Quebec is in mourning.
He just lost Guy Lafleur, victim of a cancer that was understood to be incurablethis dirty disease that mows down men and women when they still thought they were destined for many beautiful and many years.
He loses a hero, because Guy Lafleur was a Quebec hero, similar to Maurice Richard, but in an era that was no longer that of the Rocket.
rocket
Maurice Richard was the brilliant fighter of a people who were still crushed, and who embodied their best part: a pugnacious, stubborn resistance, a will to live and to fight, against the ambient contempt, against the arrogance of those who took for a sub-people of North America.
Guy Lafleur arrived later, in a context that was no longer the same. He was flamboyant as Quebec was then radiant, proud, emancipated and convinced of having reversed the bad luck that condemned it to the periphery of history and to compensatory successes.
Both had powerful energy, but it wasn’t the same.
The Rocket had the energy of despair, the energy of scabby, the energy of men who will never crash.
Guy Lafleur had the grace of men who believe that the world belongs to them, that the future holds the best for them.
I’m not from the generation that saw Guy Lafleur on the ice. The heroes of the Canadiens of my childhood were no longer necessarily Quebecers, even if, in addition to Mats Naslund and Bobby Smith, I revered Stéphane Richer and admired Patrick Roy.
Lafleur
But I lived, what am I saying, we lived in the memory of Guy Lafleur, the Blond Demon, the fabulous player, the gentleman hockey player.
I regret today the departure of a man who represents the best part of us and who embodies a time when Quebec found in him a source of pride.
