Stanley Cup winning coach reveals he is illiterate

Jacques Demers, now retired after achieving great success as a coach in the National Hockey League, has just revealed that he is illiterate. He managed to hide the fact from his colleagues and even from his children until now.

Demers coached more than 1,000 games in the NHL; he won the Jack Adams Award as NHL coach of the year twice; and he capped off his career by guiding the Montreal Canadiens to a Stanley Cup victory in 1993.

The story is very moving. Demers' father, who was an alcoholic, physically abused him. CanWest News Services quotes Demers:

"My young life was so negative, I developed a positive side to hide everything from people. By not telling people what my Dad was doing to my mom and me, I developed a positive side to hide the ugly truth.

"It was my way of surviving, but I developed anxiety," said Demers, who eventually sought professional help to deal with his personal torment.

"Going to a doctor two years ago helped me understand that when your father says, 'You're a no-good SOB,' you don't go to sleep at night and you can't function or learn at school."

In the 1960s, Demers assumed responsibility for three younger siblings when his parents died a few years apart. He was only sixteen when his Mom died.

A new biography reveals Demers' secret for the first time:

In Jacques Demers:  Toutes En Lettres, a biography written by Mario Leclerc of Le Journal de Montreal and released yesterday, the 61-year-old former Canadiens coach divulges that he never learned to adequately read or write, and shrewdly masked his embarrassing deficiency by getting others to do his paperwork. …

"Everywhere I went, in Detroit or St. Louis, the trainers or someone would always fill out the lineup without knowing my secret," Demers said yesterday.

"I would always tell them, 'You're the best, you know who's playing, you know the sweater numbers in the room.' Eddy [Palchak, the Canadiens trainer] did it for me every single game here and then I'd have an assistant coach look it over.

"No one ever knew my secret but my wife Debbie. In 1984, we were sitting in our kitchen in St. Louis and I asked her to pay some bills. She finally said, 'Look, I'm not your damn secretary.' So I had to tell her and we both kept it a very dark secret.

Even then, Demers continued to hide his illiteracy from his children. According to the Globe and Mail, he told the eldest of his four children only on Tuesday. As of yesterday afternoon, he still had not told the others, who live in the USA.

Demers feared exposure throughout his coaching career and even later, when he became a television commentator for a Francophone TV station:

"Nobody can ever hurt me again. Nobody can fire me now," he said in an interview yesterday.

"But for all those years, I always had at the back of my mind that I could be fired, I could be embarrassed, I could be humiliated.

"I coached five teams, and there's no way the National Hockey League would have given me a chance.

"There's no way they were going to hire someone who says he's an illiterate." …

Former Canadiens star Serge Savard said he only found out the truth about Mr. Demers at the end of their time together with the Montreal Canadiens, in the 1990s.

"He fooled everyone," Mr. Savard said. "He always had notes with him and he looked like he was writing something."

Demers says he learned his survival skills from his mother, who also endured bloodied beatings at the hand of her husband.

When his Canadiens won the Stanley Cup, Demers thought of his Mom. "She was my hero and would have been very proud of me."

Demers plans to donate 60 cents from each sale of the book to Le Chainon, a Montreal shelter for battered women.