GARNEAU HONOURED
Broadcaster posthumously awarded de Coubertin medal
SOCHI, Russia
One of Canada’s greatest broadcasters, Richard Garneau, was remembered Thursday by the International Olympic Committee.
Garneau is the 17th person to be awarded the Pierre de Coubertin medal, which recognizes exceptional service to the Olympic movement.
As always there are two solitudes in Canada. So, it is perhaps difficult for an English-Canadian audience to grasp the respect and affection French Canadians had for Garneau, who died 13 months ago at the age of 82 from complications after heart surgery.
No English-Canadian sports journalist was nearly as big a star as Garneau in French Canada during a career that spanned six decades and included 23 Olympic Games and 9 Stanley Cups won by the Montreal Canadiens during the many years he headlined Soiree du Hockey with Radio-Canada’s other legendary sportscaster, Rene Lecavalier.
“Urbane,” and “the Jean Béliveau of sports journalism” was how Montrealer Michael Farber,
‘I saw him prepare a lot. He worked at it. During the pre-Internet days, he would prepare months in advance with big stacks of magazines and newspapers’
STEPHANE GARNEAU
On the dedication of his father Richard Garneau to the Olympics
of Sports Illustrated, described French Canada’s “voice of the Olympics” before Garneau’s son, Stéphane, accepted the posthumous award from the IOC at Canada House. “I should be somewhere else right now,” Farber said, “but I had to be here for this.”
Other descriptive words that come to mind when recalling Garneau are “exceptional,” “passionate,” “elegant” and, in the French sense of the words, “genial” and “class.” A renaissance man, Richard spoke German, was a fan of classical music and was as comfortable in Italy or Germany as in Canada.
After watching a poignant video retrospective of his career, prepared for the occasion by colleagues from Radio-Canada, several speakers said Garneau was the most handsome man they had ever met. He was lanky and always wore his great head of hair in a rakish mop. Perhaps even more impressive was his voice — deep, rich and full of humour and irony.
Garneau famously spoke exquisite French. While not a fanatic about it, he wanted his listeners to say “la rondelle” rather than “le puck” and was disappointed when many of them didn’t. He wished more of his compatriots, including those Québécois who played hockey, took the language of Molière half as seriously as he did.
I once asked Garneau who spoke the worst French of all the great Quebecers he had interviewed. Laughing loudly, he named a famous goaltender who played for an American team.
“When they won the Stanley Cup, I would put the microphone as far from my body as I could, so nobody would see I couldn’t keep a straight face. He had been away so long he basically spoke French with a ‘le’ or ‘la’ added before English nouns that had been proceeded by English verbs and adjectives spoken with a French accent.”
I cannot remember when I first met Richard, but it was many years ago somewhere in Europe. While always welcoming and ready to talk hockey, he was far more interested in discussing the Olympic movement — especially track and field, about which his knowledge was staggeringly encyclopedic.
While not highly political, he followed that game closely, too. He once remembered almost verbatim a debate my father had had with René Lévesque back in the 1950s.
He followed that memory with a riveting account of Lévesque’s life and how the Quiet Revolution had had such a profound influence on life in Quebec and Canada.
Garneau made everything look so easy, but as his son said in accepting the de Coubertin medal: “I saw him prepare a lot. He worked at it. During the pre-Internet days he would prepare months in advance with big stacks of magazines and newspapers.”
Marcel Aubut, the Canadian Olympic Association president, said that whenever he saw Garneau after the 2012 Olympics in London, he was always proclaiming he would be in Sochi to cover his 24th Olympics.
Fittingly, ‘I Will Be in Sochi’ was the title of the book the COC presented to Stéphane Garneau to honour his father.