hile the nineteenth century anglophone communities in Québec took up cricket, lacrosse, snowshoeing, curling, and the fledgling game of hockey for amusement, the francophone communities were more fascinated by feats of strength. The tradition was set by the legendary Jos Montferrand, the hero of Bytown, but it reached its zenith in the astounding figure of Louis Cyr, "the strongest man in the world."

Louis Cyr was born in 1863, the first of 17 children. His father was of normal stature, but his mother was over six feet tall (183 cm) and close to 270 pounds (123kg). She was known to climb a barn ladder carrying a hundred-pound grain sack on each shoulder. Louis weighted 18 pounds (8 kg) at birth - obviously destined for big things.

He quit school at age 12 to help the family. According to one story, a local farmer hired the boy after Cyr single-handedly lifted the farmer's heavily loaded wagon out of a ditch. At 15, Cyr moved with his family to Lowell, Massachusetts, a French colony south of the border. According to another story, Louis lost his job at a sawmill when the irate owner got tired of his workers abandoning their labour to watch young Louis perform escalating feats of strength.

Louis met and married his petite wife in Lowell, but found the employment grass greener back in Québec. He moved to Montréal and found work as a police officer in the rough Sainte Cunegonde district. One night, Cyr showed up at the station with three criminals in tow. They had tried to resist arrest, but Cyr took one under each arm and carried the third in a vice-like grip in front of him, marching the three, off the ground, to the station. The news of the arrest got around, spreading Cyr's growing reputation.

Cyr began to tour through Canada, the United States, and Europe. Because most of his exploits were in head-to-head competitions, they do not tell what he might have done had he been pushed harder, but the list of feats is an impressive one, nevertheless. His trademark lift was to raise with back and shoulders a platform loaded with weights; in 1888 he lifted 3,526 (over 1599 kg) pounds of pig iron in this fashion. But his most spectacular lifts were of the largest men he could find in his audiences. Eighteen fat men stood on his platform in Boston, a total of 4,300 pounds (over 1950 kg). In 1894, he lifted 4,562 pounds (over 2069 kg) of corpulent manhood in like fashion.

On one occasion he raised 987 pounds (over 447 kg) with one hand. On another he lifted, again one-handed, a barrel of wet sand weighing 432 pounds (196 kg) and put it on his shoulder. Several times he lifted 550 pounds (250 kg) with one finger. Another famous Cyr stunt was to hitch a horse to each arm and hold them to a standstill. At a public display in Montréal, he bested the trick by holding four Québec farm horses, a pair pulling on each arm, without budging.

In his prime Cyr weighed 315 pounds, though he stood an inch under six feet (183 cm). His thighs were as thick as many men's waists: 33 inches (84 cm) around. Relaxed, his chest was 60 inches (152 cm), but he could expand it another seven inches (18cm). His waist was 47 inches (119 cm), his calves 28 (71 cm), his biceps 22 and-a-half (57 cm), and his forearms an incredible 19 and a half inches (49.5 cm). One defeated opponent, the heralded August W. Johnson of Sweden, said, "I have conquered strongmen all over the world, but this time I have met an elephant."

Louis Cyr humbled all such opponents until his retirement at age 45. But he could not defeat his appetites. One biographer guessed that he consumed an average of twelve pounds of meat each day. He once devoured an entire suckling pig in twenty minutes. He staged eating contests that were trials of strength in themselves.

The eating caught up with him. Plagued by asthma and heart trouble, unable to sleep in a bed and, at the end, subsisting solely on milk, Louis Cyr passed away in 1912, age 49. Had he lived in during the era when weight lifting was regulated and carefully monitored - or when proper training and diet were observed - there is no telling what records the strong man from Québec might have set.

trong men and women are a great part of Québec folklore, as well as history. Legend and fact merge in the tales of Jos Montferrand and Louis Cyr, as well as in those who followed them. Hector Décarie was the last challenger for Cyr's title, and some versions of the contest call it a stand-off, with Cyr himself declaring Déclarie "the strongest man." At least one woman, Mme Cloutier, was able to emulate one of Louis Cyr's exploits by restraining two 1,400 pound (635 kg) horses. Claude Grenache is the hero in a number of tales of strength. In one, a man walking by Grenache as the big man is plowing his field asks for directions. He is astounded when the strong man calmly lifts his iron plow out of the ground and points the way with it. Feats of strength had such prestige in Québec that La Presse had nearly 200,000 competitors for its 1907 contest to see how far a person could carry a 200 pound (91 kg) bag of salt on their shoulders.

Strength competitons were not limited to weight lifting in the nineteenth century. One of the great stories in Canadian sports is about a tug-of-war team. Five farmers from the Ontario town of Zorra got together to compete in local fairs. By 1888 they won the North American title. Years later, when their average age was 45, the five burly Scots could not resist the invitation from the Chicago World's Fair to meet the champions of the U.S. and Europe. In 1893, in a series of heroic matches lasting up to 35 minutes each, the "Mighty Men of Zorra" were declared the undisputed world's Tug-of-War champions.

Another test of strength that has a colourful [some would say bloody] history in Canada is boxing. Tommy Burns of Hanover, Ontario became world heavyweight champion in 1906, despite the fact that he was only 1.70 m. tall and weighed only 73 kg. Burns was not only tough and skilled, but also smart; he taunted his opponents into making many mistakes. He finally lost his title in 1908 to the legendary Jack Johnson, one of the greatest and most controversial fighters of all time.

Sam Langford of Weymouth Falls, Nova Scotia should have been the heavyweight champion, but racial prejudice kept title matches from him. Langford fought between 250 and 642 bouts. He once fought three bouts, in three different rings, in the same night. He was often forced to "carry" white fighters for a few rounds in order to secure matches against white opponents, which he would then effortlessly win. "The Uncrowned Champion of the World" fought for 21 years, even after he was blind from the punishment he had taken.

Nat Fleischer, longtime editor of Ring Magazine rated Langford as the seventh-best heavyweight of all time; he rated Halifax's George Dixon as the best bantamweight ever. During his 20-year career, "Little Chocolate" was: the first man to win more than two boxing titles; the first man of African descent to win a world boxing title; the first man to fight in more than 30 title matches; and the first of all modern fighters to lose, then regain, a title. Like Langford, Dixon had to fight often. In one week he fought 22 bouts.