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  I ended up using the machine just a handful of times; most of the time it was my dad who used it, not Normand. Dad would invite everyone to my grandmother’s and he would rent Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello movies — all physical humor since the machine didn’t have sound. Me, I would put on a big show for my friends, setting up a sheet in the back alley, and by the time it was dark, I had drawn a full house. If that thing had been mine, I could have built an empire. My brother recently told me he doesn’t know why Dad ever gave him la machine à vue — he never wanted it.

  My brother and I can laugh about it now, even though that was not the only time I felt left out. My dad would never give me any money, while Normand could get almost anything he wanted. They related to each other through sports. He would get a dollar for each time he scored a goal, a fortune back in those days. What you have to understand, and what I’ve only just recently realized, is that my brother had been sick as a kid and one of his legs was paralyzed for a while. My dad went to church every night to pray for him. And not just to our regular church, but to Saint Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal, the most famous shrine in Montréal, known for its miracles. My dad would climb all the stairs of this place on his knees in the hope that my brother would walk normally once again. The leg did heal up and Normand became an athlete. It really was a kind of miracle. Dad was so happy about it and so proud of my brother. I can only imagine the joy of a parent when one of their kids can overcome something like that. It just shows you how bad we were at communicating. I’ve come to realize that my dad loved me, but that he just couldn’t find a way to connect with me. We were not on the same page, that’s for sure. It took me thirty years to figure this out.

  THE ROAR OF THE PAINT AND THE SMELL OF THE CROWD

  “I planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway”

  While my brother Normand was good at sports, I was a mess. I tried different things but never really found my way. Back in those days, there were traveling circuses, going from town to town, and when they were nearby, I spent all my free time there. I would hang around the acrobats even though I didn’t speak one word of English. One time, one of the acrobats let me climb up a pole to the top, 100 feet above the ground. I did a few swings — and a few falls in the net. I was on cloud nine. The next day, I pointed out the pole to my dad; we could see it from our home. I said I was going to the top, because I wanted him to see me perform. My dad went berserk. He was beside himself, probably scared to death for me, and he proceeded to squash my circus aspirations right there. If I had had more guts in that moment, I would have left home to join the circus to become a clown or an acrobat. I would have done anything, even swept the floor, just to run away and find something that would make me happy.

  Instead, I just kept on looking. There was an amateur singing contest held at bars called Les découvertes de Jean Simon. We didn’t have reality television back then, but a lot of Montréal artists became stars at these places. I wanted to do it so badly, but Jean Simon told me that since I was my mid-teens, I was too young to sing in bars. I bugged him so much that he helped me get in through the back door to sing my song and leave right away, so no one would get in trouble. I don’t know why, but every night he would let me sing my song. I was so happy. I had an audience and an orchestra, even if I was really not very good. I needed to feel the audience reacting to me. One day, I told my dad about the singing contest. Once again, he squashed my dreams and my aspirations by forbidding me to do it ever again. I had been hoping he would bring everyone to hear me sing. But he was clueless; he never got me.

  After that, I did it behind his back. I even tried out for my favorite show Les découvertes de Billy Munro, which aired on the radio every Sunday morning. I basically just impersonated a famous local singer called Jen Roger. He was my hero; nobody remembers him today, but back then in my eyes he was the biggest star. When they heard me audition, they threw me out: I was just an imitator. I didn’t let that stop me. He was my hero and a major celebrity, and I found out where Jen Roger would eat on Sainte Catherine Street. Back then, most restaurants had shows while you ate. I asked the stage manager if I could sing my song. I actually got an ovation and even Jen Roger applauded me. In 2012, some fifty years later, they had a big birthday celebration for Jen Roger in a theater. I was invited to sing. There were dozens of singers from the province of Québec all singing their best stuff for him. They all went before me, so I was torturing myself to find a way to top them.

  I was putting more pressure on myself than if I was having a WWE Championship match with Bob Backlund at Madison Square Garden.

  Jen Roger was sitting there, in a wheelchair, with all of his friends facing the stage. So I started by saying, “I’ve always loved Jen Roger and when I was young, you were my hero. I loved you so much and I am going to tell you a story.” I reminded him about singing his song so many years earlier, but I added that he actually went to the bathroom when I started. As expected, everyone started laughing and I got the reaction I was looking for — a pop, as we refer to it in the ring. I then looked straight at him and said, “You better not stand up and go to the bathroom this time.”

  Now everyone was laughing so hard they could hardly breathe. I sang the Elvis song “The Wonder of You.” It went very well. It felt so good doing that, because he’d been such an inspiration.

  * * *

  Today, it’s clear to me that when I was a kid I was always looking for an audience. There was a church where they did a passion play every year during Easter. In the part after Jesus died, where everyone on stage was praying, there was always a big rock in the middle of the stage. Behind it, the curtain was slightly open. Then Jesus would suddenly appear from behind the rock and begin to levitate. It wasn’t very high, but it really intrigued me. I wanted to know how they did it. I needed to know. But I wasn’t allowed to go backstage. I still found a way, thinking, The hell with what I can or can’t do. Do you know what it was? It was a simple seesaw that you can find in almost any park today — a child’s toy. Jesus was standing on one end and someone pushed him up. The rock made the illusion come to life for the audience. It was amazing. I wanted to amaze people like that. And in a sense, that’s what I did in my wrestling career.

  After that I built my own stage with some friends and we played the Passion of Christ. I played Jesus. Backstage one day, the girl who played Mary and I became curious about the differences in our anatomy . . . But that’s another story — and it went nowhere, as you could probably guess.

  The only constant in my childhood was that I was always trying to create a show and get a crowd to come out and watch. No matter what kind of a performer you are, what drives you is not the promise of a big audience, but any audience — no matter the size. I could sing in my house all day long, it would feel good. But it would be nicer to have someone listening to me.

  An altar boy at church; I loved playing priest at home.

  My father was very religious, as I’ve said. Every Sunday, we had to go to church. Not that we were the only ones: every Sunday, everybody in the province of Québec had to go to church. So, I went to Mass often and, strangely, I used to love it. I loved to watch the priest preaching and to look at the people listening to him, all dressed up, as he made them stand or kneel almost at will. The priest was a star. Mass was the first show I ever saw. I loved it so much that I became an altar boy; I wanted to be a part of the ceremony. For a while, I went to Mass every morning before school and was paid five cents for each Mass. Don’t laugh, five cents went a long way back then. I could get two hot dogs for that.

  Eventually I was on duty for all the funerals and all the weddings. I loved it like crazy — I was on stage in front of people every day. In fact, I loved it so much that I built an altar in my grandmother’s yard and started playing priest. I even had a real costume given to me by an old priest. They used to say that May was the month of Mary (it still is, but they just don’t say it as muc
h anymore) and at 7 p.m. every night in May we had to get on our knees either at church or at home and say the rosary. In my house, my father insisted that everyone had to be there when we did this. Each evening, one of us led the family in the prayer. Sometimes we would go outside to my altar to say the rosary and some neighbors would join us. I invited our priest to come and see my altar, and the day he said he was coming, I told everyone that the priest would be there to say the rosary with me. When he showed up, there must have been 200 people in our yard. Afterward, I was basking in my new fame. Everyone was talking about it. They were all there to see me perform. I had found what I was looking for without even realizing it.

  We also had to go to confession in those days. There was no joking around and I hated that part. The first time I went, I told the priest I had masturbated.

  “Please don’t do that, my son; it’s a sin. As a penance, I want you to wash your hands with holy water,” he told me.

  The second time I went to confession, I told my sin to the priest. He said, “As a penance, I want you to drink holy water.”

  I’m just kidding. Lighten up, will you? Laugh a little.

  I will get to that soon enough.

  Though the priesthood wasn’t my true calling, for a brief moment, I thought I might just become a priest. After I found out that would require going to school for a long time, any aspiration I had to consecrate my life to the church ended. On top of the fact that I hated school, the cost of tuition made it impossible to seriously consider.

  At that time in Québec, the Catholic Church was almost more powerful than our elected officials. We could not eat meat on Fridays, and I didn’t like fish or eggs. Most of us poor people ate galette de sarrasin, a buckwheat pancake, or hot dog buns (without sausages). I remember that the restriction made my mother’s life even more difficult as she had to figure out how to feed us without meat.

  For one of those Fridays without meat, my mom bought a loaf of bread and inside the bag was a ticket to see a wrestling show on a Saturday afternoon. I wasn’t sure what the show was — we didn’t have a television set at the time — but it was free, so I was going no matter what. We could not afford to see any shows then. I went crazy after seeing my first match, and I have yet to fully recover.

  I remember watching Buddy Rogers enter the ring. It was like God was walking down the aisle. He had a presence about him; I didn’t know what he was made of. It was incredible, and I’ve never seen anything like it since — this slow, easy wrestling with Édouard Carpentier. My God, it was so beautiful. Years later, I wrestled with both of them and became friends with Rogers.

  I knew after that first wrestling match that I had found my calling, but I needed money to attend the big shows on Saturday nights or the even bigger show at the Montréal Forum on Wednesday evenings. One of my friends had a delivery job for a little restaurant and I helped him and he paid me for my work. He also delivered newspapers, and I helped with that too and earned some more money there as well. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to see the wrestling show.

  When I watched the Dufresne Brothers wrestle, I hated their guts. The bad guys, they were so mean and dirty. I cheered for the heroes such as Sam Chuck and Joe White. Good guys versus bad guys: I was hooked. And fans got mad for real as they screamed, “Goddamn ref, he just pulled his hair, you dumb bastard!” One day I saw the real stars: Killer Kowalski and Yvon Robert at the Forum. Yvon Robert was so much more than a wrestler to French Canadians in those days. He was a true role model, proof we could succeed even if we only spoke French.

  Since I didn’t have enough money to go as often as I’d like, I also got creative. If people left the show at intermission, I would ask for their ticket stub and watch the second half of the show for free. Sometimes, someone would let me in to the famed Forum; other times, the ushers would check out the action and I would jump the pay-gate while they were distracted.

  I think the first job I ever did in the wrestling business was sell hot dogs. I was not good at that at all, since all I wanted to do was to watch the matches. Once, one of the wrestlers asked me to get near the barricades for his match so he could turn the hot dog tray over my head. I was happy to comply, because it meant I wouldn’t have any more hot dogs to sell and I could watch the rest of the matches without working. My boss didn’t see it that way. He fired me. It didn’t matter to me: I wanted more of the kind of crowd reaction I experienced when I was showered with hot dogs, mustard, and ketchup.

  I was crazy for wrestling. It took over an hour to walk to the Forum, and it was the same to get back after the show. I even went in the winter. During a snowstorm, I would stop on Saint Laurent Street on my way home, la main as we called it, where everything was happening back in those days. There was this newspaper stand on Saint Laurent and when it was cold like that, the man stayed inside the stand and left an old cigar box outside for people to drop their five cents in for a paper. I would fake putting some money in and take out twenty-five cents “in change.” Then I used that quarter to buy two hot dogs, French fries, and a Coke and warm myself in the restaurant, so I could get home without losing a significant part of my anatomy to frostbite. That happened quite often, and I would like to thank that man for keeping me strong and warm by allowing me, without his knowledge, to eat before finishing my long walk home in the snow.

  If I could get to a show early, I would wait where stars like Yvon Robert and Buddy Rogers parked their cars and offer to help bring their stuff inside — in an attempt to get in to the Forum for free.

  “Can I carry suitcase?” I would ask in my limited English.

  Killer Kowalski gave me his bag once, and I got in with him. That didn’t happen too often, mind you, but I felt like I was on top of the world that night.

  When I started to wrestle, I patterned my whole look after him — with my purple trunks and boots. I wanted a picture of me coming off the top rope with the big knee just like Kowalski, the move with which, in 1956 at the Forum, he tore off Yukon Eric’s ear. When I finally got that picture, all I wanted was to show it to Kowalski and have him sign it. Many times, I tried to get close to him and get it autographed without success. I was always sniffing around trying to get as close as possible to the dressing room, so I could show him my precious picture. Finally one day, I had my chance. I was about to get kicked out of the dressing room when Kowalski showed up at the door.

  “What do you want, kid?”

  I held up the picture and was so proud to ask him in my best English ever, “You autograph, please?”

  If he had handed me back a gold bar, I would not have been happier. I still have the autographed photo today, and it’s one of the few pieces of wrestling memorabilia that has value to me. I get emotional thinking about it. Later on, I became good friends with Kowalski, working together in Australia and Japan. I’m proud of that and still find it amazing that I went from a wannabe wrestler to wrestling with one of my idols.

  * * *

  Anyway, at that time I was still in school but, as I explained, I never found anything for me there — there was no drama class or anything like that for me. I got a diploma after seven years of grade school and that was it. I was already dreaming about wrestling. I had already started to train around age fourteen at Les Loisirs Saint Jean Baptiste, going there once or twice a week. I don’t remember who trained me, some old-timer who taught me the basics, but I remember loving it right away. Everything came easily to me. The guy showed me something and I could do it almost right away. Another sign that I had found my calling.

  I found out that one of my school classmates was the son of the wrestling promoter Sylvio Samson. He didn’t have a television show, but he drew some nice crowds, especially during the summer. Let me tell you, it didn’t take me long to become friends with his son. I started to also train with some old-timers at Le Palais des Sports where Samson held his matches. They stretched me more than they really taught me. They had me i
n pain all the time. I learned how to fall and how to run the ropes — they’d at least shown me that.

  But over at Loisirs, I hooked up with three other trainees and we were good together. I had my first match in 1958. Then one night, I was wrestling with Fred Sauvé who was the biggest wrestler at Loisirs. Someone had left a Coke bottle ringside, so when I took a bump outside, on a whim I grabbed it and I broke it on the ring post. I proceeded to go back in the ring with the broken bottle. Everyone jumped on me including the priest, who was in charge of everything because Loisirs was part of his parish. I was so believable they were sure I was going to use it against my opponent. People who had paid twenty-five cents to see the show were getting a good one. I got kicked out of Les Loisirs for that move. Imagine: my career was nearly over before it even started.

  Thank God I had secretly been training at Le Palais des Sports with Cyclone Samson, the promoter’s son. He didn’t want his dad to find out he was wrestling, because his dad didn’t want him to enter the business. But I was meeting Sylvio Samson, a very stern and serious man, on a very regular basis. One day I finally decided to admit to him that we had been training.

  “What? You’re not going to drag my son into the wrestling business, you little bastard!”

  And so I ended up back at the Loisirs. Pat Girard had begun working there shortly after I was kicked out, and he knew I could already wrestle. He was a big star in Europe — he even wrestled in front of the Queen of England as Pat Curry — and became a well-known trainer for most of the wrestlers who came out of Montréal until the Loisirs shut down in 1990. It’s a funny thing: people know I learned wrestling at the Loisirs, so everyone assumes Pat Girard trained me. But I started at Les Loisirs before Pat Girard started wrestling there. By the time I went back, I had already wrestled my first match, so I can’t really call him my teacher, although I did wrestle at the Loisirs for him.