http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Riot
I made a passing mention of the Richard Riot in an earlier post, but it occurs to me that it’s worth posting on its own. Canada is a funny country when it comes to our unofficial national sport. Those of other nationalities joke that it preoccupies us far more than it should, but it is in some ways central to our national understanding. Hockey can both unite us as a people (Remember the Olympic gold medal win in 2002 against the upstart Americans? Everyone here does!) and it can tear us apart. In ’55, the banning of Quebec’s premier player from the playoffs by the Anglo NHL governors caused a huge flareup of Francophone tensions, and had quite a significant effect on the development of the Quebecois sovereignty movement. Jack Todd’s pieces (which I really must plug once more) point out that, for players from the storied Montreal Canadiens team, Quebec politics are still played out in locker rooms on a daily basis.