In February, 1971, a slightly bewildered boy stood beside his father in the Montreal Forum as waves of applause tumbled over them.
The ovation lasted 10 minutes, an unbridled display of gratitude from Canadiens fans who had just seen the team's legendary captain, Jean Béliveau, score his third goal of the night and the 500th of his career.
The cheering fans in the better seats were the picture of Montreal elegance. Women wore fancy hats and good dresses, and the men were in suits. Higher in the arena, the standing-room-only diehards wore Habs jerseys emblazoned with their favourite players' numbers. They led the crowd in chants; between faceoffs, when the organ usually remained silent, one well-known regular with a trumpet blew a fanfare – da-da-da-DA-da-DAH – that the fans would follow with the English cry, “Charge!” Other times, everyone sang out, “Les Canadiens sont là!”
But the real show was on the ice. When a defenceman made a crisp, rink-wide pass that was picked up on the backhand by a winger in full flight, the true connoisseurs meted out a knowing little clap. There was rarely any booing; much of the game passed in muted appreciation as the crowd focused on the action.
The Canadiens beat the Minnesota North Stars that night. And they went on to win the Stanley Cup that spring. For an 11-year-old English-speaking Montreal boy, the world unfolded that night as it always had. He sat beside his father on the drive home clutching the game program and feeling immense pride in his team and his city. Seeing Mr. Béliveau's 500th would be something to boast about at school in the morning.
For a grown man now approaching 50 and living in Toronto, that memory has become more than nostalgia: It's a link to a place left behind, an indisputable claim to Montrealer-hood made by a self-exiled anglophone.
The team, which begins its 100th regular season next week, is intimately bound up with the political and social history of Quebec, and with the memories and personal identities of its fans.
In a province where who you are and where you come from are everything, the Canadiens are a shared totem.
The team has changed, though, and so has Montreal. The city whose English elite invented the game is a place where the English community has been legislated into retreat.
There's no going back, either for anglophones or the Habs. There is today about as much chance of the team building another dynasty as there is of Westmount restoring itself as an all-English enclave.
Storied legacy
The Canadiens were founded on Dec. 4, 1909, with the goal of providing Montreal's French population with a team to cheer in the Eastern Canadian Hockey Association, D'Arcy Jenish recounts in The Montreal Canadians: 100 Years of Glory, a new unofficial history being released next week by Doubleday Canada.
It is the oldest and most storied franchise in the National Hockey League. The team has won as many Stanley Cups (24) as its closest rivals combined (Toronto's 13 and Detroit's 11).
But on close inspection, those “100 years of glory” are actually a 27-season stretch of great teams, book-ended by long periods of average performance.
The Canadiens won 16 of their 24 Stanley Cups, and were in the finals three other times, from 1953 to 1979. That sustained burst of success is unparalleled in North American sports history, and it defines the Habs. It certainly created the unrealistic impression in the mind of a boy that winning a major sports championship was a matter of course for one's home team.
The period also produced three consecutive French-Canadians stars who were not only dazzling 500-goal scorers but who were also remarkable men in their own right: Maurice Richard, Jean Béliveau and Guy Lafleur.
