REMEMBERING RED
The casket of legendary hockey writer Red Fisher is carried en route to his final resting place on Wednesday. A large Canadiens contingent, former colleagues, families and friends showed up to pay their respects. Stu Cowan has the details.
Red Fisher covered the Canadiens for 57 years, writing about 17 Stanley Cup teams and 15 players who would end up in the Hockey Hall of Fame, winning three National Newspaper Awards and being named a member of the Order of Canada.
But those weren’t the biggest stories in his life.
Fisher’s funeral service Wednesday in Montreal — he died Friday at age 91 — focused more on what was the biggest story of his life: the love affair he had with his wife, Tillie, who died 10 days before him at age 90. “My Tillie” as Fisher called her. The woman he met when they were teenagers and his wife for 69 years.
Fisher was described Wednesday as a “product of The Main” in Montreal, which is where he met Tillie. He was the son of Jewish immigrants and his father operated a second-hand shoe store. There were many young men who wanted the lovely Tillie’s hand, but it was Fisher who won her heart.
In marriage, Tillie selflessly allowed Fisher to develop his incredible work ethic while she took care of things at home with son Ian and daughter Cheryl, who knew not to bother their father when he was typing away in his office at home or speaking on the phone with a future Hall of Famer. While Fisher could be prickly on the outside with people, he was sweet and gentle with his family and protected their privacy.
Ian spoke eloquently during Wednesday’s funeral service about how his father had a “dream team” of eclectic friends — including many outside hockey — and the relationships were based on loyalty and honesty. Fisher expected excellence in hockey, writing, academics, art, music and friendship. He had an obsession with punctuality and was fiercely competitive, loving nothing more than scooping other newspapers with his Canadiens coverage. He did that often ... very often.
“I could say he became a friend,” Serge Savard, who dealt with Fisher when he was a player and later general manager with the Canadiens, said after the funeral service. “You know Red … he liked to let everybody know that he knew everything. Nobody got a scoop ahead of him.”
Réjean Houle also dealt with Fisher as a player and GM and recalled Fisher’s rule of never talking to rookies because they had nothing to say.
“The first couple of years he wasn’t talking too much to us,” Houle recalled with a chuckle before the funeral service. “But after you got to know him, you felt confident to go and see him. I respected Red a lot. If you had problems, you could go see him and talk to him about it and we knew it would stay with him.
“When I was GM, I went to see him if I was having a tough time and he was always open to what I had to say. I always felt very comfortable speaking with him. He was very straightforward with you.”
There were no grey areas in Fisher’s black-and-white world.
Former Canadiens defenceman Rick Green told a story Wednesday about the power Fisher’s words had in the locker-room.
“I came here in ’82 and I didn’t really know anything about Red, but I got to know him pretty quick,” Green said. “At one particular time, I was struggling with my play and he came up to me out of the blue and said: ‘You know what? You’re not playing very well. You’re not doing this, you’re not doing that.’ I was listening to him and I said: ‘Yeah, he’s probably right.’ And then he said: ‘If you don’t want to read about it in the paper tomorrow, you better get your act going.’ It actually motivated me to the point where I did get my act going. But that was Red. He came out of the blue and he told it the way it was and you respected him.” Houle shared a similar story. “After (Fisher) passed away, I talked with my friend Marc Tardif because we joined the Canadiens together at the same time in 1969,” Houle said. “He remembered one time he spoke with Red and he told him: ‘Come on, Marc. With all the talent you’ve got you can do better. You got all the talent.’
“In a way, he was good with the kids … after you were a rookie,” Houle added with a laugh.
There was a large Canadiens presence at Wednesday’s funeral, including a beautiful CH flower arrangement. Among those in attendance were former Canadiens president Ronald Corey, Ken Dryden and Chris Nilan, along with many of Fisher’s media friends and former colleagues.
But the Canadiens weren’t the biggest part of Fisher’s life. Son Ian spoke about his favourite photo of his parents together, taken on a street somewhere in Europe with them dancing, holding each other close and smiling brightly into each other’s eyes.
They were a match made in heaven — right to the end.