First Summit was held in 2007, bringing together Canadiens fans from across North America and beyond who follow Habs on Gazette website.
The annual Hockey Inside/Out Fan Summit will be held this weekend, bringing together Canadiens fans from across North America and beyond who follow the Canadiens on The Gazette’s website.
This year, the HI/O Fan Summit will include two games at the Bell Centre, with the Canadiens playing the Ottawa Senators on Saturday (7 p.m., SNE, Citytv, TVA Sports) and the Pittsburgh Penguins on Monday (7:30 p.m., Amazon Prime Video, RDS).
All Canadiens fans are invited to attend both events at Hurley’s.
Ian Cobb, an 80-year-old retired businessman who grew up in Montreal and lives in Belleville, Ont., organized the first HI/O Summit in 2007.
For health reasons, Cobb handed over much of the organizing for this year’s HI/O Fan Summit to Mary McGill, another huge Canadiens fan who grew up in Montreal and now lives in Ottawa. She was helped by Paul Kinnmonth, who lives in Montreal, and Rob Hing and his wife, Alayne, who live in Calgary. Cobb will still attend this year’s summit.
In 2015, fans who attend the HI/O Fan Summit donated money so that Alex Smidt and his father, John, who live in Regina, could attend the event. The previous year, Alex almost died from meningitis. Alex’s father put up a post in 2014 in the comments section of the HI/O website asking fellow Canadiens fans to pray for his son. Cobb and other fans decided to do more than that and they were able to raise enough money to bring Alex and his father to the 2015 HI/O Fan Summit after the boy had recovered from meningitis.
“What Ian Cobb and that group at HI/O did was absolutely outstanding and unbelievable,” Alex’s father said about being able to attend the HI/O Fan Summit and having his son meet his favourite player, P.K. Subban, after the game that year.