In 1917, the Montreal Canadiens became one of the four founding teams of the National Hockey League. Since then, the team has enjoyed countless breathtaking triumphs. Not only have they won more Stanley Cup Championships than any other team in the NHL, they have also boasted some of the best players the league has ever seen. Through it all, they have maintained a fan following that is unparalleled in its fierce devotion and pride. This is the story of the Montreal Canadiens -- the most sucessful sports franchise in North America.
Jim Barber managed to find time to write this book while working as the Sports and Arts Editor for The Barrie Advance, and as the Editor for the Collingwood-Wasaga Beach Connection, two community newspapers in Central Ontario. Jim is a recipient of the Ontario Community Newspaper Association Award for Sportswriting and a Canadian Community Newspaper Award for editorial writing. Educated at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, and Toronto's Centennial College, he has had a passion (obsession?) for hockey and hockey history most of his adult life. The books of Scott Young and Brian McFarlane inspired him as a youth, as do the works of Andrew Podnieks, Douglas Hunter, and Bruce Dowbiggin today. A member of the Society for International Hockey Research, Jim lives in a very old house, in a very small village called Nottawa, a few kilometers from the shores of Georgian Bay, near Collingwood, Ontario.