MONTREAL — Maurice Richard. Saul Bellow. Mordecai Richler. William Shatner. Oscar Peterson. Colleen Dewhurst. Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Leonard Cohen. Mario Lemieux.
Since its founding arsenic a missionary colony 380 years ago, this metropolis has had galore standout figures. But possibly the top modern leader successful Montreal is known for what helium didn’t do. Laurent Duvernay-Tardif didn’t play shot successful 2020.
As we attack football’s Super Bowl, let’s see a communicative of heroics and sacrifice. Duvernay-Tardif would beryllium the archetypal to accidental that the doctors and nurses who were his colleagues — substituting for the violative linemen who different would person been alongside him successful that pandemic-scarred twelvemonth — were the existent heroes. Let’s instrumentality his point, but besides person a look astatine what selflessness and teamwork mean for a antheral who erstwhile had a five-year, $41.26 cardinal declaration and won a Super Bowl ringing with the Kansas City Chiefs, but who decided to unpaid during a pandemic successful a semipermanent attraction installation successful Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, 45 minutes from Montreal.
“I felt a disconnect betwixt what was happening to me, celebrating the Super Bowl, and what was happening successful the world,” Duvernay-Tardif said successful an interview. “I felt I had to bash something. I felt I had to help. Like thousands, I raised my hand.”
He didn’t precisely slice into the assemblage astatine his caller workplace: The caller feline striding done the 2nd level of the CHSLD Gertrude-Lafrance stood 6-foot-5. He weighed 321 pounds. Plus: He has a aesculapian degree, lone the 4th subordinate successful NFL past to person 1 and the lone modern subordinate for whom the connection “practice” has peculiar meaning.
He was backmost connected the shot tract past fall, having traded his achromatic overgarment for a New York Jets uniform, but his acquisition with semipermanent patients changed, oregon possibly reaffirmed, his outlook. “The much clip I spent astatine the semipermanent attraction home,” helium wrote successful his caller book, “Red Zone: From the Offensive Line to the Front Lines of the Pandemic,” “the much I realized however much, during my years of aesculapian school, I’d drifted distant from the main crushed I wanted to beryllium a doc successful the archetypal place: to assistance people.”
Though Chiefs and Jets fans envision him successful the locker room, helium started his aesculapian residency past July successful the introspection rooms of the Herzl Family Practice Centre successful Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital. “He did everything — clinic, semipermanent care, urgent care,” said Mark Karanofsky, manager of the center. “I wouldn’t privation to enactment up against him connected a shot field, but successful a country with a patient, helium is kind, helium listens, and helium knows his stuff.”
The travel from his family’s bakery successful Mont-Saint-Hilaire successful southeastern Quebec to McGill Medical School to the NFL was circuitous — and complicated.
Matthieu Quiviger, a first-round Canadian Football League draftee who was McGill’s violative enactment coach, remembers their archetypal meeting. “For astir 5 minutes, I thought I got stuck with him,” said Quiviger, 1 of lone 4 Canadians successful the 1995 East-West Shrine Bowl. “After 1 practice, it was wide helium was amended than I was aft 5 years of play. I told him the CFL wasn’t a extremity for him, the NFL was.”
Not truthful fast. The young antheral who scooted astir McGill’s field connected a skateboard had a aesculapian vocation successful mind.
“You don’t each time get idiosyncratic astatine McGill who’s a aesculapian pupil and is that skilled,” Sonny Wolfe, McGill’s caput manager astatine the time, told me. “He was a small spot apprehensive due to the fact that his world advisers told him that playing shot wouldn’t heighten his aesculapian career.” For a while, helium was chiefly a student, practicing lone erstwhile a week. Finally, helium told his manager and his professors helium could grip some aesculapian acquisition and football.
Later, helium informed Robert Primavesi, astatine the clip the subordinate dean of undergraduate aesculapian acquisition astatine McGill, that some the CFL and NFL were funny successful him. He asked for a fewer weeks disconnected from his studies to be a pre-draft footwear campy and to beryllium evaluated by scouts.
“The question was however to acceptable NFL shot into the med-school schedule,” Primavesi recalled. “We figured retired a mode for him to instrumentality the shot play disconnected from schoolhouse and instrumentality successful January. We wondered whether helium could excel astatine both. But helium came backmost to med schoolhouse with caller maturity.”
A akin question presented itself successful Kansas City erstwhile helium became lone the 10th Canadian to beryllium drafted into the NFL from a Canadian university. But Chiefs manager Andy Reid was unfazed; his parent was 1 of the archetypal pistillate graduates of McGill’s aesculapian school. Reid was each in, and truthful was his starting guard.
And past came the pandemic, and Duvernay-Tardif took himself retired of football, though helium joined virtual Chiefs squad meetings 4 days a week. But what helium saw, and experienced, jolted his perspective.
“I saw sacrifices, teamwork, singular equilibrium betwixt passionateness and privilege,” helium said successful the interview. “Professional athletes are truthful privileged. At immoderate point, you person to recognize determination is much to beingness than conscionable sports. Through your shot vocation you physique a level — and it is important to usage that level to beforehand thing bigger than your sport. For me, it was promoting the thought of helping during 1 of the worst wellness crises.”
Duvernay-Tardif wondered whether his NFL declaration requiring him to debar carnal hazard successful the offseason — a regularisation aimed astatine downhill skiing and riding a motorcycle without a helmet — would constrict his activities. “I didn’t cognize whether what I was proposing to do, moving successful a COVID emergency, was a risky activity,” helium said, earlier adding, “Of people it was.”
His committedness disconnected the tract led Sports Illustrated to sanction him — on with LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers, tennis champion Naomi Osaka, Breanna Stewart of the WNBA, and Duvernay-Tardif’s backmost successful Kansas City, Patrick Mahomes — arsenic the magazine’s 2020 Sportspersons of the Year.
“When you assistance the hopes of your assemblage disconnected the field,” said erstwhile Cincinnati Bengal linebacker Reggie Williams, a 1987 victor of that award, “that compassion fuels your powerfulness connected the field.” It did truthful for Williams, cited for his enactment with precocious schoolhouse students. It surely did truthful for Duvernay-Tardif, who traded the risky enactment of shot for the risky work of lifting the hopes of the sick.
David M. Shribman is the erstwhile enforcement exertion of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
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