by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

If I believed in democracy, I’d have voted for Jonathan Power in the good categories of this paper’s Best of Montreal survey.

Power might look a tad angelic with his wild hair and shy smile. But in fact, he’s possibly our most famous athlete with a damnably ferocious temper.

Four years ago, Power persuaded his makeup-artist wife to relocate from Toronto to our Golden Square Mile. By my reasoning, that makes him more of a Montrealer than us natives, because he chose to live here, whereas we’re here merely by default.

It was an unlikely choice. His sport is almost unheard of here. The former top-ranked champion sometimes has to hustle back down the 401 just to scare up serious competition.

I chatted with Power at the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association, not far from his house near Sherbrooke and Peel, which he bought when prices were low. “One of my rare successful investments,” he says. His favourite feature is the elevator to his private garage.

I only got to sit with him after a snobby MAAA receptionist needlessly forced me to wait endlessly in the Toller-Cranston-decorated lobby. The MAAA always looks better in my childhood memories.

I don’t much appreciate squash. It’s scary for the nose. You end up inhaling a lot of body odours. Those of us with long noses worry about getting clobbered with a stray racquet.

Power’s reservations about the sport revolve around the beating it puts on the lower body. “There’s a lot of leaning towards the floor. It’s hard on the hips.”

It was rumoured that his 30-year-old bones would call it quits on him as he tumbled down the rankings last year due to a broken hand and bad ligaments. But he’s bounced back up to number four and vows to hit number one again.

Power grew up an army brat in St-Hubert on the South Shore until moving at age 12. The base was loaded with sports facilities. His dad made him choose a sport that same year. “I feel I made the right choice,” he says.

While other kids were cracking the books at university, he was a lonely kid hauling a racquet around foreign airports. “It was difficult travelling by myself, going out and doing training,” he says. “It was not a supervised environment.”

On the court, the quiet-spoken Power morphs into John McEnroe, terrorizing referees and duelling with his Bjorn Borg equivalent, Peter Nichol of England. The two alternated between number one and two famously for years.

Power’s signature manoeuvre involves pretending to miss the ball, and then stealthily sneaking back to whack it at the last minute. It leaves opponents and fans awestruck.

He’s a star in places like Pakistan and Qatar, where he competes for $150,000 (U.S.) purses. Bodyguards empty stores of other customers to allow him to shop alone.

Power runs a clothing line with squash fan and hockey legend Dominik Hasek. On a good year, he rakes in about $400,000 (U.S.) in prize cash, plus extras for sponsorship deals. He counts four Montrealers who make their living playing squash without teaching.

He might be unknown here, but he’s definitely ours: in newspapers he’s always “Montreal’s Jonathan Power.”

As we stroll around the Golden Square Mile, not an eye bats or notices the golden presence of the Greatest North American Squash Player of All Time. Why did he move here? “This is one of the best cities to walk around,” he replies.

Acid reflex: Sunday marks the 35th anniversary of the one of history’s unlikeliest sports feats. On June 12, 1970, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis woke up and took some LSD at noon only to realize that he was scheduled to pitch a few hours later. He took the mound while hallucinating. “The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes. Sometime I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn’t,” he later explained. At the end of it, he’d tossed a no-hitter, hitting eight batters. Ellis now works as a drug counsellor.

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