Guy Lafleur’s national funeral and how Montreal is having to prepare for it

A national funeral will be held for Montreal Canadiens legend Guy Lafleur next week, and authorities will be taking extra precautions to prepare for those who attend.

A national funeral will be held for Montreal Canadiens legend Guy Lafleur next week, but how do local authorities prepare for such a high-profile event in a hockey town?

André Durocher, a retired Montreal police inspector, explained that extensive planning and a “colossal amount of work” has to be done in “a relatively short amount of time.”

“So the day of the funeral — although it is a time to pay tribute and to mourn — if you see a lot of people with bags under their eyes. There may be people that have been working for the past week planning this event,” he said in an interview with Global News Morning on Tuesday.

The funeral for the late hockey great is set for May 3 at Mary Queen of the World Cathedral in downtown Montreal. Quebec Premier François Legault said the national honour “testifies to all the admiration and all the love that Quebecers have” for Lafleur.

According to the province of Quebec, a national funeral is “reserved for people who, for example, have made an impact on political life, as decided by the government.”

Ahead of the funeral, Lafleur will lie in state at the team’s home arena, the Bell Centre, on May 1 from noon to 8 p.m. and then again from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on May 2.

Those coordinating the funeral take into account different scenarios, Durocher said. He has worked behind the scenes of similar events, including Canadiens star Jean Béliveau’s national funeral in 2014. He will not be involved in the funeral for Lafleur.

There must be plans for crowd control, escape routes, and road closings in the downtown core. They also have to prepare for any kind of potential threat, though Durocher says that is unlikely.