Herald Marker

scotto

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The Herald Marker is big piece of Beach history going back many decades. It was used for the original Bay Road Race and used as a curb stop at the Dynes Tavern until resident Jim Howlett discovered it and requested that it take it's place back on the blvd.
Dynes owner Gord Foster had the Marker installed in the front of the tavern, but what we didn't know was how well he anchored it to the ground.
When last owner decided that it was end of the Dynes, we believed that the Marker belonged to the Beach and we tried to have removed and then stored until it could placed back.
The first effort was waste of time, it wouldn't move an inch with a towmotor. We dug it out and found it incased in concrete, the same concrete slab that supported the Dynes' sign.
We had to try something else, which ended up being a Beach resident's Bobcat. When we returned with the Bobcat, we found that someone had tried remove the marker by using a concrete saw. Two cuts that didn't make it all the way through made our job much easier.
The Marker was finally out of the ground and was left in storage for a few years and last week Jim Howlett with his assistants returned the marker to the blvd, not exactly where it was, but on the blvd.
 

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scotto

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I am ignorant of the significance of the Herald Marker. Was Herald a place name?
From the book, Pathway To Skyway(page 270);
"When the Herald (a Hamilton newspaper) road race around the bay was an annual event, Eddie Cotter was a frequent entrant and invariably was among the leaders. Of historical interest, a black granite 15-mile marker for West Plains Road still stands in 1997 on the north side of Plains Road."
 

scotto

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Another

"In 1894 the Hamilton Herald and a cigar store owner named Billy Carroll teamed up to sponsor a 30 km road race. Held on Christmas Day the first Around the Bay Road Race was a rousing success. It is not known if the publicity from the promotion of the race increased cigar sales at Carroll's store."

Read more;
http://mikewilkins.hubpages.com/hub/In-1900-Caffery-and-Sherring-dominated-Boston(lost link)
 

scotto

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Spectator article from 1954, I wonder where all the Herald stones ended up?


Preserve Old Stone Markers In Road Race
Hamilton Beach, Dec, 20 - Police Chief Howard Nickling has recovered many old Herald stones placed to mark the distance across the Beach from the Herald office when the marathon races were run around Hamilton Bay. The proprietor of the New Dynes Tavern allowed Chief Nickling to unearth these landmarks on the property of the Tavern. They have been taken with others to the Beach Commission office to keep as part of the history of the Beach.

Another;
http://www.boston.com/zope_homepage/sports/marathon_archive/history/1900.shtml
 

David O'Reilly

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#8
scotto
05-15-2011, 02:10 PM
I am ignorant of the significance of the Herald Marker. Was Herald a place name?

From the book, Pathway To Skyway(page 270);
"When the Herald (a Hamilton newspaper) road race around the bay was an annual event, Eddie Cotter was a frequent entrant and invariably was among the leaders. Of historical interest, a black granite 15-mile marker for West Plains Road still stands in 1997 on the north side of Plains Road."
________________________________________
scotto
05-15-2011, 03:10 PM
"In 1894 the Hamilton Herald and a cigar store owner named Billy Carroll teamed up to sponsor a 30 km road race. Held on Christmas Day the first Around the Bay Road Race was a rousing success. It is not known if the publicity from the promotion of the race increased cigar sales at Carroll's store."

Read more;

http://hubpages.com/hub/In-1900-Caffery-and-Sherring-dominated-Boston

Here is a Wikipedia page with some history of the race, and a picture of the 1912 winner (Jim Duffy) standing on the canal bridge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Around_the_Bay_Road_Race
 

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scotto

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Scott,

Were pedestrians permitted to use the Hamilton and Northwestern Railroad’s swing bridge? This is something I’ve wondered about for some time, but more soe today when reading the ‘Herald Marker’ thread, in which your post says that the ‘Around the Bay Road Race’ began in 1894. This was two years before the road swing bridge was constructed.

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I will say yes they were allowed to use the bridge, but I will check through some old newspapers to see if I can find proof of that.
 

Drogo

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I think David asked this question

Scott
I think I saw David asking about walking over the train (?) bridge. Here is an answer. May 26, 1880 Spectator.

A Warning to Intruders

Monday afternoon, at the Beach, a young man named Wm. Holleran attempted to cross over the railway bridge, when he was accosted by Capt. Campbell, the caretaker, and informed that it was against the rules for any person not actually employed there to go across the bridge. The fellow refused to go away, and the captain took him by his shoulder to put him off. Holleran turned on Campbell and assaulted him, breaking his watch chain and tearing his shirt. A brother of Capt. Campbell, who came to his assistance, was also attacked by Holleran and kicked pretty badly. County constable McNair was called on and Holleran was brought by the cars to the city. He was admitted to bail, and Tuesday morning appeared before his Worship to answer the charge of assault. Capt. Campbell testified that , in addition to what has already been described, he had been made the victim of most abusive language in front of a number of ladies and gentlemen. He did not wish to press the charge, but merely to make known the fact that he will be protected in the discharge of his duty. The Magistrate, fined the defendant in the sum of $10 and costs, of sixty days.

From Halinet
 
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scotto

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David does bring up a question, if the railway bridge was off-limits to pedestrian traffic, how did the runners for the Herald Race get across the canal as there wasn't a bridge for another two years. Checking old Globe and Mail articles shows that the first race they reported on was in 1896 and William Sherring didn't even enter, it seems he was in another race the day before in Dundas finishing third.
 

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Drogo

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I suppose that "put on their Jesus boots and walk on water" isn't a valid answer but as they close roads and everything today they might have gotten special permission with someone who tended the railway for the scheduled trains or they got on the ferry and crossed. Swimming was another option. Fact is the ferry ran until 1896 and it is only logical that when a bridge opened the job ended. It was pass it's time.
 

scotto

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It wouldn't be much of a race if had to wait for the ferry and swimming across the canal in December would be a bad idea. I tried to check at the library, but there isn't anything on microfilm for those years.
 

scotto

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Race of the Century

Posted with permission from the Hamilton Spectator
_____________________________________________________

Looking back at the first Around The Bay Race

James Elliott
The Hamilton Spectator
March 26, 1994

If Billy Marshall were to run the course of tomorrow's Around the Bay Road Race, would he recognize anything?
When the winner of the inaugural marathon loped around the bay on Christmas Day, 1894, besting a field of 13 to win a $25 silver cup, Hamilton and Burlington were vastly different places than they are today.
Large stretches of the 30-kilometre (19-mile) course ran through rich farmland, most of the industrial complexes and high-speed transportation corridors that now define the bayshore didn't exist. And, undoubtedly, the waters of what was then called Burlington Bay were a lot cleaner.
And yet much of what the 24-year-old soldier/sportsman saw that clear, cold, windy day, endures.
Marking the original route today are several landmarks that guided runners a century ago, including some noted watering holes, a pioneer mansion, a nautical lighthouse and one of the first pumping stations in North America. When young Marshall came to the post as the class of a field of rank local amateurs, it's unlikely he realized he was launching a grand sports tradition unmatched in North America.
TURNED OUT IN CANVAS knickerbockers and tennis shoes. the72-kilo (160-pound) Marshall, a member of the Thirteenth Battalion (later to become the Royal Hamilton light Infantry), was an early favorite.
The streets surrounding the Opera house block on James Street North were lined. Despite the cold, windy weather and the fact it was Christmas morning, thousands lined the streets m James down to Barton and on to Sherman.
Over the next century, the race would attract fields that were much more illustrious—indeed, some of the best in the world would win in Hamilton, legendary figures like Longboat, Sherring and Caffrey—but it's doubtful any subsequent competitions could match that inaugural race for sheer exuberance and rowdy high spirits.
In addition to the thousands of onlookers who jammed the downtown start/finish, there were wild west cowboys, bicyclists and countless buggies strung out around the course. After a day of watching wagons run into bicycles run into racers, the Spectator reporter could only marvel at "such a congregation of crazy drivers and riders."
THE RACE ITSELF, sponsored by the feisty, upstart Hamilton Herald, Canada's original one-cent newspaper, was the brainchild of the paper's co-founding brothers, Robert and John Harris. Conceived on one of their regular Sunday morning walks around the bay, the brothers saw a chance to cash in on the burgeoning popularity of the 'sport papers were calling "pedestrianism".
A total of 29 "peds", including Robert Harris and members of several local athletic dubs, anted up the 50-cent entry fee for a chance at the $25 silver cup and three boxes of cigars put up as prizes.
By 9:30, Christmas morning, a bakers-dozen had assembled in the cold outside the Grand Opera House on James Street North. The bookmakers, Davis and Haskins, were still taking bets. Marshall and Harris were co-favorites at 3-to-l. Forty minutes later, when John Harris fired the starting gun, the field could barely move through the crush that spilled onto the course several blocks up James and along Barton as far as Sherman.
AS THE RUNNERS moved off, hundreds of young men jammed the trollies and followed behind, cheek and jowl with hundreds of horse-drawn rigs and men on horseback. Leading the parade, Tuckett's Mounted Scouts, sponsored by the local cigarette manufacturer and turned out in a wild west costume, cleared a path for the runners.
Clearly the organizers had no idea how wildly popular an around-the-bay footrace would be because contemporary accounts talk of spectators creating a spectacle that consistently overshadowed he race itself. Crowd control was virtually non-existent.
The Boxing Day edition of the Spec, while managing to avoid any mention of rival Herald as the sponsor, devoted nearly two columns of type to coverage, including a scathing indictment of vehicular deportment.
"Never at any one time had there been such a congregation of crazy drivers and riders congregated in Hamilton. From the start of the race to the finish, complaints were numerous and bitter as to their conduct.
"The mounted patrol endeavored to make of itself a mounted cowboy aggregation racing and running wild over the entire course. Drivers of rigs (buck-boards) were no less foolish and several accidents were reported."
On the Beach Strip, the city's truant officer was amazed to see another buggy drive up and over his rig, "considerably damaging his slash board. The driver of the intruding vehicle whipped up his horse and went on without waiting to explain or apologize." The second who was leading Marshall on his wheel near the Valley Inn "was run down by a furiously driven rig and his wheel badly smashed. He was thrown in the ditch and escaped injury." A bicyclist, following the racers, collided with a horse near Sherman and Barton. "The shock knocked him off his wheel and in front of a passing buggy which ran him over. He was badly bruised and cut," the newspaper reported. At the Valley Inn, a man ran out in the road to shake Marshall's hand and was promptly run over by the bicyclist who was pacing the runner.
As for the race itself, the Harris brothers had worked out the around-the-bay route — estimated at 19 or 20 miles — as an arduous blend of town and country terrain.
Barton Street downtown, today retains much of the late 19th Century style, though the tinsmiths and glass-blowers have been replaced with secondhand shops and pizzerias. In 1894, there wasn't much east of Sherman until the racetrack— now replaced by the Centre Mall — and the Jockey Club which survives today as the Oakwood. Turning north at the Jockey Club, the open fields now house the towering stacks and giant green plumbing of the mighty Dofasco complex. This is pure Hamilton. Unapologetic, unvarnished. Tough, gritty and definitely not pretty. At Woodward Avenue, the cut-stone grandeur of Thomas Keefer's pumping station is still imposing but now shares the neighborhood with the mountainous beige and charcoal slag heaps, incidental harvest of the steel industry.
Under the QEW, the lake now in sight, discourse turns onto the Beach Strip, a little worse for wear but still possessed of considerable charm, to pass Dynes' Hotel.
There's a heavy soft coal smell in the air, and the old tavern's now sheathed in grey siding and sports a monster satellite dish, but in the roadside grass nearby there's concrete evidence of another era — a tumbledown stone marker bearing the legend "HERALD — 5-M-V".
The strip's permanently in the shadow of the Skyway but there are still hints of faded elegance in the surviving homes that attest to an age when the Beach was a place of leisure and high style. IN THE BEGINNING, runners got to cross the ship's canal on the railway bridge, everyone else got to cross with the ferryman and admire the stone canal lighthouse. At the end of the Beach Strip, Joseph Brant's 18th Century landmark house is gone but a lookalike museum stands nearby looking a bit lost in the midst of a hospital complex.
The rolling farmland of a century ago has been replaced by malls, rows of town housing, gas stations and convenience stores. The course today winds through affluent Burlington neighborhoods down past the park where Robert Cavalier de la Salle visited 325 years ago.
At the 16-mile point, the course follows the original route dropping down to the Valley Inn, across the noisiest small bridge in the province. To climb Heartbreak Hill on the other side to York Boulevard, across the High Level Bridge unto Burlington Heights and the postcard perspective of the bay. In 1894, when Billy Marshall broke away from the field and came down York alone leading dozens and buggies and bicycles, he was cheered by mass crowds all the way downtown. His time was two hours and 14 minutes. Described in the Spec as "hard as nails," Marshall turned up at a victory banquet that night to accept the silver cup. Place and show got boxes of cigars.
AS A LAST WORD, the Spec wrapped up the inaugural race with an observation that has "So successful was the
event that the race will likely be run annually. By donating the cup, the promoters of this race have created an interest in go-as-you-please races, which will not die out for some time." Indeed it will not.


Herald218.jpg
 

scotto

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Attached is a picture sent in by Sharla of the old railway swing bridge, note the sign on the right side, no trespassing.

Photographer, Gerald Little.

 

scotto

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Another Story

From, Hamilton Centennial Official Programme 1846-1946
__________________________________________________________




Shades of
CAFFERY, LONGBOAT, DUFFY


FROM 1894 until 1916, a day in each fall was marked on the calendars of Hamilton people as an occasion particularly worthy of note. The penciled memorandum said: "Herald road race."
It became an established custom for parents and children to find themselves a place somewhere on the course of 19-mile around-the-Bay run and cheer themselves hoarse as contestant after contestant padded by.
"It's Longboat!" the word would speed, and, as the silent Indian trotted methodically onward, shouts of "Attaboy Tom" would rend the air. As years passed, names of other popular favourites would be taken up just as Longboat's had succeeded Caffery's and Sherring's in times before.
Duffy, whose record for the old Herald course, still stands (1 hour, 46 minutes, 15 seconds), winner of the 1912 and 1913 events, and Corkery, winner in 1915 and 1916, were heroes of their day, as was Jamieson, 1914 winner, who, like Marshall, 1894 winner, and Jimmy Duffy, lost his life overseas in the first Great War in the services of the Land of the Maple Leaf.
The writer lived in Burlington, Ontario, when Longboat was in his prime, and remembers standing at the head of Ontario Street at Maple Avenue and thrilling as the first of the pack swung into view around the Brant House turn.
With handkerchief knotted in place over the head to fit like a cap and running jersey and shorts soaked through with perspiration, runner after runner jogged past. For Burlingtonians, the day had a special significance if stout-hearted Eddie Cotter who, like the girl in the song, was "always a bridesmaid but never a bride," was well up in the van. Game little Eddie, more than once was among those to finish early, but never took the Herald cup home to place on his mantlepiece. In 1908, however, he won the Brant-ford to Hamilton marathon, a feat which pleased his Burlington, Bronte and Oakville friends exceedingly.
Shorter than the Olympic marathon course by approximately seven miles, the Herald race, nevertheless, was a test of the fortitude and ability of any competitor, particularly back in the early years before pavement was laid.
Many were the hazards in the path of the early runner. More often than not, he was ploughing through sand and mud, with the occasional strip of board walk to trip his tired and unwary feet.
Two toll gates provided additional bars to progress, although the tollgate keepers were not so liable to halt the runner who, after all, could slip through unchallenged, as they were to stop the livery stable rigs loaded with handlers, trainers and followers and make the impatient company "cough up."
Before the bridge was built at the Canal, traffic was taken from one side to the other on a hand-operated ferry. This means of transportation was much too slow and uncertain for the marathoners, so they swung to the C.N.R. railway bridge and pranced daintily from tie to tie, continuing on their way while the escorting rigs were held up at the ferry landing.The runner who had one or more rigs in his wake was a person of some consequence, because only the most promising could boast such backing. It goes without saying that the attentive followers didn't take the drive around the bay just for the fun of it. Plenty of money was bet on Herald road races and in the hotels afterward many a sportsman parted with rolls of greenbacks which he fully had expected to see added to, rather than diminished in size. Longboat's win in 1906 was a classic example. The Indian runner had gained most of his knowledge in this City, but the boys "in the know" muffed that particular selection, because Tom came in at 100 to 1. Bets ranged from $1 to $500. Le Barre, winner in 1901, was 20 to 1, Duffy 3 to 1, Richards (1911 winner) 4 to 1, and Jamieson (1914 winner) 5 to 1.
Dotted along the marathon course were famous oases where horse and driver could halt briefly to slake a parched thirst. Popular among these were Fitches, Dynes, Perrie's at the Canal, the-Brant House, the Aldershot hotel and the Valley Inn. Most of the granite Herald markers long since have disappeared, but we believe one still is to be seen near the old Dynes hotel on the Beach.
The late R. B. Harris, publisher of the Hamilton Herald, and his brother, inaugurated the first of the famous races in 1894, and from then until 1916, when the war made running of the classic an impossibility, it flourished. The first race started at 9 o'clock in the morning, Christmas Day, 1894, from in front of the late Billy Carroll's cigar store on James street north. It was a bitterly cold day, with the temperature below the zero mark. Labour Day was selected the next year. Thanksgiving Day was chosen on several occasions and October conditions, more than September, were found to be propitious.
From 1919 to 1936 the race was run under varying conditions and rules. In the latter year, Thomas R. Thomson, who trained the 1911-12-13-14 winners, including the late Jimmy Duffy, a member of Unit 153, Army and Navy Veterans in Canada, with Frank Spencer, then Club secretary, was given permission to re-establish the famous old fixture.
Caffery, Longboat and Duffy all were winners of the Boston Marathon as well as the Herald race.

For the sake of record, and because it may be of interest for our readers to consult it in years to come, we print the following table:
 

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Around the Bay Road Race — the story of the stones

Posted with permission from the Hamilton Spectator
______________________________________________________
Thousands will run the course, and most won¡¦t notice the three surviving mile markers erected when the race was young
March 20, 2018
by Paul Wilson „³
Hamilton Spectator|


In Wiltshire, England, there is Stonehenge, a puzzling circle of 83 prehistoric standing stones.

In Hamilton, Canada, there are the nearly ancient dark-granite standing stones of North America's oldest foot race.

The Around the Bay Road Race is this Sunday. Thousands will run the course, and most won't notice the three surviving mile markers erected when the race was young.

On a bitter Christmas Day, 1894, 13 men set out from Billy Carroll's Cigar Store on James Street North, with citizens on bikes, horses and in buggies charging along behind.
The Hamilton Herald newspaper sponsored the run in the early years. The course is an even 30 kilometres today, but in the beginning it was 19 miles, 168 yards.

And they measured out the race in rock-solid fashion. Granite markers were produced, about six feet tall, with the Herald name and the mile number engraved on each. They looked like cemetery stones, fashioned to last an eternity.

But that was not to be. In the mid-1920s, the race disappeared for a decade or so. Maybe it was in those years that the markers fell.

The Spectator carried a short item in December of 1954:

"(Hamilton Beach) Police Chief Howard Nickling has recovered many old Herald stones placed to mark the distance across the Beach from the Herald office when the marathon races were run around Hamilton Bay. They have been taken with others to the Beach Commission office to keep as part of the history of the Beach."

No one has a better handle on Beach Strip history than Scott Howley, and you can find some of what he knows at


On the site, Howley wonders what happened to those stones that landed at the Beach Commission. But he does know the story of how one race marker on the Beach got liberated.

It is the five-mile Herald marker. In the beginning, it may have been along Woodward Avenue. But somehow, it ended up as a parking curb in the lot at the Dynes Tavern, a Beach landmark built in 1847.

The marker got discovered in the late 1980s, and eventually the tavern did the right thing. The stone was mounted out front of the establishment.

Then a new owner of the Dynes came along and it was clear his plan was to knock the old place down. Tony DePasquale did just that, without a demolition permit, and got charged by the city. Now the property is covered with condos.

The Herald marker was at risk too. There was talk of that tavern owner taking it off to a cottage somewhere.

And then, a covert Beach Strip rescue. A decade has passed, so now it can be told. On the evening of July 18, 2007, a band of heritage freedom fighters showed up at the Dynes with a Bobcat and spirited that stone to safety. Howley has a photo of the liberation.

The marker sat in more than one backyard on the Beach, under tarps, for several years. And in the spring of 2011, the people themselves mounted the stone at the edge of Beach Boulevard, across from Hamilton Beach Convenience.

And now, in Aldershot, ultra marathoner Les Michalak and others in the Burlington Runners Club plan to showcase the Herald Mile 15 stone in a grander way. It stands on Plains Road West, near the intersection of Spring Gardens Road.

But it's partly hidden by overgrown vegetation. Through GoFundMe (search 'ATB Historic Marker' on that site), the club has just started to raise money to move the stone closer to the street, and add a bench, a plaque and some public art.

Word is these markers were used as betting posts. Michalak likes the idea of art that depicts guys with cigars exchanging money, runners flying past.

And that leaves the final known survivor, the Herald Mile 17 marker, which stands just south of the High Level Bridge. But it's behind a chain-link fence, and needs a plaque to tell its story. How about getting that done for next year, the 125th anniversary of when those first sturdy souls set off to beat the bay?



Paul Wilson's column appears Tuesdays in the GO section PaulWilson. Hamilton@gmail.com


Full article;
https://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/8337191-around-the-bay-road-race-the-story-of-the-stones/
 

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More on Tom Longboat;

Who Do You Think I Am? A Story of Tom Longboat
A legendary athlete, he was adored and celebrated as the finest runner of his time. But journalists of the day could never reconcile such brilliance with his First Nations origin.
Written by Peter Unwin
— September 13, 2015

On the basis of his stunning finishes in his Ontario races, he had become an overnight legend. Newspapers were suddenly calling him "the greatest distance runner the world has ever seen." He was made odds-on favourite to win. When Longboat shunned prerace interviews, local writers fabricated them and rushed them into print. Unable to get a photograph, they substituted a picture of an indigenous football player and printed that instead.
On April 19, 1907, a hundred thousand people lined up to watch the eighth running of the Boston Marathon. The route spanned forty-two kilometres, the course was hilly, and the temperatures cool. At the sound of a pistol shot, 124 runners surged forward.
At a street crossing several kilometres in, a freight train intersected the race. Ten runners, including Longboat, made it through; the rest were forced to wait more than a minute while the train cleared. Out in the hills of Boston where the race would end, a snow squall struck. Having run over forty gruelling kilometres. Longboat sprinted the final 1.6 kilometres uphill, into slanting snow, in an astonishing four minutes, forty-six seconds, smashing the course record set by Canadian Jack Cafferty by a full five minutes. His nearest competitor lagged more than a kilometre behind. It is said Longboat had picked up his trophy and was eating dinner as fellow racers crossed the line. A Boston headline staled: “Hills Held No Terror For Redskin.”
Tom Longboat returned to Toronto and to a triumph that is difficult to imagine. Two hundred thousand people lined the streets. Bands played. Reportedly, “young women gazed at [him] in rapture. Longboat, with a Union Jack draped around his shoulders, was placed in an open car and driven through the city at the head of a torch-light parade. People lit brooms on fire and waved them through the air. Streetcar drivers, unable to move, handed out unpunched transfers, having no idea when the streets might clear. Longboat, appearing uncomfortable beneath the crush of adoration, was given a gold medal and the keys to the city. “The British Empire is proud of you,” boomed the mayor, and announced a $500 gift to go to the runner's education.


Tom Longboart: Marathon man.
Hockey Hall of Fame / Library and Archives Canada (MIKAN 3656298)
Even in the most celebrated moment of Tom Longboat's career, newspaper writers could not conceal their discomfort with him. To the racial assumptions they had grown up with. Longboat posed a perplexing challenge.
A member of an often-named “pathetic” and supposedly vanishing race, a poorly educated "Injun," be was also tall, handsome, and now very famous. “It is hoped that Longboat’s success will not develop obstinacy on his part.” cautioned the Toronto Star, "and that be will continue to be manageable."
“Obstinate” and “unmanageable” are the twin themes in an almost daily narrative that depicts Longboat as an animal in need of breaking. In print he became a “lanky, raw-boned, headstrong Redskin” who did not run, but “galloped.” Faced with a compliment, be "would smile as wide as a hippo and gurgle his thanks."
Sports writer Lou Marsh described the young Onondagan "smiling like a coon in a watermelon patch." Marsh, a popular Toronto Star sports columnist who carried on a bizarre campaign against Longboat, confidently described him as “the original dummy. ... Wily ... unreliable ... as hard to train as a leopard.”

The cultural difficulty writers faced in trying to pinpoint the man is suggested even in the quantity of nicknames they stuck on him. He was tagged the Bronze Cyclone, the Bronze Wonder, the Racing Redskin, the Wonderful Redskin, Tireless Tom, Big Chief, Heap Big Chief, the Great Indian, even the Irish Indian and, later — not yet out of his thirties — Old Tom. This confusion of titles did not so much describe a man named Tom Longboat, but the gropings of newspapermen to integrate a world-famous Canadian “Indian” into the racial hierarchies of the time.

Whole story;
http://www.canadashistory.ca/explor...who-do-you-think-i-am-a-story-of-tom-longboat
 

scotto

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Tom Longboat and the great American con: How a Pawtucket grifter impersonated a Canadian sports legend

Tom Longboat was getting comfortable in San Jose. He had a room at the upscale Imperial Hotel on South First Street, and would tell those whom he met that he was in California to regain his “health” after a hellacious time with the Canadian regiment in the trenches the Great War had carved across Europe. If the person kept listening — and most people Longboat met did — the world-famous Onondaga runner from Six Nations territory near Brantford, Ont., would speak of his athletic feats: his marathon world record, his victory at the 1908 Olympics, his head-to-head battles against the great British distance man, Alfie Shrubb.
Read whole article;
https://nationalpost.com/news/canad...-a-canadian-sports-legend?video_autoplay=true


More;
https://nationalpost.com/news/canad...om-longboat?video_autoplay=true#comments-area
 

scotto

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#20
Tom Longboat won Around the Bay in 1906. Then Boston Marathon a year later
Sat., April 3, 2021
Hamilton Spectator
Tom Longboat was not well known before he set out on the Around the Bay Road Race in Hamilton in 1906.
He not only won the race, but was a full three minutes ahead of his closest competitor. From there, he triumphed through sleet and rain at the Boston Marathon the following year. By the time he retired, he had beaten all of the top distance runners of his day, and, according to some sources, even once outran a horse between Caledonia and Hagersville.
Longboat, 1887-1949, an Onondaga from Six Nations, was the most famous Canadian distance runner in the early 20th Century in a career that took flight after his victory in Hamilton.


Read whole article;
https://www.thespec.com/life/local-...n-1906-then-boston-marathon-a-year-later.html
 
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