Guy Lafleur’s death shook Quebecers. She shook them deeply, far beyond the emotions usually evoked by the media system when a personality loved by the public leaves us. The reaction, this time, is much more lively, much deeper too.
Because it was not just a great hockey player who passed away on April 22, but a true national hero, who represented a part of our collective identity.
Guy! Guy! Guy! Even those who only follow hockey from afar know very well what this cry refers to, as we saw in the first film of the Boys, when Ti-Guy, played by Patrick Huard, suddenly thinks he’s Guy Lafleur! This has happened to all of us, one day, on the ice or elsewhere!
I hear the doubters: how can a hockey player be a national hero? They invite us not to exaggerate. They are wrong.
They don’t understand the history of Quebec, and what hockey has long represented for our people. Need we remind you: we were a defeated people, humiliated in our own country, condemned to leave our tongues in the locker room when they returned to the factory.
But we were getting our revenge on the ice, in our national sport. From this point of view, and whatever those who imagine that people of “different colors” cannot have similar experiences say, our history is not unrelated to that of black Americans.
I said it a few days ago in this columnMaurice Richard represented the French Canadian who speaks little but does not allow himself to be crushed, animated by a fascinating energy of life.
Guy Lafleur represented a new stage in our collective identity, that of a flamboyant, conquering, proud and free Quebec. He represented it to the point of becoming a symbol of our collective life.
Guy Lafleur also belongs to a time when Quebecers knew how to resonate in unison: they felt and experienced the world as a people knowing that it was a people.
Some were sovereignists, others were federalists, some had abandoned Catholicism, others remained faithful to some of its rites, but all knew that they were taking part in the same collective adventure.
They weren’t segmented into hundreds of ever-narrowing, unrelated categories.
It may be said that nostalgia is not to be recommended, but Quebecers know very well that they have lost something since they lost this deep unity, this assured and self-assured “we” which had led them to say one day “masters at home”.
We
Today, telling us is suspect. It was the fashion of the time. She is sad, even ugly.
And suddenly, through the death of a hero, who had brought our pride to the ice while remaining close to his people, Quebecers remember who they were.
Through the death of Guy Lafleur, Quebecers also mourn part of their lost identity. And secretly wonder if they can find her.