The NHL’s Jacques Demers was able to win a Stanley Cup but he now admits there has been one skill he was never able to master: how to read.
The former Montreal Canadiens coach says in a new biography by sports writer Mario LeClerc that while he can write his name and a few other words, he is functionally illiterate, unable to read most sentences.
Now 61, Demers says he first admitted his problem to his wife in 1984, when she complained about always being his secretary.
“And I said listen, here it is, here’s the story,” he remembers. “And first thing I said was well, ‘is she going to stay with me?’ You know, you don’t know. But obviously it worked out.”
Demers managed to keep his illiteracy a secret from just about everyone else as he built his career in the NHL, fearing that it would damage his career.
“There’s no way that the National Hockey League would have given me a chance,” Demers says. “You’re not going to hire someone and say ‘He’s illiterate and he’s going to be a good coach.’ It just doesn’t work that way.”
But some admit they had an inkling. CTV Montreal sportscaster Brian Wilde worked with Demers on a show about the Habs and remembers how Demers struggled when asked to write a script.
“Jacques fought through it. He tried his best to write it,” Wilde recalls. “At one point, he said, ‘Well, I have to give up on the writing. I can’t do the writing.’ And we said, ‘Well let’s see what you’ve done so far.’ And he said, “Well, I didn’t bring it with me’.”
Demers told CTV’s Canada AM that he found ways of covering up his secret.
“I can’t write a letter to anybody, but if I had to go in a banquet or different place to sign autographs, I would always write a few words: ‘Best wishes, Jacques Demers’, ‘To my friend’ — those are words that I learned by heart. So I kept it to very minimal words.
“But I’ve extended a little bit some of my words that I could write now.”
In the new biography, Demers says he was raised by an abusive, alcoholic father in a poor area of Montreal. He believes that watching his father repeatedly beat his mother impaired his ability to learn to read and write.
“I think that’s how I became handicapped, because of my high anxiety,” he says.
Literacy advocate Judy Brandeis says most literacy problems stem from learning disabilities that are never diagnosed. She says Demers’ admission is important.
“I think it’s very unfortunate for him that he has the problem. But it’s very interesting that it would take a sport figure to bring the issue to the forefront, because we’ve been trying to do that for years,” she says.
Demers says he hopes that by bringing the issue out and coming out from the shame, he’ll help others like him.
“They say there’s a million people in the province of Quebec that can’t write or read. Man, if I could just help 10 people…”