And a story of two fox-farmers is an exploration of honour and loss.įrom the Duplessis government to the Eaton’s catalogue, Roch Carrier’s stories are classic Canlit. But it’s also about home, community, identity.Ī village entrepreneur fills the house with cases of toothpaste, but it’s not about dental hygiene, rather resilience and context. So an Irish nun teaches French Canadian children to read aloud, but with an Irish accent (too close for comfort to the King’s English for many parents in the village). Though rooted in single personalities or moments, there is a meaning which stretches beyond the particular.
The other stories in this collection have a similar feel. It’s a sketch which reminds readers that we often have things in common with others even when we believe them to be completely different it’s a microcosmic peek at a looming human question. The story is the kind of thing you can imagine being told at a dinner table, or over drinks in the pub: what happens when a francophone boy who is desperately fond of Maurice Richard and the Montreal Canadiens is sent the wrong hockey sweater in an Eaton’s catalogue order, and is forced to wear the sweater of the anglophone favourite, the Toronto Maple Leafs. Ten-year-old Roch Carrier appears on the Wikipedia page wearing a hockey sweater, years before he authored the story as an adult, and on the backs of our five-dollar bills, children still love to play hockey, just as he did as a boy. Small number of pages, but a very big deal.Īnd that line between fiction and reality is blurred once more. Or, wait, there’s more: ECW Press published This Sweater Is For You! by Sheldon Cohen this year, which considers the creative process in illustrating and animating “The Hockey Sweater”. Or, you could read the story, either in Tundra Books’ illustrated version (artwork by Sheldon Cohen, a Jewish anglophone who was a terrible hockey player) or in this reprinted edition of Roch Carrier’s stories, part of House of Anansi’s A List appearing this autumn. If this is all new to you, you can watch the NFB film online (it’s about 10 minutes long) or The Canadian Museum of Civilization has a neat exhibit which includes some audio clips and photographs: these will fill in the gaps. That’s how central this story, only four pages long, is to Canadians.Ī short story about hockey, a 10-year-old French-Canadian boy’s crowning disappointment, and the cultural tensions between anglophones and francophones: on our money.
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