The Last Stand of Louis Cyr, the World's Strongest Man

On the evening of February 26, 1906, four thousand people packed into the pavilion at Parc Sohmer in Montreal's east end. Hundreds more were turned away, but all were coverging to see an event that was part miracle, part funeral.

The man shuffling toward the stage was 42 years old, barely able to walk, and by most medical accounts should not have been alive at all. His legs had been partially paralyzed and his kidneys were failing. For years Louis Cyr had survived on little more than milk, and yet there was, the man who had held the title of strongest in the world, preparing to defend it one last time against a hard-bodied 26-year-old named Hector Décarie. Nobody in that crowd needed an introduction; Cyr had been famous longer than most of them had been alive.

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