The Montreal Victoire Set the Standard: A Walter Cup Celebration That Will Inspire A Generation

I was 16 the last time I attended a championship parade for a sports team in the streets of Montreal.

What I experienced on Saturday afternoon, as roughly 20,000 people gathered at Quartier des spectacles to celebrate the Montreal Victoire and their Walter Cup championship, took me back 33 years. Around this same time in 1993, I was standing on Sherbrooke Street celebrating the Montreal Canadiens’ 24th Stanley Cup.

There weren’t as many people on Saturday. But when you find yourself in the middle of a crowd, whether it was at Quartier des spectacles this weekend or on Sherbrooke Street near Parc La Fontaine when I was 16, the difference between 20,000 and 100,000 people becomes almost abstract. All you see are people as far as the eye can see.

That’s when the sense of awe sets in. You stop counting and simply let yourself be carried away by the moment.

And believe me, I felt the same chills, the same emotions, and I’ll cherish this memory just as I still cherish the one from 33 years ago.

The other difference is that instead of celebrating Patrick, Vincent and Éric, fans were celebrating Marie-Philip, Ann-Renée and Catherine.

In fact, after the festivities, Marie-Philip Poulin pointed out that experiencing that kind of celebration had long been a dream shared by women’s hockey players, something that seemed reserved for Stanley Cup champions. The kind of celebration you only saw on television.

And that is exactly what we got.

A real parade, complete with a double-decker bus and a convertible. A giant screen set up at the main site. Sunshine overhead, as if the hockey gods had decided to make the 85 percent chance of rain disappear overnight.

And most importantly, people. Lots of people. More than even the most optimistic observers would have dared imagine.

I’m telling you: a perfect 10 out of 10, fifty years after Nadia Comaneci.

One of the most memorable moments of the day was seeing the emotion on the faces of players such as Ann-Renée Desbiens. The goaltender admitted she had tears in her eyes when the bus turned onto Sainte-Catherine Street and she saw the crowd.

As she later told the fans on stage, she never imagined she would one day fill Bell Centre, let alone Quartier des spectacles

“If I had experienced something like this when I was young, I would have dreamed of becoming a professional hockey player!”

I heard those words at Complexe Desjardins about an hour after the parade ended, from a Victoire supporter who had just come from the celebration.

And they stuck with me.

Because it’s true that women in my generation, in Montreal, and those who came after it, never had the opportunity to witness female athletes being celebrated with this kind of enthusiasm.

This celebration was on par with what we saw for the Las Vegas Aces in the WNBA last year. But it was unlike anything women’s hockey had experienced before.

Montreal won the Clarkson Cup four times. The last time, in 2017, the Montreal Canadiennes featured a star-studded roster that included Marie-Philip Poulin, Caroline Ouellette, Kim Deschênes, Ann-Sophie Bettez, Noémie Marin, Laurianne Rougeau, Cathy Chartrand, Julie Chu and Charline Labonté.

The celebration?

A small press conference after a Canadiens practice, attended by a handful of reporters in the media room at the team’s practice facility in Brossard.

Everyone I spoke to who played a role in this success story—Marie-Philip Poulin, Laura Stacey, Ann-Renée Desbiens, Kori Cheverie, Danièle Sauvageau and Montreal Mayor Soraya Martinez Ferrada—agreed on one thing: this celebration will inspire the young girls who watched it on television, online or in person.

“Honestly, I hope every single one of them wants to wear a Victorie jersey one day!” said Laura Stacey.

And judging by the reaction of some young fans a few minutes later, that wish was already coming true.

When the players stepped off the stage, I saw and heard teenage girls screaming to get Nicole Gosling’s attention in hopes of getting an autograph. When the defender finally made her way over to them, the emotion was impossible to miss.

It reminded me how happy I was to attend the 1993 parade. And that is precisely why celebrations like this matter: they create memories that last a lifetime.

“This has to become the baseline standard!”

Ann-Renée Desbiens was absolutely right.

I criticized the short route between Bleury and Clark streets, but my goal was to make the PWHL understand that Montreal was ready to celebrate this championship in a big way. These players deserve the same treatment that championship men’s teams have received in the past, whether it was the Canadiens or the Alouettes.

The league needs to understand that what it saw in Minnesota is not the norm. Montreal proved on Saturday that a women’s hockey team can generate the kind of turnout and excitement usually reserved for the city’s biggest sports celebrations.

Montreal won’t win the championship every year, of course. But images from this celebration were carried by major media outlets across North America.

So, who knows? Maybe they will inspire fans in other cities to celebrate their own champions with the same enthusiasm when their turn comes.

Next time, I want to see a parade stretching across 10 or 15 city blocks. I want to see 25,000, 30,000, maybe even 40,000 people filling downtown Montreal to celebrate their heroes.

If Saturday taught us anything, it’s that we shouldn’t be afraid to think big.

As Ann-Renée Desbiens said after the celebrations:

“Keep dreaming bigger.”