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Talented as he was as a hockey player, Jean Béliveau is also remembered as a courtly, generous man. Fans' letters were always personally answered. Autographs were carefully penned and legible. Here are some moments of his life outside the rink that testify to the class and thoughtfulness of the late Montreal Canadiens captain.

A Béliveau statue outside Montreal's Jean Béliveau Arena in Longueuil, Que. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson)

Comforting fellow cancer patients

It was the day he first learned he had a malignant throat tumour in the spring of 2000. As a distraught Béliveau left the hospital, a woman spotted him and asked if the hockey legend could visit her son, who lay ailing in the cancer ward.

And so, despite his own anguish, Béliveau composed himself and headed back inside to offer words of support to the 18-year-old patient.

That anecdote was recounted in the Journal de Montréal in a story explaining how, following his diagnosis, Béliveau had become a confidant to many fans who wrote or called him, asking him to help give solace to their own cancer-stricken relatives.

“So each day I’d call them, around five o’clock, trying to bolster their morale, telling them: `If you let yourself go, you’re finished,’” Béliveau said.

The cancer in his neck eventually went into remission following radiotherapy but he would recall how hard the news struck him, coming around the time of the death of his former teammate, Maurice Richard.

Béliveau with Maurice Richard (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz)

The Acadian

He was aware of the vagaries of life when he looked at his family’s history. As indicated by his name, he is of Acadien origin. In his autobiography, he mentions that his father’s ancestors settled in Nova Scotia around 1642. After the British troops deported the Acadiens from the Maritimes in 1755, the family ended up in New England, near Boston.

They came to Quebec in the middle of the 19th century and became part of the Acadian community that grew around the town of Saint-Grégoire when the government offered farming land to settlers.

The Béliveau family was disrupted again around the time of the First World War when the farmland wasn’t enough to accommodate all the siblings of his father’s generation. Four of the eldest sons decided to move west after “reaching the same conclusions that pushed so many French Canadians to exile themselves to the further reaches of North America.”

His father, who was still a teen, wasn’t allowed to leave the family farm. But three of his uncles became farmers in Saskatchewan. They lost contact with a fourth uncle who had moved to British Columbia.

Béliveau signing a stick for Ottawa Senators Bantam player Ryan Campbell (THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Falstead)

The lessons he learned from his father

Béliveau grew up during the Great Depression, the eldest of eight children - five boys and three girls.

They lived modestly and grew their own vegetables and raised rabbits to supplement the wages of his father, Arthur, a lineman for the Shawinigan Water and Power Company. He recalled that his father would bring home discarded utility poles that they would chop to fuel the wood stove.

As word of his athletic skills spread, various teams tried to sign him to a contract. He recalled a scout for the Canadiens trying to impress him by fanning a wad of dollar bills on a table.

His father, however, held firm. “My son will not sign anything that allows someone else to control his life,” Béliveau recalled his father saying.

In addition to teaching him work ethics, he remembered that his father also cautioned him never to be in someone’s debt. When Béliveau eventually signed with the Citadelles of Quebec City, his father drove him to the team bus, shook his hand and said: “Do your best, Jean.”

Jean Béliveau and his wife, Elise. (THE CANADIAN PRESS)

He chose family over Rideau Hall

His son-in-law, a police officer, committed suicide in 1986. Béliveau, who often had been on the road with the Canadiens while his daughter grew up, vowed that he would help raise his two granddaughters.

In March 1993, Brian Mulroney offered Béliveau a seat in the Senate. Béliveau, who was never keen on partisan politics anyway, declined because he didn’t feel he could dedicate enough time to do a good job.

“My reflex was to ask for 24 hours to think it over,” he said, “but I called him back later that day. I didn’t want someone so busy to waste his Saturday, especially since I’d made up my mind.”

The following year, the new prime minister, Jean Chrétien, asked Béliveau to replace the outgoing governor-general, Ray Hnatyshyn.

Béliveau was flattered but again his commitment to his granddaughters prevailed.

“I strongly believe it is my duty to be the father those girls need for the next five years or so," he said at the time. “What I told Mr. Chrétien was that to take my wife and move to Ottawa would be deserting my family.”