Louis XVI Prepares for His Execution

 

La petite Aurore et Guy Damien Lafleur

La petite Aurore, quelle horreur, you lived twelve months on oatmeal and Planters peanuts and doll hair, so I'd imagine, being imaginative, and they whipped you with a belt and burned your hands and cheeks on the stove, and all the good Catholic boys and girls of Dear Québec were traumatized forever because they made a movie about it and put it on TV, and of course there were only two or three channels back then, and this poor tortured girl became the best ever emblem of Québec's mongrel Catholicism and all the little French Canadian kids knew it plain as day, even as the so-called adults prevaricate, just as the plains of Abraham stand dismal and grey...je me souviens...

Guy Damien Lafleur, born in Thurso, Québec the year after my parents were born, but not in Québec, remains an all-time leading scorer for the Montreal Canadiens hockey franchise, his numbers right up there with those of Maurice “Rocket” Richard, the only other player who competes with him for status as most popular among true traditionalist Canadiens fans. At fifteen years of age and a paltry one-hundred-thirty-five pounds, Lafleur joined the Québec Jr. Aces and managed to somehow score a whopping one-hundred-sixty-one goals in one hundred games.