We’re Habs diehards, born and bred
For most diehard Montreal Canadiens fans, reading Jay Baruchel’s Born Into It is like sitting down with a fellow diehard Habs fan and agreeing on, well, pretty much everything.
He gets so many things right in this wild, rollicking book.
Consider his take on the Habs rivalries over the years. Like Baruchel, I agree the Toronto Maple Leafs are a rival. But I don’t hate them the way I hate the Boston Bruins. The way Baruchel hates the Bruins.
I really disliked the Quebec Nordiques back when they were in the league, but not to the same extent as I do the Bruins.
Living in Windsor at the border with Detroit, I also see the Red Wings as a rival. And while I don’t like Detroit and their puffed-up fanbase — “Hockeytown”? Gimme a break! — I’ve always respected the club and its recent success.
But Boston? Canadiens fans hate the Bruins viscerally — it’s in our blood and bones. Baruchel’s take on Boston — in the form of a letter to the organization that ends with, “I’ll see you in hell” — is the equivalent of landing a perfect knockout punch to the head of an opponent at the end of a hockey fight.
I only wish he would have given Chris Nilan a pass in this section. The one-time Bruin from Boston (who has the accent to prove it) and forever Canadien should have been named as the only Beantown boy we’re allowed to like. I forgave Baruchel when he later wrote glowingly about the former pugilist who has the Habs logo tattooed on his body.
On the subject of fighting in the NHL, the opinions of the author and writer/director of Goon movies are honest and realistic: he admits he likes fighting and that it has its place in the history of the game but he can’t ignore the tragic consequences on the lives of enforcers like Wade Belak, Derek Boogaard and Rick Rypien. Baruchel’s blow-by-blow — literally — description of the infamous “Good Friday Massacre” playoff game between the Canadiens and Nordiques is especially detailed and takes Habs fans back in time. That game will mark its 35th anniversary on April 20, 2019.
Most fans will cheer his take on a lot of the highlights of Habs history, as well as the lowlights like how poorly they handled the Patrick Roy trade and, more recently, shipping another fan favourite, P.K. Subban, out of town.
We also can’t argue with his assessment of how the game has changed in the era of Gary Bettman who launched his own desert storm in the U.S. when the league expanded, and sigh along with Baruchel that perhaps the glory days will never come back.
“The game itself is different,” he writes. “It is an offshoot, a distillation of the game we used to play. The old game. We were champions of the old game. We are faceless competitors of the new game, stock opponents for the real stars to best en route to glory.”
Still, we are Habs fans and even in a bounce-back season like 2018–19 that fell short of a playoff spot this spring, we will bide our time and tune in to watch them again in October.
“We wouldn’t be the Habs if we weren’t annually given a toxic reminder of how awesome we were, once upon a time,” Baruchel writes. “We wouldn’t be the Habs if we were if we were run right through. It’s that hope, that toxic bit of success, that keeps the wins meaningful and the losses painful, and God help us, it always makes us cocky.”
There’s more to like in this book by the talented and very funny Baruchel: a short fictional story about the Habs — even poetry.
But parents, there’s also a lot of swearing between these covers so if you’re going to read Born Into It, keep it away from the kids. Until they get big enough to sit next to you on the couch and swear with you at the Habs on TV.
Claudio D’Andrea has been writing and editing for newspapers, magazine and online publications for more than 30 years. You can read his stuff on LinkedIn and Medium.com and follow him on Twitter.
