To say that Maurice Richard embodies the aspirations of French Canadians for emancipation, even a sort of harbinger of the Quiet Revolution or even a founding myth of modern Quebec, frankly, is nothing new. The historian Emmanuel Lapierre, for his part, takes the overinterpretation up a notch to propose something else much stronger, namely that the nationalism of resistance in the stands and that on the ice then moved forward in unison.
Supporting statistical study, it shows that, when the Montreal Canadiens were composed mainly of French-speaking players, the team won the Stanley Cup half the time. “While the members of the other teams played for money or glory, the French-speaking Canadians played for their country, French Canada, Quebec. They were ready to make any sacrifices, he says in his essay The duel of nations. »
This demonstration published in the journal World in 2012 is taken up and amplified in the last chapter of the first essay by the history teacher at a Montreal college. Mr. Lapierre says he went on a tour of hockey monks to submit his interpretation that in short the CH players had nourished nationalism, and vice versa. Former coach Jean Perron speaks to him of a “bomb”. The historian then strives to demonstrate how the team erased this reality, how the proofs of Quebec’s emancipation would now be erased everywhere “in sport, in films, in music, in books, in programs school, university.
It’s a lot. Others will be able to dismantle this well-tinged reading of the socio-political history of the Canadian, if only by recalling the transformations of the rules for recruiting players or the strong links uniting all professional teams to their hometowns, sometimes as far as ‘to the collective delirium. Researchers have analyzed sporting passions as an emotional plague and that for the CH as the manifestation of a new religiosity…
The main thing is not there. In the context of Emmanuel Lapierre, the example of the CH, more or less French-speaking and victorious, serves a broader purpose. The historian debunks the fairly common idea dividing nationalism into two branches: one considered good, based on peace-making Anglo-Saxon liberalism; the other deemed bad, leading to xenophobia and war. He goes back to the intellectual roots of this dichotomy by evoking the thought of the American Hans Kohn (The Idea of Nationalism) and the studies of Hannah Arendt.
The argument then turns to the idea of the duel of nations which gives the book its title. The nations to which great virtues were attributed for all humanity then turn out to be, on the contrary, brutal and imperial, to the great misfortune of smaller ones, threatened even in their very existence and what is most fundamental to them, such as language and culture, which includes hockey and CH. The imposition of English on the Welsh and the Irish bears witness to this. The work even suggests (without source) that the majority of the six thousand existing cultures will “probably” have disappeared by the end of the 21st century.e century !
“Freedom and recognition are necessary for people to live happily,” writes Emmanuel Lapierre. Preserving the nations of the world involves letting them exist in one way or another. Without it, they die. Whether these nations live in destitution or abundance changes absolutely nothing. »