Two months have passed since then, but Stéphane Turcot still remembers everything. The atmosphere, the sober buildings and above all the stamina of these young Ukrainians who have come to represent their country at the Tournoi Pee-Wee de Québec.
That’s what the documentary From the Border to Victory tells, which will be broadcast on TVA next Monday at 11 a.m. The show, originally intended to last 30 minutes, ended up being stretched to 1 hour as there was so much to say and see.
Inspired by the search for these Ukrainian ice hockey players, Turcot and the Communications Rivage team traveled to Bucharest, the Romanian capital, which was the home base of this team, made up of young people exiled by the war and others still in the affected Country live the Russian invasion.
Everything was decided very quickly, recalls Turcot, a sports journalist for TVA. “Maybe 10 days before departure [le producteur] Pierre Durivage called me. He asked me if I would be tempted to board. I said yes immediately. »
“It’s real life”
The experience that the reporter, who will also narrate the documentary, was to have there was in no way comparable to the many coverages of events he had had earlier in his career. “I’m privileged to have done that,” he says. I’m satisfied, but humanely that goes beyond everything. It was real, it wasn’t whimsical, it wasn’t ready-made phrases to please someone or put on a show. It’s real life. »
Screenshot from the documentary From the Frontier to Victory
Arrival of young Ukrainian ice hockey players at the border between Ukraine and Moldova.
The documentary, the result of the collaboration of three generations of the Durivage family, narrates the crossing of the Ukrainian border by four players who stayed in the country, a risky stage in the journey that would lead the entire team to Quebec.
love wave bombs
We hear the brave hockey players talk about the canceled holidays, their fear of bomb noise. We see them training hard before the start in Romania, we follow them as they triumphantly arrive in front of the cameras in Montreal.
Archive photo, Didier Debusschère
Then, of course, there’s this expression of love from Quebec City at a nearly full Videotron Center for their first game in the tournament they’ve been waiting for, which is a little balm for their daily anxieties.
“The Pee-Wee tournament, I’ve always enjoyed covering it. There are always 1000 stories, but let’s say this one will go down in history,” says Stéphane Turcot.