It’s game over for the $5 hockey bill
Text from iconic children’s book dropped from new currency
Roch Carrier missed the telephone call in 2001, sitting in his Ottawa office as Canada’s national librarian.
“My secretary told me it was from the Bank of Canada,” Carrier said with a bright smile this week over morning cappuccino in a quiet Montreal café.
“I thought, ‘Did I write a bad cheque? Was I robbed? Had I done something wrong?’ I phoned my bank in Montreal and they found nothing.”
“So,” he said, “I didn’t return the call.”
And then the phone rang again.
“My secretary was very strong. She was a bit my boss,” Carrier continued, his grin spreading. “She said, ‘Mr. Carrier, my feeling is that you should call them back.’ ”
At the other end of the phone, when he did, was an official with the Bank of Canada telling Carrier that the country’s central bank was planning to use an excerpt from the author’s classic 1979 book Le chandail de hockey — translated to The Hockey Sweater — on a new $5 banknote.
“That was amazing,” Carrier said. “I fell from my chair.”
For a decade, from 2002 through last year — when the Bank of Canada processed its final order for the note — the short passage from the story has appeared on the reverse of the $5 bill, French text from Le chandail de hockey atop English text from The Hockey Sweater:
“The winters of my childhood were long, long seasons. We lived in three places — the school, the church and the skating rink — but our real life was on the skating rink.”
Roch Carrier’s name divides the two passages, which appear to the right of a child tobogganing, beneath an adult and child skating and to the left of four children playing pond hockey, including a long-haired girl wearing the No. 9 jersey in tribute to Maurice Richard, the focal point of Carrier’s tale.
Last week, the Bank of Canada introduced its new $5 polymer bill, a more durable and secure product whose theme has replaced winter sports, primarily hockey, for one profiling the country’s role in space exploration.
Eventually, the paper fin will disappear, tattered and otherwise unfit bills returning to the central bank for shredding and replacement by the new polymer product.
As you would expect, there is not a single drop of bitterness in Carrier, 76, who knows that in probably just a few years “his” bill will be only a collector’s item or a museum piece.
When we sat on Thursday morning, he had not yet held the new bill.
Asked how many of the current $5 notes he had in his pocket, he chuckled.
“I will tell you,” he said, digging into his pocket.
He had one, wrapped around a couple of $20s.
‘In Quebec, we have fighting, a war that we should not have against symbols. Some people are very preoccupied by just the clothes we wear.’
ROCH CARRIER Author of The Hockey Sweater
According to Bank of Canada senior analyst Michel Lebeau, there are roughly 226 million of the paper $5 notes now in circulation, including the one in Carrier’s pocket; the author’s name is thus attached to an estimated $1.3 billion.
Carrier just shook his head at this and said, “Compared to the fact that I’ve been honoured as I have, to me that sum means nothing.”
The Hockey Sweater is an important, cherished piece of Canadian literature, much more than a quaint recollection of a youngster growing up in rural Quebec in the 1940s.
Carrier wrote the story almost by accident in 1970, asked by CBC Radio to answer the question “What does Quebec want?” during a politically charged time.
When nothing came to him, deadline pressing, Carrier penned a story about his youth in Sainte-Justine, 280 km northeast of Montreal:
Roch, age 10 in 1947, worships the ice skated by his hero, Canadiens legend Maurice (Rocket) Richard. Roch’s mother orders him a new Canadiens sweater through the Eaton’s catalogue, but receives from Mr. Eaton, by mischief or mistake, a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey.
Roch is traumatized, his blue and white Leafs sweater worn like a scarlet letter on the village rink until he loses his temper because of what he perceives as persecution by the French-Canadian priest/referee: little ice time, then penalized for being a sixth skater. Imagine.
To seek God’s forgiveness, Roch is banished to the church — where he prays that the Almighty, also surely a fan of La Sainte Flanelle, will dispatch a hundred million moths to devour his Toronto sweater.
Has Carrier ever considered the consequences had Mr. Eaton sent his mother a Canadiens sweater, as requested?
“Never. Not once,” he replied finally. “I guess there would have been no story?”
So Mr. Eaton’s mistake was our good fortune, Carrier’s tale spanning the enormous gulf of Canada’s linguistic and cultural divide.
A decade after it was written, the tale was beautifully animated for the National Film Board by Montrealer Sheldon Cohen, becoming an instant classic that has touched millions worldwide and remains fresh to this day, Carrier touring Canada for half-hour readings done with orchestras playing a score written for the performance by Abigail Richardson-Schulte.
To many, the bleu-blancrouge is practically a religion to disciples of the Canadiens. This fact is not, nor has it ever been, lost on Carrier, who deplores the Parti Québécois’ bid to restrict religious symbols.
“At this moment in Quebec, we have fighting, a war that we should not have against symbols,” he said of the controversial, bitterly divisive charter of values. “Some people are very preoccupied by just the clothes we wear.
“I was in a park recently and I saw a (Muslim) couple. Her face was hidden by a scarf and they were walking side by side, and in front of them was a child, I’d say seven years old, wearing a Canadiens sweater. And they want to pass a law.”
Carrier raised an eyebrow and said no more.
That an excerpt from The Hockey Sweater has appeared for a decade on the $5 bill still seems unreal to the author of the words.
“It’s been something unbelievable, I have to tell you,” Carrier said. “The first time I arrived in France as a student, on one of the new francs was a picture and a quote of Victor Hugo, the great French writer.
“A young French-Canadian coming to Paris — I was thinking, ‘Oh, these people are so civilized, they honour a writer!’”
Carrier has more than a few of “his” $5 notes tucked away as souvenirs and he admits that over the years he has signed many — probably thousands, he figures — for fans and collectors.
“I’m not permitted to deface a Royal product,” he said in mock horror when the question was put to him about autographs, laughing when it was suggested he’d have signed far fewer keepsakes had he been featured on the $20, $50 or $100.
“I don’t have any bad or negative feelings,” he said about the paper $5 being replaced. “No frustration. No disappointment. I never thought it would be there for the rest of my life.
“It’s been a tremendous honour,” Carrier said of being featured on this banknote for a decade, the sun now slowly starting to set on his currency fame.
“Hockey is a great game. A wonderful game. In some ways, in our country, it’s like air.”