MONTREAL

On the day after the historic signing, a man in a Montreal Alouettes T-shirt is walking along the cordoned off strip of Sainte-Catherine St., known as Le Village Gai.

“Are you wearing that today in celebration of Michael Sam?” I ask.

“No,” he said.

“Can you tell me why you’re wearing it?”

“I like the Alouettes,” he said, looking at me funny, then walking away.

If there was any kind of feel-good celebration in The Gay Village after Sam’s signing with the Alouettes, it was anything but apparent on Wednesday afternoon. There was some interest, just not a lot. There was some recognition, just not a lot. Mostly there was a combination of admiration and ambivalence, depending on who you spoke to. The sporting trumpets were playing, but not everyone was hearing the music.

And on the practice field at Bishop’s University in the afternoon, Sam was about to ready to make his Canadian Football League debut at rookie camp. At the same time, at the corner of Saint-Catherine and Amherst, in the heart of The Gay Village with pink baubles adorning the street without cars in decoration, life went on.

More people than not didn’t seem to know who Michael Sam was. When it was explained, some of them knew the story. One of them was particularly excited, not from the football side but from the celebrity side: “He’s sooooo sweet,” said 53-year-old restaurant worker, Denis Marois, sounding like a teenager.

“Have you seen him?” Marois giggled. “He is very hot.”

The walk from the middle of The Gay Village to Percival-Molson Memorial Stadium is about 15 minutes in length. The stadium is accessible to the gay community. Available tickets, well, that’s more complicated.

“We want to support Michael Sam in any way possible,” said Jean-Seabastien Boudreault, vice-president of Montreal Pride, and a significant voice in the Montreal gay community.

Boudreault has already invited Sam to be part of the Pride celebration this summer.

Other groups and other events have already reached out to the defensive lineman who has now spent three days in Canada. Sam wants to be football player first: The gay community wants a well-spoken, handsome, macho symbol. “We want to support him,” said Boudreault, “and we’d like him, hopefully, to support us.

“We’d like to get more tickets, more people at games. But you know what? Tickets have always been very hard to get for the Alouettes. There’s not many available.”

At the Boutique Moulin Rose along Sainte-Catherine St., store manager Mohamed Amzal thinks he would like to add Alouettes jerseys with Sam on the back as a sale item. In his store, you can buy almost any kind of costume for almost any kind of occasion and then some, just not sporting items. “If people want this, we’ll sell it,” he said. “I think there will be interest. I think it will build up.”

This is not much of a sporting community. Ask anyone about football and almost every answer comes back with some kind of hockey analogy in broken English.

The city played host to the World Outgames about six years ago.

“It was a failure,” said Michael Brouillard, a 30-year-old restaurant host. “A lot of buildup, a lot of people, but it never happened again.

A sports fan, Brouillard said: “I’ve followed the Michael Sam story going back to the NFL and the internet. But you don’t hear many people talking sports around here. That’s not our culture. That’s not our neighborhood.

“But I think you’ll see gay people interested in football and maybe our team because he’s here. Football is a masculine sport, it’s more a straight people sport. But we know there are gay hockey players. We just don’t know who they are.

“Now we know we have a gay football player and I think we’ll take pride in that.”

Montreal may be the perfect place for Michael Sam to be. The Alouettes have historically quick-kicked convention, leaving conservatism for other more reserved outfits.

“The more people out of the closet, the better for everyone,” said 27-year-old Micah Campsall, who answered questions in exchange for spare change. “The more understanding there’ll be. A day ago, I didn’t know who he is. Today, I want to meet him.”

Bartender Alain Desallers thinks Sam won’t have any problem in Montreal or with the Alouettes, but might have some difficulty elsewhere.

“I’m sure he will become a hero here,” the 47-year-old said. “I’m really proud of what he’s doing. But he will have some problems. There’s still too much prejudice, especially outside the city. You feel it when you leave Montreal.

“Montreal is OK for everything — multi-cultural, gays, lesbians, trans, no matter — everything but English.”