I do loves me some good old-fashioned wrasslin’.

My grandfather, waaaay back in the early 80’s, used to take my brother and myself out visiting after church on Sunday — we would always stop and visit with his friends up in the mountains of Quebec. One of them, Cecil, would always be watching wrestling while laying on his couch in the living room, so my brother and I would sit in front of the TV and watch with him… it could have been ‘Maple Leaf Wrestling’, but I’m pretty it was ‘Lutte Internationale’ (or ‘Promotions Varoussac’) [wiki bio here], an independent wrestling organization based in Quebec, from 1980-1987, when it closed down because of the influence of the evil empire of WWF / WWE.

In 1980, the Quebec-based promotion featured a match between Andre The Giant and Hulk Hogan, almost a decade before they met at WrestleMania III. I missed that one, but I do remember watching Andre wrestle, and the Rougeau Brothers as well, while we were visiting Cecil. Years later, in the mid-90’s, my brother were living in Ottawa, and we’d get together at his place on Monday nights to watch WWF Monday Night Raw. I think the last time I watched WWF / WWE was the year the Pay-Per-View WrestleMania featured ‘Big Show’ entering the ring to Hulk Hogan’s theme music, and dressed up as the former Superstar. It was just a little much.

Since 2014, I’ve taken photos for the ‘Great North Wrestling’ company, and for it’s owner, Devon “Hannibal the Cannibal” Nicholson [his Wiki here]. The GNW promotion came to Hawkesbury a few times, where Devin wrestled ‘A.J. Styles’, and Dan ‘The Beast’ Severin [see my photos of Dan here]… one of my favourite photos I’ve ever taken was of Devin and Styles wrestling against each other [see it here] (forgive me for the giant copyright). The first time I took photos for the show, I was really really impressed by the wrestlers taking huge falls on the concrete floor of Hawkesbury’s ‘Robert Hartley Arena’. It was really cool.

The GNW crew were doing it for very little money, basically just the love of professional wrestling. Much like Devin’s promotion, the Hawkesbury / Grenville based ‘Au Sommet de la Lutte’ [Facebook page here] promotion (ASDLL), has been operating locally since 2021, and they have no problem hitting the concrete as well. They performed at the VKHFair this past summer, and put on an exceptional show, and I had a great time taking photos of them.

…in a lot of the photos, you can see my oldest son, Victor, sitting in the front row with his best friend, Bryce. Victor is wearing the Red Bull t-shirt, and black cap. So wrasslin’ is kind of crossing generations now… which is cool.

So… just click on the first photo to get the carousel going. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did taking them… after a looooooong hiatus from VKHPhotos, it’s great to be productive again.