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Wednesday, May 31, 2000 A "monumental" manSaying goodbye to our hero, Rocket RichardMONTREAL - He kept apologizing, though there was no need. Not on this day. He kept trying to speak and each time his lips quivered and his eyes welled up until the tears spilled down his cheeks and dripped onto his grey Montreal Canadiens t-shirt. Yvon Dufour stood at the intersection of Notre-Dame and Ste-Sulpice streets astride his bicycle and like the hundreds of others who crammed the narrow streets outside Basilique Notre-Dame for the funeral rites for Maurice "The Rocket" Richard, he fought a battle with his emotions he could not win. "I'm sorry," he said as he wiped the back of his hands across his cheek. "It's an emotional day today. We're seeing our heroes dying and I don't like it." Dufour, 32, was born eight years after The Rocket played his last game. But he was there Wednesday, another face in a crowd which was a cross section of generations, of ethnic background, men and women, the fresh-faced and weathered, buzz cuts and blue hairs, business suits and tank tops, Armani and La Sainte Flannelle. They came on rollerblades and canes, bicycles and in wheelchairs. Their presence was evidence of the Richard magic, the love his legend inspired and the mystical hold Canadiens hockey and its heroes hold over the heart of a city. "I didn't see him play. When I started following the Canadiens it was (Guy) Lafleur, (Jacques) Lemaire, (Steve) Shutt, (Larry) Robinson, (Guy) Lapointe, (Serge) Savard," said Dufour. "I knew them and they were a part of my life. They are still. "I started to hear a lot about The Rocket. I heard a guy on the radio this morning talking about how for 18 years he saw him and today he was going to thank him. I heard a lot about (Richard). I think of all the Cups he and his brother (Henri) brought to Montreal. I love hockey and all my life I've played hockey. "That's why I came here, to thank him, to thank him for the gift of hockey." At this time of year, these streets used to belong to the likes of the Montreal Canadiens and heroes like Richard. The concrete gorges would be choked by worshippers who came to see Les Glorieux hoist another Stanley Cup at the head of a parade. Now they fight for the Stanley Cup in the swamps of New Jersey and deep in the heart to Texas and never has the Cup, once a fixture of life here, seemed so far away. The people lined the streets of downtown Montreal again Wednesday in bright sunshine, but now it was for a solemn procession, led by police astride motorcycles and horses and not bearing a silver cup which represented a moment of glory in the present, but a dark casket that represented an end to glories of the past. The sounds of the service from inside the majestic cathedral were pumped through a huge speaker system into the canyons around Place d'Armes, the sounds of the eulogies, the voices lifted in song and thunderous tones from the organ bounced and echoed off the buildings. Like they had for Stanley Cup parades of the past, they pressed against the windows of modern office buildings and hung out the windows of the older ones, quietly trying to catch a glimpse of the who's who of Canada and Canadiens hockey who made their way into the cathedral for the 10:30 a.m. service. Prime Minister Chretien. Former PM Brian Mulroney. Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard. Former Habs captain Jean Beliveau, now fighting cancer himself. Vincent Damphousse, Pierre Turgeon, Canadiens coach Alain Vigneault and members of the current club. Mike Bossy, the New York Islander who was the first player to match The Rocket's 50-goals-in-50-games mark, stopped to reveal how deep the competitive streak in Richard ran. "He was a little mad," said Bossy of Richard's reaction to Bossy's 50th goal. "He grabbed me by the neck for the cameras. He had a pretty good grip and he was squeezing me pretty tight. I was like, 'Okay, Maurice, okay, the cameras are done. "To have my name linked to Richard, to be in equal standing of something Maurice Richard did gives me a lot of pride." While the church was filled with dignitaries who had come to honour Richard, the people, literally in the street on this day, were the ones who perhaps most appreciated his legend. The wind whipped the three flags across the street from the cathedral and they stood out in rigid salute at half mast above the makeshift TV studios, as The Rocket's casket made its way to the front of the church. As the hearse pulled to a stop, the wind died as if on cue and it seemed like the air took on an almost unbearable weight. It was as though as the casket was lifted higher, the air grew heavier. Then a ripple of applause started and it grew, pushing back the heaviness and the moment became electric. The applause built and somebody whistled and then somebody else and the sound raised goosebumps even in the warm sun. Later, the crowd stood in rapt silence through most of the ceremony, applauding the eulogies and the performance by chanteuse Ginette Reno at the end of the service. The mourners trickled out of the cathedral, men in business suits crying and not being ashamed for a moment. "It was perfect," said Paul Barenteau, a 61-year-old restaurateur from Ste-Hyacinthe, who got up at 6 a.m. to make sure he could get a seat inside the cathedral. "The atmosphere was perfect." The sky had darkened now, its grey matching the stone face of the cathedral. The members of the public who had gotten seats inside continued to file past. A sandy-haired man in a khaki business suit and open-necked shirt let a tear trickle out his right eye. An older gentleman, his glasses in his left hand, swept his right hand over his face. A boy of about 10 came through the crowd, a bottle of cream soda cradled in his arm. An old woman, a purple sweater over her bowed shoulders, shuffled by on a cane. So many different faces. "Fifty years from now, people will still be talking about Maurice Richard," said Dufour. "One hundred years from now...the man is a monument." During his life, Richard's play during the frigid winter months came to symbolize a limitless passion and embodied the spirit of a city, a province and a people. In death, on a summer-like day, it was no different. More on Rocket Richard
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