The Hockey Sweater

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Any children or adults who have ever been forced to wear a piece of clothing which was not “in” will identify with Roch who, as a ten-year-old boy from a Quebec village in 1946, has to wear a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater while all his friends are trying to imitate Los Canadiens’ star, Rocket Richard, by wearing his number nine sweater. Roch’s unhappy situation begins when his old Canadiens sweater becomes too small and his mother orders him a replacement via the Eaton’s catalogue. When the Toronto-based company substitutes a Leafs sweater for the desired one, Roch refuses to wear it, but his mother, with typical parental logic, explains that the hockey season will be over before an exchange can be completed. Faced with the choice of either wearing the sweater or missing a year’s hockey, Roch reluctantly wears the Leafs sweater to the rink, where he is seemingly ostracized by his coach and team mates. Seeing an injury to one of the players in the third period, Roch, who has not played to this point, jumps on the ice only to be penalized for “too many men.” Believing he is being persecuted because of his blue sweater, Roch angrily smashes his stick on the ice and is directed by the referee, the local curate, to “go to the church and ask God to forgive you.” There, a not totally chastened Roch asks God to send “a hundred million moths that would eat up my Toronto Maple Leafs sweater.”

Fischman first translated Carrier’s story for inclusion in The Hockey Sweater and Other Stories (Toronto: Anansi, 1979). Readers familiar with the Anansi version will detect some slight differences between the original and the Tundra retelling. To accommodate a younger audience, the modifications consist principally of minor vocabulary substitutions plus the division of long paragraphs into smaller units. Cohen made an award-winning animated film of the story for the National Film Board of Canada in 1980 and completed 13 new paintings for the book. These brightly colored, detailed illustrations, in addition to capturing the story’s emotions, accurately portray the real village of Ste. Justice during the mid-’40s. The paintings occupy three-quarters of each double-page spread, with the text being placed on the extreme left quarter.

An entertaining and amusing book, the title, which is also available in a French edition, should not just be placed in libraries’ juvenile sections. Adults who remember the original six-team NHL will also recollect the enormous rivalry between the Leafs and Canadiens and how, for many, each team came to represent the aspirations of Canada’s two founding language groups.