Mad Dog: The Maurice Vachon Story - Softcover

Hebert, Bertrand; Laprade, Pat

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1770413324 ISBN 13: 9781770413320

Verlag: ECW Press,Canada, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

The true story of one of pro wrestling’s most charismatic, feared, and beloved icons

Who was Maurice the man, and who was Mad Dog the character? Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon was a gold medalist, a pro-wrestling legend, and a pop culture icon — but he was also a son, husband, and father. Mad Dog explores Vachon’s career and personal struggles with painstakingly detailed historical research and through both Maurice’s own recollections and those of the people who knew him best.

As a young man, Maurice could have chosen a dark criminal path, but then wrestling and family changed him. Chronicling his slow but steady rise to prominence across America and internationally in some of pro wrestling’s most important territories, this in-depth biography shows how Vachon’s life came to be defined by the words of Mark Twain: “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” Fiercely proud, motivated, and supremely talented, Vachon’s story is also the amazing tale of how a lifelong make-believe heel became a real-life hero outside of the ring.

With a foreword by his brother, Paul Vachon, and an afterword by his widow, Kathie Vachon.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Bertrand Hébert co-wrote Pat Patterson’s autobiography, Accepted. He lives in Beauharnois, Quebec. He also co-wrote Wrestling Observer Newsletter’s 2013 book of the year, Mad Dogs, Midgets and Screw Jobs with Pat Laprade. Laprade is the co-author of Sisterhood of the Squared Circle, created the Quebec wrestling Hall of Fame, and lives in Montreal. George Tombs is a biographer and literary translator based in Montreal.

Bertrand Hébert co-wrote Pat Patterson’s autobiography, Accepted. He lives in Beauharnois, Quebec. He also co-wrote Wrestling Observer Newsletter’s 2013 book of the year, Mad Dogs, Midgets and Screw Jobs with Pat Laprade. Laprade is the co-author of Sisterhood of the Squared Circle, created the Quebec wrestling Hall of Fame, and lives in Montreal. George Tombs is a biographer and literary translator based in Montreal.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

The true story of one of pro wrestling's most charismatic, feared, and beloved icons

Who was Maurice the man, and who was Mad Dog the character? Maurice "Mad Dog" Vachon was a gold medalist, a pro-wrestling legend, and a pop culture icon -- but he was also a son, husband, and father. Mad Dog explores Vachon's career and personal struggles with painstakingly detailed historical research and through both Maurice's own recollections and those of the people who knew him best.

As a young man, Maurice could have chosen a dark criminal path, but then wrestling and family changed him. Chronicling his slow but steady rise to prominence across America and internationally in some of pro wrestling's most important territories, this in-depth biography shows how Vachon's life came to be defined by the words of Mark Twain: "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." Fiercely proud, motivated, and supremely talented, Vachon's story is also the amazing tale of how a lifelong make-believe heel became a real-life hero outside of the ring.

With a foreword by his brother, Paul Vachon, and an afterword by his widow, Kathie Vachon.

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CHAPTER 1: A THUG IN THE MAKING

The epic story of Maurice Vachon starts in 1929 in Ville-Émard, a working-class neighborhood in Montreal. Ville-Émard is located next to the city boroughs of Verdun and LaSalle, between the Lachine Canal and the Aqueduc Canal. It was annexed to the City of Montreal in 1910 and is now part of the South-West borough. Other well-known personalities come from there, such as ice hockey legend Mario Lemieux, and many factories were built there in the early twentieth century, giving the neighborhood a working-class character.

Maurice’s father, Ferdinand Vachon, was born on March 7, 1905, in St. Raphael, a small Ontario village that no longer exists, a few dozen miles north of Cornwall and west of Valleyfield, Quebec. When Ferdinand and his twin brother, William, were ten years old, the family moved to Ville-Émard. Maurice’s mother, Marguerite Picard, was born on September 13, 1905, in the small Ontario village of Huntsville. The village has about two thousand inhabitants and is located some three hundred miles west of Ottawa and sixty miles south of North Bay. Her family moved to Montreal when she was just two months old, and she was already living in Ville-Émard by the time her future husband moved there. These two young Franco-Ontarians had connecting backyards, so they saw each other on a regular basis while growing up. They got married on October 29, 1927. Between 1928 and 1951, Ferdinand and Marguerite, devout Catholics, had a total of twelve children and adopted a thirteenth.

Maurice Régis Vachon was born on September 1, 1929, a little over a month before the stock market crash heralding the beginning of the Great Depression, and ten years to the day before the start of World War II. He was baptized at Notre-Dame-du-Perpétuel-Secours Church, a parish with many English Catholic families, and was named Maurice for his godfather, Maurice Picard (his mother’s brother), and Régis for his paternal grandfather, who had died nearly two decades beforehand.

The firstborn in the family was Marcel. Coming next was Maurice, born in the first family home on Briand Street. By the time their third baby, Guy, was born in 1930, the family had moved to 6873 Jogues Street, where Maurice would grow up. This second-story apartment wasn’t exactly a penthouse: it was the upper half of a duplex, with a room for the boys and a double room for the girls and the parents. Considering the Vachons raised twelve children here (their last child, Diane, was not born on Jogues Street), the apartment must have felt cramped. But many other families in working-class areas of the big city had similar living quarters. The rent varied from $14 to $25 a month, not much in today’s world, but salaries were not what they are today.

Ferdinand Vachon, who was nicknamed Fred, worked as a dock worker at the Port of Montreal, then as a police sergeant, earning $75 every two weeks. During the Depression, this was good pay, although with many mouths to feed it wasn’t a fortune. The Vachon children made their own toys, and, as in all large families, the youngest of them wore hand-me-downs from their older siblings. Marguerite shopped for food at the grocery store, Blain, on credit, not so much because she had to but because it was convenient. The children went to a store in downtown Montreal where for just forty cents they could buy bread, cakes, and donuts fresh from the day before. Fred had a job that brought certain advantages. For example, when he recovered a truck full of stolen clothes, the store owner offered him a set of free clothes for all his children. Nowadays, such practices would be considered unethical, but during the Depression, any donation was welcome. All in all, every penny counted in the Vachon household, but the children never wanted for anything.

So for young Maurice, money was not a concern. In fact, he was busy getting into mischief, fighting with English kids, and hating school. The Vachon children all went to Saint-Jean-de-Matha elementary school nearby. This was not the right kind of place for Maurice, who later described himself as a shy child who had a hard time speaking and expressing his feelings.

Making matters worse, he was left-handed. This is considered normal today, but at the time, being left-handed was often seen as a handicap or an illness. Schoolteachers — often Catholic priests and nuns — forced several generations of youngsters to write with their right hands. And using the word “force” is not an overstatement: left-handed children had their knuckles rapped with a wooden ruler until they learned to stop writing with their cursed left hand. So, like many other left-handers, Maurice wrote with his right hand and did everything else with his left hand.

School discipline was harsh, and that didn’t exactly make him feel like attending on a regular basis. “I was scared when I went back to school,” Maurice recalled in the 1980s. “I wanted to die. I would go see the principal and get the strap. I felt like I was in prison. I was someone with lots of energy to burn off.”

And Maurice burned off a lot of energy.

Going to class was agonizing, but leaving at the end of the day was a different story. His day really got going once the final bell rang at 4:00 p.m. — that’s when the fights started. Sometimes they were triggered when classmates called him “Vachon le cochon” (“Vachon the pig”). Other times classmates threw out a challenge: “Why do you want to fight me? Why not take on Maurice instead? You’ll see it isn’t easy.” He usually wore a white shirt, frequently spattered with some other kid’s blood, and some of his own too.

Maurice told the story many times of how he would come home from school with blood on his shirt. “My father would ask if I had been fighting. I would answer yes. Then he would ask if I had won. I would answer yes. Then he would say, ‘OK, that’s fine then.’”

Fred Vachon was a loving father, but he was also a man of his generation. Without realizing it at the time, he embodied something dark that Maurice would later integrate into his own personality: Fred had a bad relationship with violence. With hindsight, the schoolyard fistfights of children can be downplayed, but being so close to violence became probably the most long-lasting aspect of Maurice’s life, apart from wrestling.

Once Fred Vachon the policeman had finished interrogating Maurice about his school day, the boy would head outside looking for mischief, and that’s when the real trouble would start.

The “Vachon Gang” became well-known in the neighborhood, and for good reason: they broke windows, they got into misadventures, they fought with English kids. There was no stopping them.

The gang consisted of Maurice, his brothers Marcel and Guy, and some of their buddies, the Fichaud and Bélec brothers. Marcel was born in July 1928 and Guy in December 1930: they were only two and a half years apart. Maurice was clearly the boss — he was the one developing new schemes. He was respected by the others as much as by his own brothers. “You couldn’t fight against Maurice for very long,” recalls Guy.

At the end of Jogues Street were “Crazy Field” — so named because it was close to the Douglas Psychiatric Hospital in Verdun — and a forest that would later become Angrignon Park. At the time, Ville-Émard was working-class but it still had a very rural character, as shown by the wooden boardwalks along the streets, from before the era of concrete sidewalks. For the youngsters, the forest was their secret realm. It was also the place where Maurice and his gang fought with...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: ECW Press,Canada
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1770413324
• ISBN 13: 9781770413320
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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