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The Hockey Sweater

The Hockey Sweater
Illustrated book cover of a young boy pointing to a wall poster of Maurice Richard's career statistics using a hockey stick as several of his friends look on
The cover of The Hockey Sweater
Author Roch Carrier
Original title Le chandail de hockey
Translator Sheila Fischman
Illustrator Sheldon Cohen
Country Canada
Language French
Published 1979
Publisher Tundra Books
ISBN
The Sweater
Directed by Sheldon Cohen
Produced by
Starring
  • Roch Carrier (voice)
  • Jean-Guy Moreau (voice)
Music by Normand Roger
Edited by David Verrall
Distributed by National Film Board
Release date
  • 1980 (1980)
Running time
10:21
Country Canada
Language
  • French
  • English

The Hockey Sweater (Le chandail de hockey in the original French) is a short story by Canadian author Roch Carrier and translated to English by Sheila Fischman. It was originally published in 1979 under the title "Une abominable feuille d'érable sur la glace" ("An abominable maple leaf on the ice"). It was adapted into an animated short called The Sweater (Le Chandail) by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) in 1980 and illustrated by Sheldon Cohen.

The story is based on a real experience Carrier had as a child in Sainte-Justine, Quebec in 1946 as a fan of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team and its star player, Maurice Richard. Carrier and his friends all wear Canadiens' sweaters with Richard's number 9 on the back. When his mother orders a new sweater from the department store in the big city after the old one has worn out, he is mistakenly sent a sweater of Montreal's bitter rival, the Toronto Maple Leafs, instead. Carrier faces the persecution of his peers and his coach prevents him from playing.

The Hockey Sweater is Carrier's most famous work and is considered an iconic piece of Canadian literature. The story has sold over 300,000 copies and has been republished in numerous anthologies. It exemplifies the nation's passion for hockey, and while it is often considered an allegory of the relationship and tensions that exist between francophones and anglophones, the story is popular throughout the entire nation. A line from the story appears on Canadian five-dollar bills printed between 2001 and 2013.

In the aftermath of Quebec's Quiet Revolution, tensions between francophones within the province and anglophones escalated as a provincial movement, led by the governing Parti Québécois, to separate from Canada reached its peak in the late 1970s. Seeking to explain Quebec's independence movement, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC) Toronto affiliate asked Roch Carrier, whose debut novel La Guerre, Yes Sir had been popular among both French and English Canadians, to explain "what does Quebec want?"


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