Obituary: ‘The Flying Frenchman’ Roger Francoeur ‘loved’ being a professional wrestler
Roger Francoeur was getting a little tired of factory jobs and wanted to do something else with his life. He thought about bulking up and maybe becoming a wrestler, and got the blessing of his father.
Do it," he recalled his dad telling him after he quit his job at a factory making aluminum garbage cans.
Stick at it and you don't have to pay board," Francoeur told Spectator columnist Paul Wilson in a 2001 interview.
He took his six-foot-one, 127-pound fame down to the legendary Jack Wentworth's wrestling gym at Queenston Road and Parkdale Avenue and dove into it. He went there seven days a week, five hours a day. Two hours on the weights, three in the ring. His father even lent him his car so he could get there every day from the family's Barton Street home. He got pointers from Wentworth - who wrestled for two decades before opening his gym in 1959 - on what it took to be a professional wrestler.
The result: Francoeur was one of many wrestlers who graduated from Wentworth's gym and went on to careers in the fraternity of the squared circle in the 1960s and 1970s. There were so many wrestlers coming out of Hamilton at that time the city was nicknamed The Factory" in wrestling circles.
Francoeur, who also operated a well-known Barton Street East tavern, died July 11. He had just turned 80 on June 16.
Francoeur wrestled under such names as The Flying Frenchman and the Assassin. His contemporaries were such wrestlers as Johnny Evans (Reggie Love - half of the Love Brothers), Bill Terry (Kurt Von Hess) and Dennis Waters (Johnny Powers).
Francoeur began his wrestling career in Detroit. He also worked in the Pittsburgh to Buffalo corridor, and up into North Bay under different promoters.
I loved it," he told Greg Oliver, author of The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame" and founder of the website Slam! Wrestling.
Oliver reported, however, Francoeur lost more matches than he won. His day job was a crane operator at Burlington Steel.
In the 1980s, Francoeur became a referee, working in Toronto for years. He worked at The Big Event," the huge World Wrestling Federation match staged in August 1986 at Exhibition Stadium. The show, featuring Hulk Hogan, attracted 74,000 fans.
Francoeur kept in touch regularly with his wrestling colleagues and would attend luncheons organized by former wrestler Ernie Moore (The Executioner).
Francoeur came to Hamilton with his family in 1948 when he was seven. He was the son of Aurele and Irene Francoeur and was born on a farm outside Chandler, in the Gaspe. His mother gave birth to 13 children and he was the 12th child. Only seven survived.
His father cut trees. He would go into the woods for a week at a time and haul the timber out with horses.
The family moved into a triplex on Barton Street, way different from a rural Quebec lifestyle.
We loved it here," Francoeur told Paul Wilson. Everything was modern. Just flush the toilet. Flick a switch and there was light. At the farm there was no running water. It was kerosene lamps and a bucket when you had to go at night."
Francoeur attended St. Ann Catholic Elementary School, Gibson Public School and Central Secondary School. He quit after Grade 9 and worked at two separate jobs making garbage cans.
While he loved being a wrestler, life on the road was getting hard, especially after he married Dianne MacDonald from Truro, N.S. He quit wrestling and his crane job and, for a time, drove a cab and sold real estate.
In 1981, he opened a pizza restaurant on the Mountain but it folded. He returned to Barton Street East in 1985 and opened Mugsy's Place in a building between Wentworth Street North and Birch Avenue. It became a bar of choice for people from the East Coast.
He closed Mugsy's in 2000 after tiring of the life of a tavern owner - such as breaking up fights - and opened Jolly Roger's Used Furniture and Antiques a few doors east on Barton Street.
Francoeur is survived by his wife Dianne, children Tammy and Terry, and four grandchildren.
Daniel Nolan can be reached at dannolanwrites@gmail.com