officials as New York City), and what many say is an endemic culture of corruption. More and more of its citizens are taking refuge in the suburbs, while big business continues to flee for Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary. Montreal is saddled with the largest debt of any major Canadian city, and its infrastructure is a leaking, potholed mess. It costs 30 per cent more to build a stretch of road in Quebec than anywhere else in the country, and a recent multi-million-dollar water contract was cancelled after its cost ballooned from $154 million to nearly $356 million. The city’s political culture, one of its disgraced former politicians said recently, is hopelessly, institutionally crooked, “infected with gangrene.” Meanwhile, the province’s language hawks are yet again glancing sideways at the supposed creeping English presence among the city’s immigrant populations. The parade of bad news afflicting what a La Presse columnist once dubbed “a beautifully messy Latin city” has raised the question: how could something so beautiful go so wrong?

Montreal’s political and social landscape didn’t look nearly as grim eight years ago, when Gérald Tremblay rode into office with a promise to bring democracy and transparency to Canada’s second largest city. A former perfumer, hockey agent and provincial cabinet minister in Robert Bourassa’s Liberal government, Tremblay has cultivated the image of a squeaky-clean (if somewhat bland) politician whose idea of excitement, until his knee surgery three years ago, was a nice, long run through his neighbourhood of Outremont.

And Montreal welcomed him, in large part because he was so beige. The city has long been considered Quebec’s existential nightmare, “the rottenest city on the continent,” according to religious pamphleteer Evanston Hart in 1919, a place where every vice and threat—games of chance, naked flesh, the lion’s share of English people in the province—could be experienced in abundance. Though the city has since been rehabilitated somewhat, its reputation for secretive, top-down governance à la Jean Drapeau (who took power in the 1950s and ruled for nearly three decades) remained, all the way to Tremblay’s predecessor, Pierre Bourque. In his first two years in office beginning in 1994, Bourque’s party pleaded guilty to 122 counts of electoral and campaign finance charges. “Ever since Drapeau, Montreal mayors have had the tendency to last a couple of terms and then get into trouble,” says Harold Chorney, a professor of public policy at Concordia University in Montreal.

For years, it seemed Tremblay would buck the trend, thanks to Montrealers’ yawning indifference to municipal matters: barely 35 per cent of voters bothered to cast a ballot in the 2005 election. Whiffs of scandal—the city’s real estate corporation, run by Tremblay’s former chief of staff, was found to have made a sweetheart land deal to a well-connected developer—bounced off the mayor, as did the news that the city’s consultant and outsourcing budget had nearly doubled over six years.

Tremblay managed to withstand the revelation last April that Frank Zampino, his former right-hand man on the city’s powerful executive committee, had twice vacationed on the yacht of Tony Accurso, whose firm was ultimately awarded a $356-million water- meter contract without any debate in city council. “Frank Zampino didn’t make the best decision,” the mayor said of his lieutenant’s choice of vacation. The mayor nonetheless defended the water-meter contract, only to cancel it when an auditor general’s report said it was rife with “irregularities [and] deficient management.”

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......Well Did You ? .Turn Your Clock Back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.......................Got your extra hour of sleep.....

Now were on to Christmas..............only 7.7 weeks away.                        HF&RV