COURAGE RECALLED
Habs surgeon David Mulder reflects on a half- century of friendship with the late, great captain Jean Béliveau
As a physician, David Mulder would have seen Jean Béliveau for the first time in the mid- 1960s, a young MD from Saskatchewan not long in Montreal when he treated the minor injury of someone who was larger than life.
Béliveau was the captain of the Canadiens, more than a decade into his career with the club; Mulder was one of three McGill surgical residents who had been recruited in 1963 by Douglas Kinnear, the Canadiens doctor, paid $ 10 per game to care for the organization’s junior club.
“That $ 10 was, in those days, an incredible extra amount of money,” Mulder recalled Friday during a talk in the team’s Bell Centre alumni lounge. “We sutured up all the cuts and bumps and scrapes for the Junior Canadiens.”
In time, Mulder would trade his needle and thread for the title of Canadiens chief physician, then the instruments of the team’s chief surgeon, having now held the latter post for a decade and a half.
But it was while working with the juniors that Mulder first treated Béliveau, whose recent loss has left a hole that never will be filled in the heart of this world- renowned chest surgeon.
“The juniors filled the old Forum — Réjean Houle, Marc Tardif, Richard Martin,” Mulder recalled. “And the others involved — ( executives) Sam Pollock and Prof. ( Ron) Caron. When you sat with Prof., it was like a boxing match.”
The juniors shared the Forum with the big team, the NHL’s Canadiens, and from time to time Mulder would see Béliveau to say hello.
But then came the day when Kinnear wasn’t available and Pollock asked Mulder to have an official look at the Canadiens captain.
“Jean had a minor infected cut,” Mulder said. “It wasn’t anything serious, it might have been a laceration that was a little red. It was probably a Sunday in the Forum clinic and I probably gave Jean some antibiotic.
“But he was so thankful. My gosh, here’s Jean Béliveau thanking me. That was our first real contact. It was very warm, very close. It was very genuine.
“You have to imagine, here’s a boy from Saskatchewan, still in awe of everything, in the same room as Jean Béliveau. It was nothing less than hero worship.”
Mulder took on more work with the Canadiens, filling in for Kinnear and covering games during the 1960s, and his appreciation for Béliveau’s leadership qualities grew enormously.
So, too, did their friendship develop, a bond that grew strong, vital and intensely emotional until the day Béliveau died on Dec. 2 following a lengthy illness.
Mulder returned to the organization in 1969, having spent two years studying cardiothoracic surgery at the University of Iowa, and went to work with the Voyageurs, the Canadiens’ minor- pro American Hockey League farm team.
Called by the Canadiens again to fill in for Kinnear, Mulder was welcomed back by Béliveau, who was nearing the end of his NHL career, with memories of the doctor’s precious work with the juniors.
“Every doctor, every medical student learns about the doctorpatient relationship, but what I had to learn early on was the doctor- player relationship. Jean Béliveau taught me that,” Mulder said.
“The relationship is the same, in a way, but professional hockey players are different. They’re elite, they want to play, and Jean taught me some very important lessons.”
Béliveau was a huge help in other ways, too.
One night, Mulder had to treat Habs hard- rock John Ferguson after a nasty fight that had drawn a lot of blood. Mulder stitched up Ferguson’s deeply carved forehead, then had to break the news that the player didn’t want
My gosh, here’s Jean Béliveau thanking me. That was our first real contact. It was very warm, very close.
to hear.
“I said to John, ‘ You can’t go back to play,’” Mulder said. “He was furious, to the point that when I walked him back to the Forum clinic, he took his stick and knocked an ashtray off the wall.”
Béliveau heard this ruckus between the second and third periods.
“Jean said to me, ‘ What’s the trouble, Doc?’ and I said, ‘ I think for his own good, we have to keep John out. But he doesn’t want to stay out,’” Mulder said.
“Jean said, ‘ Leave it to me,’ and he told John, ‘ What the Doc says goes. You’re not playing. And if you don’t listen to him, I’m going to lock you in the clinic.’”
Ferguson didn’t play the third period.
“We had many occasions like this,” Mulder said, “my witnessing Jean’s wisdom and judgment that went along with his captaincy.”
Béliveau’s retirement from the game in 1971 and his move into the Canadiens front office only fortified the relationship between the two men.
“On every occasion, in every situation, Jean was kind and generous,” Mulder said. “I think of how many times he’d sit in his seat and for an hour after a game and sign autographs when he had a lot of other things he could have been doing.
“What Yvan Cournoyer said ( in his eulogy) really struck me, when he spoke about ‘ mon capitaine’ — that special relationship.”
Mulder described last Wednesday’s service at Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral as “the classiest funeral I’ve ever seen.
“You know what I thought? After Jean had finished being captain of the Montreal Canadiens hockey club, he continued then to be captain of the Montreal Canadiens family. He was the go- to guy in every situation.”
In fact, Mulder would become Béliveau’s go- to guy more often than either of them would have liked.
It was Mulder who saw the legendary centreman through his many health challenges, from the relatively minor to the lifethreatening — blood- pressure scares, installation of a pacemaker, the treatment of abdominal aneurysms, throat cancer, two strokes, a fractured hip and his gradual weakening this past summer that finally brought his days to an end.
Every treatment cut the doctor like a scalpel; Mulder adored his famous patient yet had to lock away his emotions when he buttoned his white cloak.
“Jean faced everything with incredible courage and he never complained about anything,” Mulder said.
“Sometimes, he was admitted to the hospital and we didn’t have a private room. But it never bothered him. It was an embarrassment to me but he’d just say, ‘ Don’t worry, Doc.’”
Mulder was just home from Portland, Ore., on the evening of Dec. 2 when he received the call from Béliveau’s wife, Élise, telling him that he had slipped away.
“When I hung up the phone, it was like someone had shot me between the eyes,” Mulder said almost in a whisper, Élise and her daughter, Hélène, sitting a few feet away.
Clearly, both women cherish him, and the feeling is entirely mutual.
“The image that came into my mind was the night in 1971 that Jean had scored his 500th goal,” Mulder said. “Again, I was covering that game purely by chance. I can remember them taking pictures of him. I was saying, ‘ My gosh, 500 goals,’ and Jean’s answer was, ‘ Well, if you stay around long enough, you can score 500 goals.’ Which was absolutely typical of him.”
Coincidentally, or not, Mulder was speaking in Portland about a subject that had long been dear to Béliveau’s heart.
The talk, as part of a visiting professorship, was broadly about Canada’s contribution to U. S. college basketball’s March Madness, the game invented by Canadianborn phys- ed teacher James Naismith.
“I talked about Jean having always spoken about the role of athletics and academics and character- building,” Mulder said. “He used the same principles as UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, who in his book, The Wisdom of Wooden, spoke about the three F’s: family, faith and friends. And Jean Béliveau was the epitome of all three.
“That was reinforced in me after Jean’s stroke, when he sat in his hospital room, depressed, having to learn to sign his name again. His two strongest supporters were his granddaughters, Mylène and Magalie, who slept at his bedside. It showed the incredible respect he had earned from his own family.”
That respect followed Béliveau every step of his adult life, including the day in 2006 that he was awarded an honourary law degree by McGill University.
The degree wasn’t bestowed upon him without the raised eyebrows of some; in fact, the honour had been proposed once and it was rejected.
“The thought of some was, ‘ Why would you give a hockey player an honourary degree?’” Mulder said, shaking his head.
Then- McGill principal Heather Munroe- Blum called the doctor and asked him whether he’d submit another nomination, which Mulder immediately did, this time to acceptance.
“There were some — I don’t know how you’d describe them — who were worried that a hockey player wouldn’t be able to give a convocation address to the graduating class,” Mulder said.
“I’d love to get Jean’s notes, which Élise may still have. He spoke on his vision of leadership, not only as captain of a hockey team, but leadership in a community, in giving back.
“It was probably the best convocation address I’ve heard,” Mulder said, smiling, “and I’ve heard quite a few of them.”
He visited Béliveau regularly in his final months, these housecalls as a doctor and a friend usually co- ordinated by Canadiens alumni president Réjean Houle.
“Réjean is a saint,” Mulder said. “He arranged visits for so many, attended to so many needs of the family. If he detected a problem, he’d call me and say, ‘ Doc, we have to check on this.’ He was an incredible guardian, just sensational.”
Mulder calls it a privilege to have brought some of Béliveau’s best friends to the great centreman’s bedside, including Dickie Moore, whose sun rose and set with his captain.
“I took Dickie one day and it just about broke my heart to see the two of them,” Mulder said. “Yvan ( Cournoyer) was totally broken up. Réjean took Guy Lapointe out the day after Guy’s sweater retirement and he told me he couldn’t settle Guy down, that he was absolutely heartbroken.”
Mulder last visited Béliveau at his South Shore condominium three days before he died. For about an hour that day, he found that his friend of a half- century was so sharp that Le Gros Bill wanted to discuss in detail the late Pat Quinn, the hockey coach and executive who had died a week earlier.
“Jean spoke to me about Quinn’s law degree and his talents outside of hockey, which I didn’t know,” Mulder said. “Why Jean would choose to talk about Pat Quinn at that time, I don’t know. But he was the topic of conversation.”
Mulder glanced over at Élise and Hélène and again lowered his voice.
“I think Jean’s passing was a blessing in the end. I thought it was going to happen in August, then he got better and we tided him through some crises. But he wanted to go.”
For the past week, at every turn during his rounds in the corridors of the Montreal General, Mulder has been approached by staff and patients who have offered condolences on the loss of his friend and, more often than not, a personal story about their brush with this giant of a man.
“I’d come in some days through the years, headed to the operating room, and I’d see Jean and Élise in the coffee shop, having come across the bridge early,” Mulder said.
“People have wanted to tell me the past week that Jean signed an autograph for their nephew, that he was so nice to everyone in the hospital,” he said. “It’s been won- derful hearing all these stories, hearing Dickie Moore talk about all the things that he and Jean did together.
“It’s as Dickie says — Jean is his friend and teammate forever.”
As much as his heart is aching, Mulder says that “probably like Élise, I’ve had time to grieve since the summer, when we thought we might lose Jean.”
He has more memories of his relationship with Béliveau than he can process, and for now they’re a pastel canvas of a thousand hues. In time, Mulder believes, they will come into a focus that he’ll enjoy forever.
There is one, however, that he tightly embraces now.
“It was the night that Jean first came back to the Bell Centre for a game after a stroke,” Mulder said. “He came to my little office and he hugged me and he said, ‘ Thank you, Doc, for getting me through this.’
“And that was more than I could take.”