

In the book, Carrier wrote " Nous vivions en trois lieux : l'école, l'église et la patinoire mais la vraie vie était sur la patinoire," ("We lived in three places - the school, the church and the skating rink - but our real life was on the skating rink.") This sentence can be found on the back of $5 bills from the 2001 series of Canadian banknotes.“The winters of my childhood were long, long seasons. Feeling humiliated, the boy finds himself in church, praying for God to send moths to eat up his new Leafs sweater.

When his mother forces him to wear it to his hockey game, the coach refuses to let the boy play. The boy refuses to wear the sweater as the Maple Leafs are the bitter rivals of his Canadiens. When the package arrives, the boy is heartbroken to find a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater instead of one from his beloved Canadiens. When his Canadiens sweater is worn to tatters, the boy's mother orders a new one from the Eaton's catalogue service. The book, which is based on true events from Carrier's childhood, features a young boy living in Quebec who adores his Montreal Canadiens, including star player Maurice "The Rocket" Richard. With the help of Thirsk, Carrier will read passages from the "flown" book, which documents the perils of a young Canadiens fan forced to wear a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey in his isolated Quebec town. Thirsk will present the copy he read during a six-month mission to the International Space Station to its author, Roch Carrier, at an event held at the Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa.Ĭarrier, who collaborated with animator Sheldon Cohen to release the story in 1979, will celebrate the event with students from the Roch Carrier Elementary School in Kanata, Ont. Yet instead of packing Stephen Brunt's "The Search for Bobby Orr," astronaut Robert Thirsk brought an iconic short story that continues to resonate among today's youth: The Hockey Sweater. It seems only fitting for a Canadian astronaut to pass the time in space with a book about hockey.
