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''The Hockey Sweater'' (''Le chandail de hockey'' in the original French) is a short story by Canadian author Roch Carrier and translated to English by Sheila Fischman. It was originally published in 1979 under the title "''フランス語:Une abominable feuille d'érable sur la glace''" ("An abominable maple leaf on the ice"). It was adapted into an animated short called ''The Sweater'' (''Le Chandail'') by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) in 1980 and illustrated by Sheldon Cohen. The story is based on a real experience Carrier had as a child in Sainte-Justine, Quebec in 1946 as a fan of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team and its star player, Maurice Richard. Carrier and his friends all wear Canadiens' sweaters with Richard's number 9 on the back. When his mother orders a new sweater after the old one has worn out, he is mistakenly sent a sweater of Montreal's bitter rival, the Toronto Maple Leafs, instead. Carrier faces the persecution of his peers and his coach prevents him from playing. ''The Hockey Sweater'' is Carrier's most famous work and is considered an iconic piece of Canadian literature. The story has sold over 300,000 copies and has been republished in numerous anthologies. It exemplifies the nation's passion for hockey, and while it is often considered an allegory of the relationship and tensions that exist between francophones and anglophones, the story is popular throughout the entire nation. A line from the story appears on Canadian five-dollar bills printed between 2001 and 2013. ==Background== In the aftermath of Quebec's Quiet Revolution, tensions between francophones within the province and anglophones escalated as a provincial movement, led by the governing Parti Québécois, to separate from Canada reached its peak in the late 1970s. Seeking to explain Quebec's independence movement, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC) Toronto affiliate asked Roch Carrier, whose debut novel ''La Guerre, Yes Sir'' had been popular among both French and English Canadians, to explain "what does Quebec want?" Carrier spent several weeks trying to answer the question, ultimately producing what he described as a "flat essay" that was "dull as an editorial in a newspaper". Three days before his deadline, Carrier informed the CBC that he would not be able to complete the project. He was told that the network had already booked studio time for him and had been promoting his appearance. As he remained unwilling to present his essay, Carrier was asked to write about anything he wanted to fill the time.〔 Considering what to write, Carrier thought of his own childhood. He stated in an interview that he began thinking of "when was it that I felt I was really myself? And I remember it was when I put on my skates and my Eaton catalogues on my legs, and I stood up, and I was taller than my mom, and I had a stick in my hands, so I was stronger than my brother, and I felt that I was little me. So I started to write about that and it turned into the Hockey Sweater story."〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Hockey Sweater」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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