Roch Carrier, a novelist, playwright and children’s author, is one of Québec’s most loved and widely read writers. He was born in Sainte-Justine, Quebec and studied at the Collège St-Louis in New Brunswick, the Université de Montréal in Quebec, and at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France, where he received a doctorate in literature. His first novel La guerre, yes sir!, is a post-colonial novel set in a village of Québec during the conscription crisis of the Second World War (1968), and today, it is still one of the most widely studied literary works by a French-Canadian.
The hockey sweater might be Carrier’s most beloved work, read by generations of parents, grand-parents, and educators to children dreaming of one day winning the Stanley Cup.
‘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.’
Today, people of all ages can relive the dream by watching the National Film Board’s video adaptation of the book, narrated in English and French by Carrier himself:
Filled with humour, nostalgia, and an abiding love for our game, Le chandail de hockey is deservedly considered a classic in Canadian children’s literature.