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The email came Tuesday afternoon from RDS.

Alexandre Patterson, a field producer/writer for the French-language sports network, was informing me about a new documentary titled COACH: La vie de Jacques Demers (The Life of Jacques Demers).

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Included was a private web link to watch the hour-long documentary about Demers, which was scheduled to air publicly for the first time at 7 p.m. Monday on RDS INFO and again at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday on RDS.

I was really looking forward to watching the documentary when I had some free time this weekend and then speaking with Demers for a column to publish early next week about it. Then I woke up Thursday morning to the terribly sad news that Demers, 71, had suffered a stroke and was in a hospital.

There was some good news Friday afternoon when the McGill University Health Centre issued a news release on behalf of Demers’s family wishing to thank the public and media for their outpouring of concern. As of 1 p.m. Friday, Demers’s condition was listed as stable, both from a medical and neurological point of view, and his overall condition was improving to the point where physicians planned to transfer him to the in-patient stroke unit. Demers’s family was at his bedside and able to interact with him.