There was a time in this fair land, the one where hockey runs deep in our bloodstreams, Acheter moins cher WoW Gold when the great debate revolved around which was the greater franchise: the Toronto Maple Leafs or the Montreal Canadiens.

While the topic can still plum the depths of emotion among die-hard fans of one stripe or the other, there's really no debating this ¨C the Canadiens are hockey's most successful franchise, bar none, with 24 Stanley Cups won (Toronto's next best at 13).

And, while the blue and white has its proud traditions, the bleu, blanc et rouge has a history that covers a full century. The subtitle of this thorough, highly readable history is "100 years of glory," even if not every one of them has qualified as particularly glorious.

There have been hard times in Hab-dom, maple story mesos including financial squeezes off and on, especially the one that saw the franchise pass into the hands of American ownership. For awhile there, not so long ago, the Habs were less than really competitive. Author D'Arcy Jenish, who lives in Ajax, is careful to tell the whole story, not only the feel-good chapters.

"D'Arcy Jenish gets it right," writes Canadiens current GM, Bob Gainey, in the book's introduction. "He pushes aside the cobwebs of memory. He has sanded and scraped away the layers of time. He has resisted the fluffy, romantic versions which have become common, and delivered us the nitty-gritty, real-deal story ¨C the good, and the not so good. I tell you this because I know."