Emile (Butch) Bouchard, former Montreal Canadiens captain, dead at 92
He was not on the list.
Emile (Butch) Bouchard, a longtime Montreal Canadiens captain
and four-time Stanley Cup winner, died Saturday. He was 92.
Friend and sports analyst Ron Fournier says Bouchard was
surrounded by his family when he died.
The defenceman scored 49 goals in 785 games during a 15-year
NHL career, captaining the Habs for eight seasons before retiring in 1956.
The Canadiens won the Stanley Cup four times while Bouchard
was with the team, twice while he was captain.
“He was one of the great captains in the history of the
Canadiens,” Rejean Houle, the Habs alumni president who played with the
Canadiens in the 1970s and 80s, said in an interview Saturday. “It was a period
where the team really became a dynasty.”
Pierre Bouchard, a member of the Canadiens from 1970 to
1978, said his father remained active until the end of his life.
“He was getting old, but he was in good shape,” he said.
The Canadiens issued a release saying the organization was
“deeply saddened” by Bouchard’s death.
Born in Montreal on Sept. 4, 1919, Emile Bouchard wasn’t
planning on a career in hockey after originally wanting to work in banking or
as a beekeeper. He competed in many sports growing up, including baseball and
boxing. Around age 16 he began to take hockey seriously.
After borrowing $35 from his brother to buy equipment,
Bouchard began playing for the Verdun Maple Leafs of Quebec’s old Provincial
Senior League.
The rugged 6-foot-2, 205-pound Bouchard quickly got noticed
and the Montreal Canadiens offered him his first professional contract to play
with their minor league club in Providence, Rhode Island. He played 12 games for the
Providence Reds in 1940-41.
Bouchard grabbed the big club’s attention at training camp
the following year when he made the 80-kilometre trip by bicycle from his home
in Montreal to the training site in St-Hyacinthe, Que.
He earned a spot on the blue-line and played the next 15
seasons with the Habs, establishing a reputation as one of the best hitters of
the era.
Bouchard was inducted by the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1966.
“He was one of the leaders in the 1940s for a team that
wasn’t going anywhere, and then later things went very well with the arrival of
Maurice (Richard) and all the others after that,” Pierre Bouchard said. “Those
were great years for the Canadiens’ organization.
Despite his success, Emile Bouchard had to wait 43 years to
have his No. 3 jersey retired. After a grassroots campaign started by his
family, he was honoured alongside fellow Habs great Elmer Lach before the
team’s centennial game on Dec. 4, 2009.
“It gave him a great boost in the last seven, eight years of
his life,” Pierre Bouchard said. “It allowed him to be better known to the
younger generation.”
Emile Bouchard was also a successful Montreal businessman.
Hockey didn’t keep him from beekeeping during his playing career. From 1938 to
1950, his 1.2 million bees produced up to 6,800 kilograms of honey annually.
In 1948, he opened his own restaurant, called Butch
Bouchard, in downtown Montreal. It was a mainstay in the area, hosting cabaret
shows and musicians until it closed in 1983.
Houle remembers going to the restaurant with his teammates
after games, and got to know Bouchard well.
“He was a great leader, just by his presence,” Houle said.
“When we played a good game, he was always proud to see us win. His heart
belonged to the Canadiens, that’s clear.”
Bouchard also combined business and sports, becoming the
director of the Montreal Royals of baseball’s International League in 1956,
which was the farm club of the Brooklyn Dodgers at the time. He was promoted to
president in 1957 but the club played its final season in 1960.
Bouchard married painter Marie-Claire Macbeth in 1946 and
had five children.
A funeral service is expected to be held next Saturday.
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