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It was beautiful to see Jacques Demers at the Bell Centre Thursday night.

It was also sad.

Demers, the last coach to win a Stanley Cup with the Canadiens, was honoured along with other members of that 1993 championship team before the Habs’ home opener against the Los Angeles Kings. The players were shown on the giant screen while standing in entrances to the rink around the building, all wearing Canadiens sweaters. Demers, unfortunately, can no longer stand since suffering a stroke two years ago. He was shown sitting motionless in a wheelchair with Serge Savard, the general manager of the 1993 team, standing beside him. The former coach was greeted by a standing ovation. At one point, Savard seemed to wipe a tear from his eye.

He surely wasn’t alone.

Demers is one of the nicest men I have ever met and what made it beautiful to see him Thursday night is the fact the 74-year-old has always been a fighter and still is. He had to be, growing up with an abusive, alcoholic father who did his best to destroy his self-confidence as a boy, calling his eldest of four children stupid and scaring Demers to the point he would wet his pants. Demers learned later in life he had attention-deficit problems and an anxiety disorder, which contributed to him dropping out of school after Grade 8. In 2005, Demers revealed he was functionally illiterate in a French-language biography titled Jacques Demers En Toutes Lettres.