Marcel Aubut has aged, but he has retained the enthusiasm of his years spent at the head of Fleurdelisés. The 77-year-old man says he is feeling perfect happiness, even if his eyes darken when he returns to the circumstances of the “incredible hole” caused by the departure of the Nordiques in 1995.
“I don’t remember being unhappy in my life,” continues the man who has long been called the kid of the Grande Allée. Except when the club is gone. It took me a good two years before I could grieve. It was my whole life.”
It still hurts
Marcel Aubut answers questions from Mikaël Lalancette in a long interview. (Frédéric Matte, The Sun)
To think that the famous lawyer from the capital had dared to assert, when purchasing the club in 1988, that the Nordiques would be in Quebec “forever”, a declaration which pains him today.
Unfortunately for him, the politicians of his time, the Prime Minister of Quebec, Jacques Parizeau, and the mayor of the city, Jean-Paul L’Allier, were not keen on the idea of financing the construction of the new amphitheater that he had been demanding since 1989.
From their first exchanges after the Parti Québécois election in September 1994, Parizeau reminded him of the fact that he had not been able to rally the first citizen of his city to his cause, not to mention the unfavorable opinion polls. to the Blues.
The equivalent, still believes the ex-president of the Quebec club, of playing with a “broken arm”.
Criticism of L’Allier
The mayor of Quebec, Jean-Paul L’Allier, and his general director, Denis de Belleval. (Archives City of Quebec, Photo Le Soleil, Gilles Lafond. Rights reserved City of Quebec.)
At city hall, Mayor Jean-Paul L’Allier preferred “the arts” to hockey millionaires, says the Laval University graduate, taking care not to focus too much on the man who disappeared in 2016.
“I didn’t have the actors with the conviction it took to succeed. We got along very well though. [L’Allier] and me. On just about everything except that. In the crucial Nordic issue, he told me from the start that he would not board.
Marcel Aubut continues to believe that if L’Allier had exercised leadership, the other mayors of the Quebec Urban Community would have followed, an analysis which diverges from the testimonies reported in our retrospective published Tuesday.
An unforgettable lesson
Former president of the Nordiques, Marcel Aubut, and Pierre Lacroix in 1994. (Archives The Sun)
However, the Prime Minister listened attentively when the all-powerful president of the Nordiques repeated to him the lesson that Billy MacMillan had taught him in the 1980s.
The manager of the New Jersey Devils had pointed out to him that a professional sports team was a “jewel” that was best cherished, because you never know if you can get it back when you let it go. “When I said that to Parizeau, he no longer spoke,” remembers the ex-businessman.
The inability to adopt a salary cap during the lockout settlement in January 1995 signaled the end of recreation in Quebec.
People weren’t listening anymore
Joe Sakic with Marcel Aubut in 1994. (Le Soleil Photo Library, Jean-Marie Villeneuve/Le Soleil Photo Library, Jean-Marie Villeneuve)
Convinced that the financial health of the club was more in danger than ever, the founder of the Aubut-Chabot firm in 1983 tried to turn things around, but in vain. “People were resigned, I had been crying wolf for six years. No one really wanted to help us.”
There were outstretched hands, like that of the Deputy Prime Minister, Bernard Landry, who, during a meeting in March 1995, authorized him to repeat to the media that he was in favor of a special lottery to save the Fleurdelisés .
The next day’s headline was so unpopular that the council of ministers made him “shut the fuck up” afterwards. “Forty-eight hours later, we no longer found him,” said Aubut.
A dream solidarity
Even if he wanted nothing to do with selling, the general partner of the company that owns the club, made up of Marcel Dutil, Metro-Richelieu (Bernard Bélair), the Mutual of Civil Servants (Jacques Labrecque), the paper maker Daishowa (André Sarasin) and of the FTQ Solidarity Fund (Claude Blanchet), believes that his colleagues offered him “dream” solidarity.
Before playing his last card at the government tables, Marcel Aubut worked to find a “credible buyer” by meeting, in the greatest secrecy, 14 potential owners a few months before the fateful moment.
Denver the most serious
Jean-Paul L’Allier and Marcel Aubut during the signing of the lease for the Colisée in 1991. Four years later, the Blues left Quebec. (Archives The Sun)
The former tenor of the Blues talks about cities, without naming the people involved, for fear of breaking confidentiality agreements. Oklahoma City, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Atlanta, Phoenix and Denver are in the mix, although some were not very serious.
Gary Bettman approved of Denver’s choice, although Aubut insists the young National League commissioner wanted to stay rooted in America’s only French-speaking capital.
“He trusted me,” reiterates this key player in Bettman’s arrival as NHL director. He respected all the efforts we made. If we had been able to get through it, if we had had the slightest opening from the Quebec government, it would have supported me.
-One “wall” too many
The government negotiator, André Joli-Coeur, visited our offices last December. (Frédéric Matte/Le Soleil)
The arrival of a negotiator, lawyer André Joli-Coeur, in mid-April 1995, rebuffed Marcel Aubut, convinced that the objective of this new “wall” between the Nordics and the government was to “gain some time”.
“I was angry with them for imposing this on us at such a critical stage. It really wasn’t anything against André, it just gave the impression that the government wanted to hide and avoid direct damage. It was the best sign they could give to tell us to screech our camp.”
Quebec’s only offer was limited to a proposal to buy back the shares of non-institutional members — the shares of Marcel Aubut and Marcel Dutil — and to give itself two years to judge the need to build a new amphitheater.
Aubut laughs when talking about the rejection that followed. “They put everything in place so that we would say no. Their argument was to say that they would not do business with individuals, but ours was that the National League did not want to do business with governments.
“Bettman really forbade me to do that after what happened in Winnipeg!”
— Marcel Aubut on the government’s financial involvement
Sale, the only way out
A demonstration organized against the sale of the Nordiques in May 1995. (Photo Archives City of Quebec, Fonds Le Soleil, (Gilles Fréchette). Rights reserved City of Quebec.)
With no way out, stuck in a “cul de sac”, the president of the technological park of metropolitan Quebec had no other choice than to resolve to sell the club that he had managed to bring into the National League in 1979 .
This period is still “hell” in the memories of the native of Saint-Hubert-de-Rivière-du-Loup. The latter remembers every detail of the hours spent sacrificing his beloved team on the altar of Comsat, Maryland, a deadline he would have liked to postpone for a year.
On May 25, 1995, the leader of the Nordiques announced that the team was being sold for US$75 million. The father of three daughters shed all the tears in his body as he went to “close the books” on this significant episode in his life.
The press conference for the sale of the Nordiques in 1995. (Photo Archives Ville de Québec, Photo Le Soleil, Jocelyn Bernier. Rights reserved Ville de Québec.)
The renowned lawyer was so inconsolable that he thought, for a few moments, that it would be impossible for him to get to the Loews Le Concorde. “Let’s say we took detours,” he sums up, comparing the exercise to a funeral.
Nearly 30 years later, Marcel Aubut sighs when he sees himself in photos from the time, inflated with helium, weighing more than 100 pounds more than his current weight.
A “zombie” on the edge of the abyss, blood pressure “in the ceiling Léon”.
“It took a giant to take all that. I no longer knew where the limit was, even though we all knew there was one. If I had been a smoker or had taken more alcohol, I would not have made it through. Never.”
The president and co-owner of the Nordiques, Marcel Aubut, during the announcement of the sale of the Nordiques. He was overworked, on the edge of the abyss. (Photo Archives City of Quebec, Photo Le Soleil, Jean-Marie Villeneuve. Rights reserved City of Quebec.)
Has he made mistakes, does he have regrets? “Mistakes, surely. But I am not able to identify them.
Even if the sale of the Nordiques was a good financial blow, the $15 million — an approximate sum that he refuses to confirm — collected by Marcel Aubut did not “change much” in his life or at his office. lawyers, according to him.
No more than his influence in the city, a professional career which led him to the head of the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) in 2009.
“I was already quite comfortable financially so I didn’t wait until after that to live,” he says. The Nordiques were my life so I didn’t want to lose them. I wanted to lead them for several more years. I dreamed of winning the Stanley Cup.”
Rather, it was the Colorado Avalanche who did it in his place, in 1996, then in 2001. “It was not one club that I sold to them, but two,” he says, making allusion to the multiple talents, Forsberg, Foote, Deadmarsh and the others, shipped to Denver.
All that was missing was Patrick Roy.
“And I know I would never have had him…”
