culture & labor firegeezer on 10 Apr 2008 07:18 pm
Wait Until The Fans Hear About This!
THERE IS NO CITY IN THE WORLD THAT IS MORE supportive of their hockey team than Montreal. The oldest team in the National Hockey League, and the most successful over the decades, is completely ingrained in the city’s culture. The Montreal Canadiens, Les Habitants, are IT.
And that’s what’s so puzzling about Mayor Gerald Tremblay’s actions today. The NHL playoffs begin this week and the Habs are the number 1 seed in the Eastern Conference. The FF’s at Fire Station 5, using a water-based paint that can be hosed off, painted the doors of the engine bays with Habs colors (red, white and blue) and team decorations. By this afternoon almost every station in the city had decorated their doors.
Fire Station 5 - The Ringleader
But the mayor stuck his foot in it this morning and ordered the stations to remove the “graffiti” immediately. Failure to do so would lead to the City hiring a contractor to go around to the stations and “repair” them, with the cost of having it done billed to the Union. “When you paint over the windows of a fire station, it’s vandalism,” the mayor said. (There’s the truth behind all this….the mayor is constantly battling the Union and they are in the midst of tough contract bargaining).
Union president Michel Crevier said the union won’t pay the cleanup bill. “We find it incredible that the mayor of Montreal doesn’t want to support the Canadiens,” Crevier said.
Station 25 and crew, Habs fans thru and thru
(Gazette/Carpenter photo)
As for the stations, they’re telling the mayor to stick it where the sun don’t shine because they are not going to remove the decorations. At station 25 Joel Lapointe, a firefighter for 20 years, said, “We’re not removing our flags, this is nothing negative. We’re really doing this to support the Canadiens, because we’re proud.”
Wait until everybody gets home from work today and catches this on the evening news.
Update: Word’s going around that they’re painting the truck tires with red, white and blue stripes now, too. We’ll look for a picture of that for you.
The Montreal Gazette has the full STORY.
CTV photo
Firegeezer predicts that by 10 am tomorrow (Friday) the mayor has rescinded his order, locked himself in his office and refused all media requests.
Update #2: Montreal won their game tonight, 4-1 over Boston. It was game #1 of a best-of-seven series.
Most Commented Posts
