Ariane Moffatt had just rung the bell among the supporters after the CF Montreal goal. “I love this smell. I know it’s illegal, but I love that smell,” Luc told me, talking about smoke bombs, not all of which are allowed at Saputo Stadium.
I did not know Luc Fortin before Wednesday. His sister Michèle wrote to me at the beginning of May, following the publication of a column on my evenings at the stadium with Fiston. “Luc turned 60 yesterday, brilliant, expresses himself very well, a lot of knowledge, handsome man, six feet, lives alone…”
Luc is also, his sister told me, a long-time Impact fan. THE match Perfect. We made an appointment for a blind date. I picked him up at his house by car. He was waiting for me outside, on the stairs, and approached as soon as I started to slow down, looking for his address.
“Do I sit in front or behind? I had got out, a little nervous and awkward, to open the door for her. He opened it himself and sat down behind Son, our chaperone.
We talked about the end of high school for Fiston, Luc’s son who is studying in France, his friend Jean, whom I once knew in Duty. Soccer too, of course, our common passion. When I parked on rue Viau, he asked me a question that I had never been asked and that I hadn’t expected: “Am I on the sidewalk or the street? »
Luc is blind. He was born with microphthalmia. As a child, he said, he could catch a ball, but not a ball. As a teenager, he could read the newspaper’s headlines, but not the article. At 21, he completely lost his sight. Her 33-year-old son, who can still see, suffers from the same eye condition.
I am sighted, but I have many blind spots. Starting with not anticipating a question as predictable as: “If I open my door, do I risk mowing down a cyclist or finding myself facing a car?” »
Luc took my elbow to guide himself. In the most subtle way, at your fingertips. Fortunately, I had the instinct to tell him that there was an open door on our way thanks to Fiston, who acted as a scout.
Arrived near the stadium, I had become cautious. There is a slight drop here, a change of surface there, we will go from asphalt to concrete and from concrete to earth. Be careful, there is plain paving that rolls up!
When I informed Luc that there was a small pothole in front of us, without finding the exact term, he told me that was the only information I would have had to communicate to him from the beginning. of our walk. He told me with humor and kindness, in his warm voice of a former radio and television presenter (at AMI Télé).
I feared more than anything not to guide Luc well on the stairs leading to the stadium. I said there were two steps; there were three. He reassured me by teaching me that by the only movements of my elbow, he managed to anticipate a new step or a landing. “Your elbow tells me. »
It’s not because he can’t see the ball that Luc stops himself from enjoying a match at the stadium. He immersed himself in the atmosphere, while listening to the live broadcast of the game on the radio, on a small device equipped with headphones.
He made me understand that living the match is not seeing the match. It’s feeling the vibration of the bleachers when “the whole stadium” begins to sing, clapping their hands and feet. It is the sound of the crowd, its euphoric outbursts and its empty passages, its explosions of joy after a goal or its collective recriminations at the sight of a yellow card.
It’s the long, perpetual answering song between the two sections of supporters at both ends of the field. “We owe them a lot,” believes Luc. It is jubilation at the sound of three whistles from the referee at the end of the match. “I’ve never been told so much about the referee,” Luc quipped, when I noted that the woman officiating the match ran more than her male colleagues.
I pointed out to him how much CF Montreal seemed to control the game in the first half. “Yes, but Nashville is not a possession club,” Luc reminded me with good reason.
He knows his MLS. Like Fiston, he listens to Western games when he returns from Saputo Stadium. The next day, he listens to the part of CF Montreal that he recorded on TV, even if the description is less precise than on the radio. “I know the game, so it’s less serious! »
Son kept us informed of the length of the stoppages. There were about thirty seconds left in the game. “Is there someone behind?” asked Luc. He got up applauding and the whole stadium imitated him. It was a perfect summer solstice evening. The sun that had warmed us for an hour had given way to a light breeze. There was electricity in the air. Everything that our eyes cannot perceive.