“I had no temptation of looking somewhere else to play.” | Gauthier is home in Winnipeg

There’s a lot about Shayne Gauthier’s story which seems familiar.

Gauthier, who scribbled his name on a one-year contract extension with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers this week, tells a tale of becoming a professional athlete that includes all the usual elements, from hard work and dedication to a loyal family providing the foundation of encouragement and support.

He lives in Winnipeg full-time now, has found the love of his life in Katie, a local French immersion teacher, and is working as an apprentice electrician with Allco Electrical Ltd.

“After six-seven years I really like how things have worked out for me here,” Gauthier explained in a chat with bluebombers.com. “I like what’s going in Winnipeg and I like how I’ve grown with this team and want to keep doing it.

“I had no temptation of looking somewhere else to play.”

That’s a refrain that also sounds familiar, given the number of pending Blue Bombers free agents who have already signed extensions in the last couple of weeks.

But there are more layers to Gauthier’s story that are worth telling beyond him finding a home with the Blue Bombers and in Winnipeg. And it begins with this: when Gauthier first arrived here for rookie camp in 2016, he couldn’t speak English. Like… none.

“When I first got here, my first couple of years my English was really bad,” said Gauthier. “Really bad.”

Actually, let’s rewind just a bit further to the days before the 2016 CFL Draft when the Blue Bombers selected him in the fourth round, 28th overall, just to punctuate the point.

“During my CFL combine, those interviews teams do with prospects almost killed me because I was so anxious, so stressed,” Gauthier explained. “Actually, Winnipeg was my best interview… they were the team that made me feel the most comfortable.

“But after I got drafted by Winnipeg you have about two weeks between that and the start of training camp. I was so scared. I didn’t know how I would react or how it would be. At the time there were a couple of French players on the team in Julian Feoli-Gudino and Christophe Normand… they helped me a lot. They helped me so much with what the coaches were saying and everything I had to do to make the team.

“I owe so much to those guys for helping me in those rough times.”

A little background here for context…

Gauthier’s hometown of Dobleau-Mistassini is nestled on Lac Saint-Jean in northern Quebec, a straight shot some 340 kilometres north of Quebec City.

He spoke exclusively French growing up, attended French schools, and played his college football at Université Laval, a predominantly Francophone institution.

He was a solid college player, too, as a two-time conference all-star and a CIS (now U-Sports) Second-Team All-Canadian as a senior.
Yet when he arrived in Winnipeg for rookie camp, he was like a stranger in a strange land.

“I could understand what people were saying, but when it came to speaking it was a completely different sphere of the language,” he said. “At the beginning, I had to translate everything from French to English in my head before I was able to speak. If you do that, you’re late on everything because the time it takes you to translate, they’ve moved on already.

“It was so hard at the beginning. It also made me look, a lot, like a guy who didn’t talk to his teammates… it wasn’t because I didn’t want to, it was because I wasn’t able to do it. Then as I got more comfortable with certain people and my English was getting better, I could show more of my personality.

“One thing I always did through that was always making sure I was at least giving 100 percent so that everyone could see how hard I was working. That was my way to get accepted, even if I wasn’t speaking a lot.”

Gauthier did enough to crack the Blue Bombers roster as a rookie, dressing for nine games in ’16 and then a dozen more a year later.

His English improved, too, but every offseason he returned home to Dobleau-Mistassini where he spoke exclusively in French.

“My first couple of years here, by the end of the season my English was getting better and better and I was getting more comfortable,” he said. “But the year I met my wife, I went back to Quebec that winter but kept speaking English with her all the time over FaceTime and I got better. And then I came bilingual in the year I stayed here the whole time just from being in an English environment.

“The day I started thinking in English it became so much easier. I remember Jackson Jeffcoat telling me in training camp the year after I had stayed here in the winter that my English was so much better. The trick is to dive into it and then stay somewhere long enough that you have to figure it out.”

It could be said that Gauthier’s evolution as a linebacker is still unfolding. He is coming off a season where he was used in a couple of defensive packages, getting him more defensive snaps than at any other time in his pro career. And he was productive, too, as part of the stingiest defence in the CFL.

“To be a ‘Mike’ linebacker (middle linebacker) you’ve got to be a good communicator and be able to speak on the field,” Gauthier said. “Honestly, the fact that I wasn’t speaking English well in my first few years made it a little harder for me to demonstrate what I can do on defence. Then after four-five-six years, I became bilingual and able to communicate more and was more confident on the field so that when my name was called and did my business it was good enough for them to still see that I have some potential and was put into the defensive rotation in a couple of packages.

“I’m still learning, but I think I’m getting better with every snap I get moving forward.”

Gauthier, it’s worth noting, was late to find the game. He played hockey as a kid and also participated in judo – his dad Patrice and his brother Dave both have their black belts, sister Melanie has a brown belt – before turning to football when he was 14.

He fell in love with football instantly, playing in Dobleau-Mistassini in the spring and then changing schools and living with a teammate’s family so he could play again in the fall in Saint-Georges-de-Beauce, some 4 ½ hours from home.

Asked about that ability to grind, to willingly roll up his sleeves and just get busy whether it’s on the football field or learning English while becoming an electrician thousands of kilometers away in Winnipeg, and Gauthier points to one source: his father Patrice and his mother Marie-Anne.

“They taught me everything, pushed me in everything to try and be my best,” he said. “There’s just one way to do things and it’s all-in. That’s what I try to do.

“You know what? Since I’ve been with the Bombers I really like the man I’ve become over the years. Those first couple of years I knew I wanted to play football, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life. I knew football wasn’t going to last forever and once I started planning for that everything fell into place.

“I like what I’m doing now. I can still work out because the company I’m working for allows me to do that. I’m really happy where I am right now. And I love being a Blue Bomber.”