Maurice Richard

the long version

"Few athletes, even great ones, transcend their sport. But right from the start Maurice Richard represented far more than a high-scoring forward who filled seats in NHL arenas. The March 1955 Richard Riot, in which fans went on a rampage to protest his suspension, contained the seeds of a transformation. The fact that during Richard's final five seasons his team won the Stanley Cup each spring, and that his retirement in 1960 coincided with the defeat of the repressive Duplessis regime and the emergence of a government that would quickly reinvent Quebec as a modern, secular society, made it impossible to separate his athletic accomplishments from the social and political evolutions of his time"--Pub. info.