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Ps: This site is monitored but not actively posting on a regular basis. Mostly these are stories & some photos saved from a defunct site known as Verdun Connections which was on MSN Groups initially then on a social network called Multiply.
Some 50-plus years ago, Montreal played host to an international summer fair they named Expo ’67: Man and his World, and transported the universe on a voyage no one had ever experienced before.
Next month, at Hudson Village Theatre, we get to relive those moments in the brilliant new Quebec film entitled Expo ‘67, Mission Impossible. It will be screened on Wednesday, Feb. 28, at the celebratory opening of the Hudson Festival of Canadian Film, a stunning cinematic journey which continues to Sunday, March 4. Wednesday night revenues go to Village Theatre’s current expansion project.
The opening, along with hosting special guests and Man and His World participants, will also ensure sufficient elbow-rubbing time for Expo ’67 alumni to reconnect.
Expo ’67: Mission Impossible, the film, is a masterpiece, lovingly put together by three Quebec filmmakers: Guylaine Maroist, Michel Barbeau and Eric Ruel. Not only does it walk the viewer through Expo ‘67’s fundamental yet complex multi-level planning stages, most of which have been kept under wraps, it also shares the glory moments, few and far between.
We meet the on-site team of dreamers who made it happen – remember, they had less than four years to complete the project – a team locked into the goals of innovation and experimentation such as the world had never seen.And it all focused on the fair’s man-made islands, shapes of muck dredged from the St. Lawrence River, islands which blossomed into action central once the doors opened.
Then, miracle of miracles, when that ribbon-cutting day arrived, everything was up and ready. A task that should have taken six to ten years to accomplish was completed in less than four.
The fair was launched, as per schedule, on a cool Thursday in late April, although as multitudes poured through the gates and onto the grounds, it soon became apparent, weather was the last thing on their minds.
Expo ’67: Man and his World: a fantasy perched in the middle of the St. Laurence River had come to life. Its goal, the “building of bridges between people” was now a reality.
And the people came, and came, and then came back again.
Long-time Hudson resident Audrey Wall was a hostess at the Canadian Pacific Pavilion that year. She remembers her Expo summer as an “exhilarating, transformative experience, a significant coming of age chapter in my life.”
Audrey was just one staff member among thousands, including local residents, who made the whole thing work, so much so that what with its focus on innovation, imagination, popularity and visitor satisfaction, there has never been another world’s fair to match it.
Peter Mundie, cinema authority and Hudson resident, gives the example of film. “Expo ‘67 changed the world of film,” he insisted. “Arguably, the most lasting contribution, and one in which Canada’s cinematographers played a key role, relates to innovations in film projection size, ranging from single image to multi-image and from flat screen to surround systems, now all the norm in today’s ever-changing cinema.”
“In fact,” as Film Society’s David Glazier stated, “one might say that even our film society is an oblique outcrop of that expansion.”
Expo ’67: Man and His World wrapped up on Oct. 29, 1967, almost six months and 55 million guests to the day it opened.
The lucky few who then turned off the lights for a last time, did so in the knowledge that this magnificent achievement had shaken the world, even making converts of those naysayers who had insisted it couldn’t be done.
Today, our special summer of ‘67 has become the stuff of legend. All because a core of brilliant, unrestrained star-gazers possessed the courage, the will and the determination to make the impossible — possible.
Do try to see the movie: you won’t be disappointed.
Red Fisher, the chronicler and the conscience of Montreal hockey whose career touched seven decades, died on Friday at age 91.
Fisher started on the Canadiens beat in 1955 in the era of train travel and finished it in 2012 when reporters tweeted the lines at morning skates. The man knew how to make an entrance: the first game he covered was the Richard Riot, that singular marriage of hockey, sociology and, ultimately, mythology that has marked Quebec for generations. Fisher was the link to the most glorious of the Canadiens teams and covered 17 of their record 24 Stanley Cups. Along the way, the journalist who was believed to be the longest-serving beat man covering the major North American leagues collected three National Newspaper Awards and thousands of tales, entertaining readers and often ennobling hockey.
Fisher received one of Canada’s highest civilian honours on Dec. 29, 2017, when he was named a member of the Order of Canada “for his contributions to sports journalism, notably for his iconic coverage of the Montreal Canadiens hockey franchise.”
“He was the best of his time,” Canadiens Hall of Fame goaltender Ken Dryden wrote in an email, “and his time lasted a very long time.”
Canadiens’ Jean Beliveau and Gazette reporter Red Fisher during the early 1960s. GAZETTE FILES, COURTESY OF RED FISHER
Although he was prominent on Hockey Night in Canada with The Fisher Report and worked as a colour analyst on Canadiens broadcasts, Fisher was better known for the written than the spoken word. He was a distinctive writer, often bypassing the who-what-where-why journalism conventions for something as informative but more stylish, punctuated with tics and flourishes that hardened into an inimitable style. Among his catchphrases: “My great and good friend.” “Nobody died.” “Take a deep breath and hold it.” His deadline game stories were not newspaper-y, but 800-word novellas, replete with heroes, villains and plot. The gift for narrative and analysis made him the definitive voice on hockey’s heritage franchise at the Montreal Star and for 33 years, at the Gazette.
“There were a lot of intelligent people in the (media) business, but he was one of the most astute,” New York Rangers president Glen Sather said. “He was intelligent, analytical.”
“When things would go wrong for the team or for me, I would search for answers,” Dryden wrote. “If I couldn’t find them, I would say to myself: ‘I wonder what Red thinks’ and wait for the next day’s paper. I never did that with anyone else.”
Former Canadiens great and Hockey Hall of Famer Dickie Moore congratulates the Montreal Gazette’s Red Fisher on his induction into the Quebec Sports Hall of Fame on Nov. 24, 2010.JOHN KENNEY / THE GAZETTE
Fisher wanted a good tale, a nugget that might illuminate a play or a game. Even as reporting became more breathless in the Internet age, Fisher remained circumspect. “He liked the story but hated the rumour,” Sather said. In his 1994 memoirs, Hockey, Heroes and Me, Fisher wrote his favourite four-letter word was “fair.” He would leave cheap shots and bons mots to others, not that he avoided the clever and cutting when the situation demanded. During the 1970s when Scotty Bowman was stonewalling an injury to Montreal’s first-line centre, Fisher wrote: “Jacques Lemaire is doubtful for tonight’s game with what Canadiens coach Scotty Bowman describes as an upset stomach. The pain, however, has gone all the way up to his slightly separated shoulder.”
While game stories and columns were his staples, Fisher wrote some memorable features that were fuelled by empathy and a firm grasp of the human condition. His tender stories about Laura Gainey, swept out to sea on her tall ship off the coast of Nova Scotia in 2006, a frail Toe Blake and the death of Hall of Fame winger and close friend Dickie Moore in 2015 belied his painstakingly cultivated image as a curmudgeon. At times he could be — to appropriate one of his literary locutions — cranky with gusts to crotchety. But for Fisher respect and friendship were precious commodities, slowly earned and not freely bestowed.
Former Canadiens goaltender Patrick Roy has a word with Red Fisher following a news conference on Sept. 11, 2008, called to announce the retirement of Roy’s sweater.JOHN MAHONEY / MONWP
“I met Red first in Stockholm at the World Hockey Championships in 1969,” Dryden wrote. “I was twenty-one; he was forty-two. I thought he was sixty. He was imperious. He was Red Fisher. He observed; he reported; he pronounced. He loved being the best because he could act like the best. He could be cantankerous and crusty. He could be intimidating. He could avoid suffering the fools he had no time for. But if you didn’t fall for his act, Red was funny, smart and endlessly great company.”
“The players liked Red because he was from the old era,” said Steve Shutt, the star left winger on the dynastic Canadiens of the 1970s who later worked with Fisher on CJAD broadcasts. “He came from a time when the players and reporters were attached, riding the trains together. He was viewed almost as part of the team.”
Fisher, raised near The Main where his father, Sam, who had emigrated from Russia (via several years in Scotland), repaired and sold second-hand shoes, started on the Canadiens beat at a time when reporters were practically embedded with their teams. Indeed, Fisher might have been the last working journalist to be initiated by the Canadiens in the old-time hockey way. Now, NHL rookies are merely stuck with outrageous tabs after dinners, but Fisher, like the players of decades ago, received rougher treatment. He was stripped naked, bound to a massage table and shaved by Maurice Richard, dressed in a surgeon’s cap and a white lab coat, who, Fisher would later write, growled: “Welcome to the family.”
Red Fisher at the Bell Centre on Sept. 24, 2005.CHRISTINNE MUSCHI / THE GAZETTE
Fisher earned his place in the family not because the Canadiens initially paid for transportation, hotels and $10 in meal money — a practice The Star discontinued in 1963 when Fisher and Blake, the coach, had a confrontation over the policy — but through his work. Although he became synonymous with the Canadiens in the minds of readers across the country, he bristled when he was perceived as being too closely aligned to the team. Fisher had a policy of not speaking to rookies, probably the most famous Red Rule. When the 36-year-old Alain Vigneault was hired to coach the Canadiens in May 1997, he telephoned Fisher and said: “Mr. Fisher, I know you don’t talk to rookies, but I’d like to have lunch this summer to discuss our team.” The choice of the word “our” was the solecism. “No, thanks,” Fisher told Vigneault. “See you in training camp.”
“Red never was out for the big scoop, although that didn’t mean he didn’t get them.”
Perhaps the most sensational came in 1970. Fisher obtained a financial report presented by NHL president Clarence Campbell to the Board of Governors that stated: “Even though our return to the players last season was at an all-time low, our profits were at an all-time high.” Fisher wrote a five-part series about player salaries and benefits, a sensation that netted him the first of his National Newspaper Awards. The series, which embarrassed the NHL, also cost Fisher a regular slot on Hockey Night in Canada intermissions.
Fourteen years later, Fisher broke another story, one — indirectly at least — that might have had an even more significant effect on his career.
Red Fisher and Canadiens coach Jacques Demers in 1995.PETER MARTIN / GAZETTE
In 1984, a senior Gazette executive was mulling removing Fisher from the Canadiens beat and replacing him with a writer who specialized in Olympic sports. “I think Red’s losing his fastball,” the executive confided to a newspaper staffer.
The idea was utter folly. Fisher knew where the hockey bodies were buried; most other reporters were unaware anyone was missing. Fisher infrequently attended the actual Canadiens practices because there was no need. He would go to the Forum before the skates, troll the changing area behind the dressing room for stories and quietly depart before other journalists arrived. A few weeks after the Gazette executive mused about shaking up the beat, Fisher shook up Montreal and the NHL by reporting Guy Lafleur would announce his retirement, the resounding Montreal sports scoop of the decade.
The story killed any talk of Fisher’s fastball. Fisher, who vowed to keep working “until I get it right,” had plenty of zip for another 28 years, during which he would win two more National Newspaper Awards and a career achievement award from Sports Media Canada. He was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Quebec Sports Hall of Fame in 2010.
Aislin cartoon of Red Fisher and Canadiens players.AISLIN / MONTREAL GAZETTE
Fisher worked until he was 85. He did not let go of anything lightly, whether it was his career or a feud with the Hockey Hall of Fame.
In 1985, he won the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award for distinguished hockey writing given by the Hall, receiving a blazer that designated him as an Honoured Member. Almost two decades later, Bill Hay, then chairman of the Hall of Fame, essentially downgraded the writer and broadcaster categories; the winners of the Elmer Ferguson and Foster Hewitt Memorial Awards were to be considered “media honourees” and not members. Fisher, who had served on the Hall of Fame selection committee from 1985 through 2003, severed ties with the Hall. He requested his photograph in the media lounge at the Bell Centre, where it hung with other Hall-recognized media members, be removed. Fisher never made his peace with the Hall of Fame nor did he bother to camouflage his bitterness at the perceived slight.
“A travesty what Hay did to Red,” Sather said.
Sather was one of Fisher’s closest friends in hockey, perhaps the only man who could put anything over on him. His most famous prank involved research Fisher had done at the Canadian Pacific Railway museum in Montreal for Sather, who, with partners, had purchased Storm Mountain Lodge, built by the railway in 1922, near Banff. The amount of work and the recompense for the time always remained in dispute — in jest, Sather wondered what Fisher wanted for his efforts and Fisher, who collected western art, asked in all seriousness for an Indian painting — but the punch line was not. After various cheque-is-in-the-mail burlesques — Sather said the painting had been returned because of an incorrect address — the Edmonton Oilers general manager told Fisher he would present the painting at the draft in Montreal. Sather invited journalists and team officials to his hotel suite, gave a laudatory speech about his newspaper friend and then removed the black crepe from the picture on the easel in the room. There in a full headdress was an enlarged photograph of former NHL defenceman and Oilers scout Jim Neilson, who is half Cree, pretending to paint the side of house.
Voilà . An Indian, painting.
No one laughed louder and longer than Fisher.
Red Fisher leaves the press box at the Montreal Forum on Oct. 1, 1994. The game that was to be played that day was cancelled because of a lockout of NHL players.PETER MARTIN / GAZETTE
In February 2016, the Professional Hockey Writers Association, of which Fisher was a founder, asked permission to name an annual award for beat writing in his honour. Fisher demurred. (He was at odds with the PHWA after it did not back him vigorously enough in his feud with the Hall of Fame.) After several minutes of arm-twisting from an intermediary, Fisher relented. “But,” he said, “make sure you tell them I don’t give a damn” — that’s paraphrasing slightly — “one way or another.”
Tillie, Fisher’s wife of 69 years died on Jan. 9, 2018, at age 90.
Fisher is survived by children Ian and Cheryl, and grandson Ryan.
The news was announced at the historic auditorium on Monday afternoon, with a slew of politicians on hand, including Montreal mayor Denis Coderre, Verdun mayor Jean-François Parenteau and provincial MNA Isabelle Melançon.
Meg Hewings, general manager of Les Canadiennes, said moving to Verdun is a great thing for one of Canada’s leading women’s hockey teams. Les Canadiennes used to be called the Montreal Stars and changed their name in September 2015, a few months after entering into a marketing partnership with the Montreal Canadiens.
“The Verdun Auditorium is an incredible facility, it has a history that goes way back in terms of hockey, on the men’s side but on the women’s side, too,” said Hewings. “It’s the right size for us. It’s a 3,000 to 4,000-seat arena, so we’re hoping to grow into that by the time we open in 2019. It’s also a great facility for our athletes in terms of being able to train and compete. So we’ll have our home locker room here and we’ll have a number of amenities. And it’s been difficult for us to find that in the past several years…it’s also close to the metro. It’s accessible.”
Hewings also thinks there is a great fan base for hockey in the area.
“Verdun is a neighbourhood that’s crazy about hockey and we’re excited to fill this place and light it up with the hockey that we’ve been showcasing,” said Hewings.
“You don’t have to look too far around here to understand the community spirit that thrives in Verdun,” said Brenda Andress, the commissioner of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League. “You look at your main street, with shops, where people know each other … for us that’s what’s important in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League. It’s not only about playing the game on the ice. It’s about what you do off the ice. … For us it’s about finding ways to ensure that young girls are empowered — empowered to believe they can become what they choose to be in life. Empowered to make sure their fitness level and their self-esteem is important to them. And the power to know that no matter who you are born to … that the Canadian Women’s Hockey League provides the most high examples with our players. Our players really are what the Canadian Women’s Hockey League is about. Every day that they come play with us … those players give back to the community.”
Wow ! 2018, we neaver dreamt of that number when we were kids in Verdun. happy New Year to all of you who surf by, may it be one of health,happiness, family & friends, Cheers ! Les
Some 50-plus years ago, Montreal played host to an international summer fair they named Expo ’67: Man and his World, and transported the universe on a voyage no one had ever experienced before.
