Most Canadians in their late fifties and beyond remember where they were when it happened. Some 16 million viewers — more than 70 percent of the population — were glued to TV sets at home, at school, at work, and outside shop windows. In Stratford, Ontario, William Hutt had just finished the transformative storm scene in act 3 of King Lear when he turned to the audience and intoned, “Ladies and gentlemen, Canada has just beaten the Russians 6–5.” Moments before, in Moscow’s Luzhniki Palace of Sports, some 3,000 raucous Canadians cheered Paul Henderson as he scored with only thirty-four seconds left to win the eighth game and claim victory in the Summit Series, between Canadian pros and the best of the Soviet Union.
In central Russia, it was late evening, Thursday, September 28, 1972, and I was there in the press seats as a twenty-nine-year-old reporter covering the contest for Time, straining to see the action at the far end of the rink. Below to my...
Robert Lewis spent eight years as a Time correspondent and twenty-five years at Maclean’s, the last seven as editor-in-chief. He is the author of Power, Prime Ministers and the Press: The Battle for Truth on Parliament Hill.
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