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Rotary Club guest speaker talks about the strongest man in the world

Date: 3/5/2015

EAST LONGMEADOW – Imagine being distantly related to the strongest man in the world. Well, imagination has nothing to do with it for Peter Benton, who presented a speech about his distant relative, French Canadian strongman Louis Cyr, to the Rotary Club of East Longmeadow.

Benton, an East Longmeadow Rotary Club member and Longmeadow resident, said Cyr is his first cousin twice removed or his grandfather’s first cousin. Cyr had a career as one of the strongest men in North America between the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Cyr was born in Saint-Cyprien-de-Napierville in Quebec, Canada in 1863 and in his adolescence he showed an aptitude for physical strength while working at lumber camps and on farms, he added.

“Louis Cyr and my grandfather were both born in Saint-Cyprien-de-Napierville, which is now just Napierville and is about 20 miles from Montreal,” Benton said. “Louis Cyr was the second of 17 kids and my grandfather was the 10th or 11th of 14. So, they were separated by 28 years in age.”

When Cyr was 17 years old he challenged the strongest man in Canada at that time, David Michaud of Quebec, Benton noted.

“This 17-year-old kid beat him,” he added. “They used to lift stones. Louis lifted a stone that was 458 pounds. He brought it up [to his shoulder]. So, he’s anointed Canada’s strongest man at 17 years old. Well, that’s just the start of it.”

Cyr went on to Boston shortly after his victory over Michaud to enter a completion, which he also won.  

“His mother decided that he should let his her grow,” Benton said. “So, he let his hair grow long like Samson. So, it was kind of a spectacle in his early career.”

After Boston, he decided to return to Montreal, where several men attacked him, he added.

“The thugs didn’t fare so well and he basically tied him up and through them in the police station,” Benton said.

For about a year and a half, Cyr served as a Montreal police officer, he noted. Following that job, he went on tour with a troupe that included a weightlifter, a wrestler, and a boxer.

“What happened, almost the first night he was out [was] the guys in the bad part of town attacked him; a couple of gangs [with] knives, hatchets, and everything,” Benton said. “He just took a couple of these guys and tore the living daylights out of them.

“He took one guy as a battering ram and that guy got killed and the guy he was with, the other cop, got killed,” Benton continued. “He basically ended up carrying a couple of these guys to the police station under his arms; couple of 200 pound guys and they never messed with him again, he continued.”

Benton said some of Cyr’s feats include lifting a platform on his back holding 18 men weighing 4,337 pounds and lifting a 534-pound weight with one finger.

During his prime years as a strongman at the age of 32, Cyr had a 22.5-inch neck width, a 60-inch chest width, weighed about 310 pounds, and had 33-inch thighs, he added. Cyr could eat seven pounds of meat in a single meal.

“He eventually ended up going to Europe and challenged everybody and the ones that met his challenge, he beat,” Benton said. “The ones that wouldn’t dare [challenge him] conceded.”

He was designated the strongest man in the world after that time, Benton noted.

He is considered to be one of the strongest men in recorded history.