Trama

A French Canadian boy endures the terrible shame when he receives the hockey sweater of the wrong team.

This cartoon tells a humourous story that underlines the "two solitudes" element of Canadian society where two social groups, the English speaking and French speaking populations live in the same country, but can literally barely speak to or tolerate each other. This is illustrated in this story about how a boy in Quebec has to endure the terrible shame of being given the sweater of the predominate English speaking Canadian hockey team, Toronto Maple Leafs, instead of the same sweater of his idol, Maurice "Rocket" Richard of the Montreal Canadiens.—Kenneth Chisholm <kchishol@execulink.com>

Quebecker Roch Carrier relates a story from his childhood. His childhood idol, like that of all the children that he knew, was Maurice Richard - "the Rocket" - and hockey and the Montréal Canadiens his passions. All the children wanted to look like the Rocket, act like the Rocket and especially play hockey like the Rocket. Even in pickup hockey games, all the children wore Canadien sweaters with five pretend Rockets playing against five other pretend Rockets. When his existing Canadiens sweater wore out, Roch's diligent mother, using what little English she knew, ordered Roch another one through the Eaton's catalog. But the replacement sweater ended up being his worst nightmare. Roch prayed to God to right what he saw as this fundamental wrong in his life.—Huggo