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“At first it can be a surprise, but the reception has been very good,” Rousseau says. “I think people remarked more on their height than the colour of their skin. That makes me happy.”

In the stands last Sunday, watching Thetford’s top team, the Gold team, destroy visitors from the Université de Sherbrooke 114-43, Emmanuel Baril said his young children are excited to attend the basketball games. “They talk about going to see the ‘tall black guys,’” he said.

Kasey Paul-Buzas, a 20-year-old from Montreal, has been with the academy since its first year in Alma. He is set to graduate this year and has committed to play for Nipissing University in North Bay next fall. Raised by his mother after the death of his father, he said getting out of the city helped him “grow as a man and as a basketball player … It kept me away from all the distractions, from all the bad things that happen in Montreal.”

But in Alma, he and his black teammates would get suspicious looks. “If something was stolen, people would think it was us,” he said. He has found Thetford Mines to be much more welcoming.

Borys Minger, 18, who is also graduating this year and is headed for Ottawa’s Carleton University, has arguably experienced the greatest culture shock of all the players. He is from French Guyana on the northeast coast of South America, where Rwigema recruited him two years ago. “I had never seen towns like this before coming to Canada,” he said, “towns that could be so quiet – so cold too.” BUT he said he was immediately interested in Rwigema’s academy because North America is where the best basketball is played. His dream is to play in Europe’s top professional league, but first he plans to earn a university degree. “Coming here is the best decision I could have made for my basketball and for everything,” he said.