MONTREAL – Former Montreal Expos player Gary Carter will be immortalized Tuesday when a street in Villeray-St-Michel-Park Extension is renamed in his honour.
Faillon St. W. borders Jarry Park, where the Expos played for most of their first decade and where Carter made his big-league debut.
“It was here at Jarry Park that the player affectionately known as Kid began his major league career,” said Laurent Blanchard, chairman of the city’s executive committee, told a small gathering of officials and fans, some wearing caps and shorts with the Expos’ red, white and blue logo.
“He was an idol who touched the heart of Montrealers and inspired many young athletes.”
A larger celebration is planned for June 15 when Ahuntsic baseball park in the city’s north end will be named for Carter, who died on Feb. 16, 2012 of brain cancer at 57.
Carter’s wife, Sandy, and other family members were not able to attend the street renaming because they only learned of it this week, but they are expected to be at the ball park ceremony.
The city announced the details of its tribute to the player who starred with the now-defunct Expos for more than half of his career, after close to 2,000 proposals were submitted to the city after the call for ideas was launched Feb. 27.
Carter delighted Montreal fans with his skills and enthusiasm from 1974-84, when he was traded to New York, and he returned in 1992 for his farewell season. He was the first Expos player to be enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He died in February of cancer at age 57.
Carter’s death triggered an outpouring of Expos nostalgia in a city that boasts few lingering traces of baseball. Aside from the Expos banner hanging at the Bell Centre hockey arena, and the usually vacant Olympic Stadium, there is little evidence in Montreal that the city hosted, and was sometimes impassioned for, a major league team over 36 years from 1969-2004.
The California-born star athlete entrenched himself in Quebec life during his time there, calling it a second home and learning some French.
– With files from The Canadian Press
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