La Parade Sportive: Quebec’s 1940s Hockey Card-ish Thing

La Parade sportive was a popular 1940’s French-language sports radio program hosted by Paul Stuart, heard primarily on Montreal stations CKVL and CKAC.

Connected to the radio show was something that has become particularly interesting to collectors today.

Stuart had black-and-white portrait sheets printed with the La Parade sportive name at the top. He promoted the portraits during his broadcasts, and listeners could order portraits of their favorite athletes directly from him for the remarkably low price of 10 portraits for one dollar.

The portraits were produced in Montreal and aimed heavily at Quebec's French-speaking sports audience. The known hockey portion dates approximately from 1943–47, right in the middle of one of the great gaps in hockey-card production.

World War II had dramatically reduced the amount of sports material being produced, and traditional hockey cards were almost nonexistent.

For a hockey fan wanting a picture of a favorite player, the choices were limited. Among the important contemporary options were Bee Hive photos, Quaker Oats portraits, and La Parade sportive. Unlike the much broader Bee Hive program, La Parade sportive had a distinctly Quebec identity.

1940s Quality

The portraits were printed in black and white and measured approximately 5 x 8.5 inches.

These weren't tobacco or food issues, weren't packaged with another product, and weren't produced by a traditional trading-card manufacturer. They were printed on extremely thin, flimsy paper. In an era defined by wartime shortages and cost-cutting, inexpensive paper was hardly unusual.

That fragile construction is part of the challenge of collecting them today. These were inexpensive pieces of paper meant to be mailed to sports fans—not carefully protected collectibles designed to survive for another 80 years.

The portraits were essentially mail-order promotional sports portraits associated with a radio program, with the program's airtime conveniently printed across the top.

They weren't created for the modern concept of "card collecting."

71 Hockey Players — From Maurice Richard to Lionel Bouvrette

A surviving collector's checklist identifies 71 hockey players in La Parade sportive.

There are Montreal Canadiens and players from Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Toronto and New York, along with complete teams and famous forward lines. There are also minor-league players and athletes from Quebec's extremely popular professional leagues.

The names range from superstars such as Maurice Richard, Bill Durnan, Turk Broda and Doug Harvey to players almost forgotten outside serious hockey-history circles.

And that second group is where La Parade sportive becomes especially important to me as a goalie collector.

Some of the players represented in these portraits were never properly represented on a conventional hockey card.

Lionel Bouvrette — The Closest Thing to a Rookie Card

One of those players is goaltender Lionel Bouvrette.

Bouvrette appears on the known La Parade sportive hockey checklist, but there is no conventional Lionel Bouvrette rookie card to chase in the way there is for a Terry Sawchuk, Jacques Plante or Glenn Hall.

That makes his La Parade sportive portrait particularly significant.

I went back and forth on whether to include the Bouvrette La Parade sportive portrait in the Goalie Archive.

Ultimately, I did.

I don't consider it a true rookie card. In fact, I don't really consider it a hockey card at all.

But it is a contemporary, period-issued collectible depicting Bouvrette from an era in which hockey cards were barely being produced. For the purposes of the archive, it is the closest thing to a Lionel Bouvrette rookie card that I can realistically collect.

And sometimes that's the best an obscure-goalie collector is going to get.

Why Collectors Care About Them

Hockey Collectors shouldn't confuse La Parade sportive with a conventional hockey-card set.

Calling these pieces "cards" doesn't really explain what they were.

A better description is 1940s mail-order sports portrait sheets issued in connection with Paul Stuart's Montreal radio program.

But their unconventional origin is exactly what gives them character.

They document a period when very few hockey cards were being produced, while their strong focus on Quebec resulted in portraits of players who might otherwise have left almost nothing behind for today's collectors.

The surviving checklist extends beyond hockey into baseball, boxing, wrestling, skiing, golf and other sports.

Most notably, Jackie Robinson appears in the series as a member of the Montreal Royals, making his La Parade sportive portrait one of the most fascinating pieces associated with the entire issue.

That's what makes La Parade sportive different.

These aren't traditional hockey cards. They're surviving pieces of 1940s Montreal sports culture—inexpensive portraits ordered by fans listening to a French-language sports show on the radio.

More than 80 years later, many have disappeared, while the survivors have found an entirely different audience among hockey historians and collectors.

So while I wouldn't call La Parade sportive a hockey-card set, I would absolutely call it an important hockey collectible.

Lionel Bouvrette doesn't have a traditional rookie card.

But he does have La Parade sportive.

And for the Goalie Archive, that's close enough.