On the last day of Black History Month

Jackie Robinson was honoured as the man who broke the colour barrier in Major League Baseball as the first African-American player in the league. Ironically, the tribute did not occur on American soil. In fact, the accolades weren't specifically bestowed on Robinson, but rather to the fine people who welcomed and supported Jackie during the virulent and violent times that permeated the United States in that era.

In the off-season of 1945, Jackie Robinson was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers and was relegated to their Triple-A farm team, the Montreal Royals. Spring training for the Royals took place in Daytona Beach, Florida. Robinson's presence was controversial in racially charged Florida. As he was not allowed to stay with his teammates at the team hotel, he lodged instead at the home of a local black politician. In Sanford, Florida, the police chief threatened to cancel games if Robinson wasn't taken off the Roylas' rsoter. As a result, Robinson was sent back to Daytona Beach. In Jacksonville, the stadium was padlocked shut without warning on game day, by order of the city's Parks and Public Property director. In DeLand, a scheduled day game was called off, supposedly because of faulty electrical lighting.

Although he often faced hostility while on road trips (the Royals were forced to cancel a Southern exhibition tour, for example), the Montreal fan base enthusiastically supported Robinson. Jackie's presence on the field was a boon to attendance; more than one million people went to games involving Robinson in 1946, an amazing figure by International League (Triple-A) standards.

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After a spring training in the segregated South, newlywed Rachel Robinson went to look at an apartment in a white neighborhood in Montreal. A French-Canadian woman who spoke English welcomed her to the home.

''She received me so pleasantly,'' Jackie Robinson's widow recalled. ''Then she poured tea for me and agreed to rent the apartment to me furnished and she insisted I use her things -- like her linens and her china. It was an extraordinary welcome to Canada.''

The quaint Montreal duplex that served as sanctuary to the Robinsons during the early part of his struggle to break baseball's racial barrier is being recognized by the U.S. government. That chapter in American civil rights will be celebrated Monday when U.S. diplomats unveil a commemorative plaque at the apartment the couple called home in the summer of 1946.

The event will be attended by the U.S. ambassador to Canada, Montreal's mayor and Robinson's daughter as part of Black History Month.

Robinson, now 88, recalls arriving in Montreal after having survived the Jim Crow South during spring training in Florida.

There they were met with racism at every turn: on whites-only flights, in hotels and restaurants and ballparks. In some cities, they were chased out of town. The couple was twice bumped off airplanes while trying to get to Daytona.

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"This is especially a special moment," said Sharon Robinson, the couple's daughter, who is vice-chairman of the Jackie Robinson Foundation. "I had never been to the home where my parents lived, so this is an emotional experience.

"My mother and father had such positive memories about their time in Montreal," she said. "To have it recognized where they lived in a neighbourhood that welcomed them and supported them then is quite emotional. I'm from Chicago and baseball was a very important part of my life growing up and this part of baseball was particularly important to everybody in the United States," Jacobson said. "So it's an honour to be here and to be able to celebrate this and in particular to be able to celebrate what the people of Montreal did and what they showed to Americans at a time when we weren't particularly as tolerant as we ought to have been."

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