BÉLIVEAU BACK ON THE ICE
An upcoming miniseries will tell the story of the beloved Canadiens legend’s life and hockey career, including some chapters that are likely to be revelations even for longtime fans. Brendan Kelly visits the Montreal set to talk to the cast, crew and Béli
The Rocket had his film, the 2005 French-language hit Maurice Richard. Now it’s time for Le Gros Bill to take centre stage in a Quebec drama.
The local production company Pixcom is shooting a miniseries titled Jean Béliveau, based on the life and hockey career of the legendary Canadiens centre who won 10 Stanley Cups with the team.
Some of the on-ice and dressing-room scenes were shot at the Verdun Auditorium, which is where the cast and crew met the media this week.
Executive producer Charles Lafortune — who also hosts La Voix and La Voix Junior — began thinking about a series on Béliveau two years ago when the National Hockey League Hall of Famer was honoured at the Gala Artis, the Quebec TV milieu’s people’s-choice awards, which is hosted by Lafortune.
When they were pulling together footage to screen in a posthumous tribute at the gala, Lafortune was thinking: Wow, this guy is one incredible character.
“Everybody thinks they know him, but they actually don’t,” said Lafortune. “I’m 47, and when he won his last Stanley Cup (in 1971) I was only two.”
It’s a good point. Béliveau is, of course, well known to Quebecers — and Canadians — but that’s mostly thanks to what came after his playing career, when he became an executive with the Canadiens and, more significantly, maybe the team’s bestknown ambassador. Anyone 45 or under is too young to have seen Béliveau play, but fans knew of his legendary status thanks to a career that spanned two decades with the Habs, from the early 1950s to the early ‘‘70s.
That’s the period covered in the miniseries, which focuses on his exploits on the ice and his personal life.
Pierre-Yves Cardinal stars as Béliveau. The cast also includes Madeleine Péloquin as his wife, Élise, Patrice Bélanger as Boom Boom Geoffrion, Marc Beaupré as Henri Richard, Frédéric Blanchette as Butch Bouchard, Bruno Marcil as Maurice Richard
and Stéphane Crête as iconic La soirée du hockey play-by-play man René Lecavalier.
The miniseries was written by Jacques Savoie and is directed by François Gingras. It is set to begin airing on Historia on March 15, and the French-language specialty channel’s first fiction series sports a hefty budget. Each episode has a budget of $1 million, which makes it the priciest Québécois series currently being produced.
“The first year that (Béliveau) was really good and was the top scorer for the team, it was also the year that he was the most penalized on the team,” said Lafortune. “The perception we have that he was this fancy player, this Mario Lemieux-type player, it’s not really that accurate. He also had a lot of challenges with his heart and the injuries he had. So it’s not (always) smooth sailing, and people are going to learn about that.”
Savoie says the show is the story of an unusual hero.
“In his hockey career, for the longest time Jean Béliveau was an underdog,” said Savoie, whose credits include the award-winning TV drama Les Lavigueur, la vrai histoire and the hockeythemed film Pour toujours, les Canadiens.
“To have a sports drama where you have an underdog who ends up winning, it gives you a natural narrative structure,” said Savoie. “But we don’t know all this. We don’t know that at the beginning, Béliveau was at war with the Montreal Canadiens because he wanted to stay in Quebec City (playing for the Quebec Citadelles in the American Hockey League). Then when he arrived in Montreal, he was in the shadow of Maurice Richard, and even though Béliveau was very talented, Maurice Richard didn’t leave him much room to shine. The boss was the Rocket.
“The other thing that interested me was to make a show about values — something we don’t often have a chance to do. It was Béliveau’s father who instilled these values in him. If you make an agreement, you honour it. If you give your word, you honour it, and often to honour a deal, he had to do difficult things.”
The show also chronicles the challenges Béliveau faced, notably enduring many injuries (including a serious concussion) and — a dilemma familiar to any Canadiens captain or star player — dealing with the exacting demands of Habs fans.
But the miniseries also spends plenty of time on his personal life, including his relationship with Élise.
“Élise Béliveau is very present in the story, and it’s only fitting, since she had such a big influence on his life,” said Péloquin.
Cardinal said one of the big challenges in playing Béliveau was getting the hockey scenes right. Cardinal plays in a garage league, but admits his skill level is well below Béliveau’s.
“I’m not even a star in my league,” said Cardinal. “It was intimidating to try to be Béliveau on the ice, but I took a Zen approach. So I trained to try to be the best player possible, but I knew that, worse comes to worst, we could use a stunt double for the hockey sequences.”
In the end, Cardinal was good enough to do all the hockey scenes himself except for the heavy checks, which the producers felt would be too dangerous.
Another key character in Béliveau’s life was Hartland Molson, who owned the Canadiens (along with his brother Thomas) for most of Béliveau’s career. He was also president of Molson Breweries from 1953 to 1966.
“Molson ends up buying the Canadiens, but that’s after he’s set up a pretty close relationship with Béliveau,” said Matthew Harrison, a former Montrealer who plays the role. “Molson had one daughter, but he had no sons. So there was something to the relationship with Jean Béliveau. It started as a business relationship and then became a fatherson relationship.
“Béliveau became a spokesperson for Molson beer (in the early 1950s) and then Molson really took Béliveau under his wing. And I think it was really because Béliveau was such a gentleman. I bet Molson saw him as a FrenchCanadian reflection of himself. So throughout the whole series, whenever (Béliveau) needs someone to lean on, he’s in my office. We’re smoking cigars and I’m giving him worldly advice.”
Though Béliveau was very talented, Maurice Richard didn’t leave him much room to shine. The boss was the Rocket.