from Amazon
Monday, March 14, 2011
Montreal’s Jackie Robinson
I never get tired of reading Jackie Robinson stories:
“Before Jack and I moved to Montreal,” she wrote, “we had been through some very rough treatment in the racially biased South…We were shaken from that experience and didn’t know what to expect in Montreal.” Implicit here was the notion that had their reception north of the border been as difficult as what they endured in Florida, the couple might well have turned their backs – on the city, on baseball, and on Branch Rickey’s desire to change the face of baseball forever.
But instead, as Mrs. Robinson wrote, “Montreal was the perfect place for [Jack] to get his start. We never had a threatening or unpleasant experience there. The people were so welcoming and saw Jack as a player and as a man.”
Sharon Robinson, who was present at the unveiling, reiterated her mother’s sentiments: “My mother and father had such positive memories about their time in Montreal,” she said. And as for the home on avenue de Gaspé, Sharon added that, to her parents, it emerged as “a place they could come home to after being on the road in the south where there was so much hatred expressed …and have the love and respect of a community. This was very important to them.”
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