Mad Dog: The Maurice Vachon Story

by Bertrand Hébert, Pat Laprade, Paul Vachon (Foreword by), Kathie Vachon (Afterword), George Tombs (Translator)

Overview

The true story of one of pro wrestling’s most charismatic, feared, and beloved icons

Who was Maurice the man, and who was Mad Dog the character? Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon was a gold medalist, a pro-wrestling legend, and a pop culture icon — but he was also a son, husband, and father. Mad Dog explores Vachon’s career and personal struggles with painstakingly detailed historical research and through both Maurice’s own recollections and those of the people who knew him best.

As a young man, Maurice could have chosen a dark criminal path, but then wrestling and family changed him. Chronicling his slow but steady rise to prominence across America and internationally in some of pro wrestling’s most important territories, this in-depth biography shows how Vachon’s life came to be defined by the words of Mark Twain: “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” Fiercely proud, motivated, and supremely talented, Vachon’s story is also the amazing tale of how a lifelong make-believe heel became a real-life hero outside of the ring.

With a foreword by his brother, Paul Vachon, and an afterword by his widow, Kathie Vachon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770413320
Publisher:	ECW Press
Publication date:	09/05/2017
Edition description:	No Edition
Pages:	292
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Bertrand Hébert co-wrote Pat Patterson’s autobiography, Accepted. He lives in Beauharnois, Quebec. He also co-wrote Wrestling Observer Newsletter’s 2013 book of the year, Mad Dogs, Midgets and Screw Jobs with Pat Laprade. Laprade is the co-author of Sisterhood of the Squared Circle, created the Quebec wrestling Hall of Fame, and lives in Montreal. George Tombs is a biographer and literary translator based in Montreal.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1: A THUG IN THE MAKING

The epic story of Maurice Vachon starts in 1929 in Ville-Émard, a working-class neighborhood in Montreal. Ville-Émard is located next to the city boroughs of Verdun and LaSalle, between the Lachine Canal and the Aqueduc Canal. It was annexed to the City of Montreal in 1910 and is now part of the South-West borough. Other well-known personalities come from there, such as ice hockey legend Mario Lemieux, and many factories were built there in the early twentieth century, giving the neighborhood a working-class character.

Maurice’s father, Ferdinand Vachon, was born on March 7, 1905, in St. Raphael, a small Ontario village that no longer exists, a few dozen miles north of Cornwall and west of Valleyfield, Quebec. When Ferdinand and his twin brother, William, were ten years old, the family moved to Ville-Émard. Maurice’s mother, Marguerite Picard, was born on September 13, 1905, in the small Ontario village of Huntsville. The village has about two thousand inhabitants and is located some three hundred miles west of Ottawa and sixty miles south of North Bay. Her family moved to Montreal when she was just two months old, and she was already living in Ville-Émard by the time her future husband moved there. These two young Franco-Ontarians had connecting backyards, so they saw each other on a regular basis while growing up. They got married on October 29, 1927. Between 1928 and 1951, Ferdinand and Marguerite, devout Catholics, had a total of twelve children and adopted a thirteenth.

Maurice Régis Vachon was born on September 1, 1929, a little over a month before the stock market crash heralding the beginning of the Great Depression, and ten years to the day before the start of World War II. He was baptized at Notre-Dame-du-Perpétuel-Secours Church, a parish with many English Catholic families, and was named Maurice for his godfather, Maurice Picard (his mother’s brother), and Régis for his paternal grandfather, who had died nearly two decades beforehand.

The firstborn in the family was Marcel. Coming next was Maurice, born in the first family home on Briand Street. By the time their third baby, Guy, was born in 1930, the family had moved to 6873 Jogues Street, where Maurice would grow up. This second-story apartment wasn’t exactly a penthouse: it was the upper half of a duplex, with a room for the boys and a double room for the girls and the parents. Considering the Vachons raised twelve children here (their last child, Diane, was not born on Jogues Street), the apartment must have felt cramped. But many other families in working-class areas of the big city had similar living quarters. The rent varied from $14 to $25 a month, not much in today’s world, but salaries were not what they are today.

Ferdinand Vachon, who was nicknamed Fred, worked as a dock worker at the Port of Montreal, then as a police sergeant, earning $75 every two weeks. During the Depression, this was good pay, although with many mouths to feed it wasn’t a fortune. The Vachon children made their own toys, and, as in all large families, the youngest of them wore hand-me-downs from their older siblings. Marguerite shopped for food at the grocery store, Blain, on credit, not so much because she had to but because it was convenient. The children went to a store in downtown Montreal where for just forty cents they could buy bread, cakes, and donuts fresh from the day before. Fred had a job that brought certain advantages. For example, when he recovered a truck full of stolen clothes, the store owner offered him a set of free clothes for all his children. Nowadays, such practices would be considered unethical, but during the Depression, any donation was welcome. All in all, every penny counted in the Vachon household, but the children never wanted for anything.

So for young Maurice, money was not a concern. In fact, he was busy getting into mischief, fighting with English kids, and hating school. The Vachon children all went to Saint-Jean-de-Matha elementary school nearby. This was not the right kind of place for Maurice, who later described himself as a shy child who had a hard time speaking and expressing his feelings.

Making matters worse, he was left-handed. This is considered normal today, but at the time, being left-handed was often seen as a handicap or an illness. Schoolteachers — often Catholic priests and nuns — forced several generations of youngsters to write with their right hands. And using the word “force” is not an overstatement: left-handed children had their knuckles rapped with a wooden ruler until they learned to stop writing with their cursed left hand. So, like many other left-handers, Maurice wrote with his right hand and did everything else with his left hand.

School discipline was harsh, and that didn’t exactly make him feel like attending on a regular basis. “I was scared when I went back to school,” Maurice recalled in the 1980s. “I wanted to die. I would go see the principal and get the strap. I felt like I was in prison. I was someone with lots of energy to burn off.”

And Maurice burned off a lot of energy.

Going to class was agonizing, but leaving at the end of the day was a different story. His day really got going once the final bell rang at 4:00 p.m. — that’s when the fights started. Sometimes they were triggered when classmates called him “Vachon le cochon” (“Vachon the pig”). Other times classmates threw out a challenge: “Why do you want to fight me? Why not take on Maurice instead? You’ll see it isn’t easy.” He usually wore a white shirt, frequently spattered with some other kid’s blood, and some of his own too.

Maurice told the story many times of how he would come home from school with blood on his shirt. “My father would ask if I had been fighting. I would answer yes. Then he would ask if I had won. I would answer yes. Then he would say, ‘OK, that’s fine then.’”

Fred Vachon was a loving father, but he was also a man of his generation. Without realizing it at the time, he embodied something dark that Maurice would later integrate into his own personality: Fred had a bad relationship with violence. With hindsight, the schoolyard fistfights of children can be downplayed, but being so close to violence became probably the most long-lasting aspect of Maurice’s life, apart from wrestling.

Once Fred Vachon the policeman had finished interrogating Maurice about his school day, the boy would head outside looking for mischief, and that’s when the real trouble would start.

The “Vachon Gang” became well-known in the neighborhood, and for good reason: they broke windows, they got into misadventures, they fought with English kids. There was no stopping them.

The gang consisted of Maurice, his brothers Marcel and Guy, and some of their buddies, the Fichaud and Bélec brothers. Marcel was born in July 1928 and Guy in December 1930: they were only two and a half years apart. Maurice was clearly the boss — he was the one developing new schemes. He was respected by the others as much as by his own brothers. “You couldn’t fight against Maurice for very long,” recalls Guy.

At the end of Jogues Street were “Crazy Field” — so named because it was close to the Douglas Psychiatric Hospital in Verdun — and a forest that would later become Angrignon Park. At the time, Ville-Émard was working-class but it still had a very rural character, as shown by the wooden boardwalks along the streets, from before the era of concrete sidewalks. For the youngsters, the forest was their secret realm. It was also the place where Maurice and his gang fought with English kids. As we will learn shortly, a better way of putting that would be: it was the place where Maurice and his gang beat up English kids. These fistfights no doubt reflected childhood rivalries, but they were also typical of the era. In the 1930s, there was a big divide between English-speaking and French-speaking Montrealers. People speaking English were perceived as belonging to the upper class of society, whereas people speaking French were an uneducated and exploited labor force. This divide affected not just adults but also children.

Parents are responsible for the values transmitted to their children. Marguerite Vachon never hid her deep hatred for the English, despite the fact she and her husband were both originally from Ontario. In a neighborhood with two communities living side by side, there was bound to be friction. “The English called us ‘French pea soups,’” Maurice later recalled. “We called them ‘blokes’ and ‘limeys.’” These were not exactly cruel slurs, but for children in a politically charged environment, it didn’t take much to come to blows.

No English-speaking residents of Ville-Émard have ever given their side of the story, but it seems clear the Vachon Gang treated beating up English kids as a blood sport — and the gang came out on top most of the time. The Vachon Gang claimed Crazy Field as their own territory, so no self-respecting English kid would venture there. The only exception was when an English kid could speak French. And if English kids were accompanied by their fathers, then the Vachon Gang would go into hiding and be proud of not getting caught. A few years later, Maurice’s brother Marcel was the first of the family to show an interest in girls, and he went out with an English girl from Verdun. Considering the territory, this meant, ironically, that the girl’s brother had probably already been a victim of the Vachon Gang!

But beating up English kids wasn’t the gang’s full-time occupation. Actually, they seem to have spent more time breaking windows. One school in Ville LaSalle had to replace its windows over and over again: Maurice had broken all of them three times in a row. The fourth time, the school janitor caught him in the act and wanted to call the police. Maurice then started to cry, vowing never to do it again so he wouldn’t have to face the wrath of his father. So ended his career as a window breaker.

Marguerite Vachon, a diminutive woman weighing just 105 pounds, had her hands full with such a turbulent brood. She was from a large family, and thanks to a strong character she didn’t overreact. She disciplined her children, though, bringing out the strap or a stick only to scare them. At the same time, she recounted only parts of their misadventures to her husband, which spared them far more severe punishment at his hands. The family hired a maid named Ross who helped around the house from time to time. At $3 per week, this was a luxury the family could afford.

Ferdinand played his fatherly role well, but the fact that he was a policeman meant his son could often wriggle his way out of facing consequences. Youngsters in Ville-Émard looked up to Maurice for all the wrong reasons, but more generally the Vachon brothers enjoyed special consideration because their father was a policeman. At the time, this position brought more respect than it does today. Even so, fathers came over to the Vachon household to complain about Maurice beating up their sons or to report on the latest mischief he had gotten into. Ferdinand sometimes took his son on patrol, probably to show him how easy it was to get out of line. This would be unthinkable nowadays.

The one time when the Vachon children didn’t make such a ruckus was when they were playing with their dog, a border collie named Mickey. The dog’s presence spread good cheer all around, and he often accompanied the brothers on their escapades. Mickey was a full member of the Vachon Gang. He was as impertinent as any boy, and he chased after other dogs on the slightest pretext. They paid him back in kind, however: Mickey died of wounds after being attacked by two rival dogs.

Whenever his children needed to burn off energy, Fred would take them, and especially his boys, fishing and camping on Lake of Two Mountains. At the same time, he was always ready to take out the strap when they got into serious mischief. Nowadays, child services would be brought in right away, but in those days corporal punishment was the norm in many families. Maurice later remembered, “At times, I would rather have gone to jail than face the brunt of my father’s punishment.”

The Vachon boys made a point of not telling their father everything. That proved to be a wise decision. “We got up to a lot of mischief,” Maurice later recalled. “We got some good thrashings, and I suppose we deserved them.”

But their father’s attitude was paradoxical. He was proud of his sons’ bad-boy reputation and he would immediately call them to order if they seemed cowardly. One day, while sitting on the balcony of the apartment, he saw his three oldest boys running home with their school bags. This time they were fleeing, with English kids close on their heels. Instead of demanding they return home immediately, he shouted out to them there would be no dinner unless they turned around and beat up the English kids.

Despite the fistfights and other misadventures, the Vachon family were devout and regular churchgoers, like most Quebecers of the time. Maurice went to Mass regularly, even becoming an altar boy. Early in the morning he would go to church, then come home again to change, then head for school. On Sundays, Marguerite would bring her children to St. Joseph’s Oratory, a Catholic basilica and Canada’s largest church.

Maurice didn’t like academic subjects, but he made an exception in the case of geography because he had big dreams of traveling the world. Ferdinand spent a lot of time telling his sons about the criminals he had arrested. Some were Italians, others were Poles or Americans, but all had a story and a particular path in life. Ferdinand probably had the most influence on his children through his storytelling, because most of them would go on to travel and work all over the world.

Maurice had two hobbies that enabled him to develop his passion for geography: collecting stamps and raising carrier pigeons. Everyone knows about stamp collecting, but raising carrier pigeons takes some explanation. Carrier pigeons were trained to routinely return to their dovecote, and they were used especially in wartime to send messages from one base to another. Maurice raised pigeons until he was twenty years old.

One day he decided to head out, carrying a dozen pigeons in a potato sack. Once he got near Châteauguay, across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal, he sent the following message home via pigeon: “Don’t worry, Mommy, I am going to the United States, I will be back in five years.” Marguerite got into a bit of a panic, but Fred remained calm. “There’s no cause for concern,” he said. “You’ll see! Maurice is bound to get hungry and then he will come home!” Around 11:00 p.m., Fred’s prediction came true.

Maurice fed his fantasies and dreams with stamps. They enabled him to travel the world while staying at home. Some of these stamps were from France, Belgium, or Germany, and they were a welcome escape from school, where he was unhappy.

Beyond hobbies and periodic misadventures, Maurice also discovered professional wrestling. At a quite young age, he accompanied his father to see “la p’tite lutte” — light heavyweight wrestling matches. In the 1930s, wrestling was undergoing a big revival in Montreal. Thanks to the French wrestler Henri Deglane, former Olympic champion in Greco-Roman wrestling, the sport was gaining in popularity. Light heavyweight matches were held all over the city in places like the Exchange Stadium, the Ontario Stadium, the Mile End Stadium, and many others.

One time, a wrestling show was held at the Saint-Jean-de-Matha Stadium, near Maurice’s school in Ville-Émard. His father introduced him to Paul Lortie, one of the stars at the time. Maurice was all of four or five years old, but he was already fascinated by the world of wrestling that would become his. From 1939, heavyweight wrestlers fought at the Montreal Forum under the rule of promoter Eddie Quinn. But light heavyweights wrestled in the city’s smaller stadiums, occasionally replacing heavyweights at the Forum (home to the Montreal Canadiens) or wrestling in the openers.

Maurice was obviously interested in the big leagues. He and his buddies would walk a few miles just to have a look at the stadium posters announcing the upcoming matches. They occasionally attended the matches and discovered the big stars of Montreal wrestling. Their favorites were the Dusek brothers, Lou Thesz, Maurice Tillet, and Bobby Managoff, among others.

“We bought tickets for seventy-five cents and then sat in the ringside seats going for $2,” Maurice later recalled. “We were always the first to arrive.”

There was nothing surprising about his love for wrestling. Once Maurice entered the fray, he would always showboat while fighting. He liked to humiliate his opponents before beating them. He would pull their shirt up over their head, then twirl them around in a circle. He loved provoking them just enough for them to lose their concentration. That’s when he would close in for the knockout. “Maurice developed his talents as an entertainer at a young age,” Guy Vachon recalls. And Guy had eye-witnessed quite a few of his older brother’s escapades. But Maurice was the only member of their group of buddies who truly loved wrestling — and since he was the leader, the others followed along, whether they wanted to or not.

Maurice also worked for a time for Elmer Ferguson, a well-known journalist who at the time covered hockey and professional wrestling. A reporter at the Montreal Herald, Ferguson employed Maurice as a clerk, paying him $10 a week for his services. But Maurice discreetly stole some of the best photographs, which he pinned on a wall at home that was already decorated with photos of wrestlers from the papers. Needless to say, Maurice didn’t keep the job very long.

Of all the wrestlers Maurice idolized, one stands out in particular: Yvon Robert. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Robert was exceptionally popular, although he would become even more famous later on. Clearly, he was the new darling of wrestling in Quebec. A native of Verdun, not far from Ville-Émard, Robert came from the same kind of social background as the young Vachon. Maurice considered Robert the perfect example of a man from a modest background who succeeds at what he does and travels the world. As Maurice would later say on several occasions, “Yvon Robert was like a god to us.”

Interest in wrestling flagged somewhat in the late 1930s, but all of that changed with the arrival of Eddie Quinn the promoter and the blossoming of local star Yvon Robert. Hockey was not as popular in Montreal as it later became in the 1950s, and baseball was even less popular. The Vachon boys knew how to skate, but they weren’t hockey fans. Wrestling, meanwhile, was gaining ground by leaps and bounds: in those days, wrestling matches were held in Montreal more times than there are days in a week.

Maurice found wrestling fascinating, but it would take a decade before he made a career of it. Robert’s popularity actually worked against Maurice in his first years as a wrestler, but then years later it would offer him a golden opportunity.

Meanwhile, his personal life seemed like one long series of misadventures and fistfights. Maurice often got away with it and spent only a few hours in jail. But having a well-respected father in the police force proved to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it prevented Maurice from getting into serious trouble, but on the other hand, his father was far from pleased with the situation, although paradoxically and without realizing it he encouraged his son to indulge in bad-boy behavior.

Two events then took place that would change the course of Maurice’s life forever.

Maurice had many flaws and he had gotten into a lot of trouble. But his heart was always in the right place. That’s the way he was. He had to channel that voracious energy of his one way or the other, but he wasn’t always sure how. When anyone took on someone from the Vachon Gang, it was like attacking Maurice himself. And this was even more the case when his own brothers were involved. He knew his role was to protect and to defend them. He hated acts of injustice: when one gang outnumbered another and abused its strength, or when the stronger attacked the weaker without the slightest pretext. He ended up defending others more often than he defended himself. These were the first signs of a character trait he would go on to demonstrate throughout his life: generosity.

Over the years, the Vachon family grew. After the first three sons (Marcel, Maurice, and Guy) came Jeannine, Régis, Marguerite, Paul, Arthur, Pierre (the son of Marguerite’s sister, he had been part of the family since birth), Claire, André, Lise, and Diane.

One time, the children were playing on the sidewalk when a local kid, who happened to be English, gleefully started shooting pellets at them with an air rifle. Another time, when Régis (or Paul, depending on the version of the story) went apple picking, the same kid stole his bag of apples. This was too much for Maurice. He followed the boy home, subjecting him to a storm of punches to teach him never to steal from a Vachon again. A few days later, as Maurice was on his way to school through the back alleys, the English kid’s father came after him on a bicycle and happened to kick him in passing. Maurice gave him everything he had: he showered the man with blows. The father nevertheless managed to escape and reached a clearing not far away. But Maurice hadn’t finished yet. He followed him, then jumped on him until the man begged for mercy: “Let me go, let me go!”

Giving kids his age a licking was one thing, but for thirteen-year-old Maurice to beat up an adult was another.

“That’s when I realized this made no sense,” he later recalled.

When Maurice and his buddies weren’t breaking windows or getting into brawls, they were attacking trains, especially by removing the seals on freight wagons. This was illegal, because without those aluminum seals, nobody could be sure of the freight loaded in the wagon. Maurice got arrested and was temporarily detained at the station. His father had to bend over backwards to get him out of trouble.

For Ferdinand, this was one misadventure too many. He had put up with straightforward mischief, broken windows, train damage, fistfights, and Maurice’s reluctance to apply himself to his studies. Ferdinand pictured what kind of future his son was headed for, and it wasn’t a pretty one. Maurice was developing the same profile as some of the bandits Ferdinand had to deal with on a daily basis.

“Maurice would have taken a wrong turn in life,” says Paul Vachon. “He was headed more or less for the life of a thug.”

“He liked fighting way too much,” adds Guy.

Maurice himself admitted he didn’t have too rosy a future: “I think I must have taken the wrong path in life. I got into more and more mischief, then I started doing stuff that was straight-out illegal.”

That’s when Ferdinand decided to sign his boys up for boxing at the YMCA. “If they have that much energy to spend, they might as well spend it in the right place without hurting anyone,” he told himself.

No one could have predicted what was about to happen, but this decision marked a turning point in Maurice’s life. The only time he would approach the criminal world again was while working as a doorman in private nightclubs.

For the police sergeant, the boxing lessons at the YMCA certainly came as a relief. But for Maurice, this was the beginning of a new life. He would discover the passion of training. Maurice would continue to train throughout his life. Training would open many doors and help him learn many things, but it would also have tragic consequences.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments ix

Foreword iii

Prologue xv

1 A Thug in the Making 1

2 The English Are Coming! 14

3 Around the World 21

4 Thank You, Armand 34

5 No Man Is a Prophet in His Own Country 45

6 Make Love, Not War 54

7 Maurice Cheats Death, Part One 61

8 Another Vachon Enters the Fray 68

9 Between Texas and Quebec: A Family Affair 73

10 The Warm Breath of Mabel and the Freezing Air of Calgary 80

11 Strong as a Bear! 91

12 Aloha, Cheryl 97

13 Mad Dog Is Born 104

14 A New Start in the Midwest 116

15 Maurice Cheats Death, Part Two 128

16 The Vachon Brothers at the Top of Their Game 138

17 Grand Prix Wrestling: Maurice’s Triumphant Return 148

18 Free Agent — in Wrestling and in Life 173

19 Life Starts at Fifty 195

20 There’s No Business Like Show Business! 211

21 Maurice Cheats Death, Part Three 229

22 Deal or No Deal? 239

23 The Road to Happiness 246

24 The Passing of a Legend 260

Epilogue 271

Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon: Statistics 273

A Last Word 277

References 278

Composed with the HTML instant editor. Please purchase a HTMLg subscription license to stop adding promotional messages to the edited documents.

Editorial Reviews

I’ve learned so many things about Maurice. It was very revealing. I couldn’t wait to read more about him, I was really captivated. I already had respect for Maurice; I have even more now.” — Raymond Rougeau, former WWE wrestler and announcer

“I never saw Mad Dog Vachon wrestle because he was before my time, but I always heard about how wild he was and after reading this book I now perfectly understand why people were so fascinated with him. It truly captures the essence of who Mad Dog Vachon was.” — WWE Superstar Kevin Owens

“A definitive history of this hardcore heel who lived life to its fullest and wrestled even harder... The authors did their homework well and we reap the reward of their efforts. Mad Dog is a must-have read for every serious fan of pro wrestling.” — George Schire, author of Minnesota’s Golden Age of Wrestling

“It sounds like he was a larger than life character.” — Dangerous Dan’s Book Blog

“What made this book a good read was the research and writing about the inner workings of the professional wrestling circuit.” — The Guy Who Reviews Sports Books

“Explores Vachon's career and personal struggles with painstakingly detailed historical research and through Maurice's own recollections and those of the people who knew him best.” — Entertainment Report

“There is a lot of detailed information about Vachon's career and it's obvious the authors spent a lot of time researching.” — Teena In Toronto

“Pat Laprade and Bertrand Hebert, who did the great book on Montreal wrestling history, wrote this one and I've seen it and it covers his entire life and that of the Vachon clan, wrestling in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s and some of the legendary events in Montreal as well as the AWA, where Vachon was an icon.” — Wrestling Observer

“Fans of classic eras of wrestling (1960s-1980s) will enjoy this work, along with those that want to study more about Canadian wrestling. The book was entertaining, knowledgeable, and heart-filled all combined in one setting. ECW has another winner on its hands with Mad Dog.” — Lance Writes Blog

From the Publisher