MEMORABLE PEOPLE AND MEMORABLE MOMENTS

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Terry Fox

When he dipped his prosthetic leg into the Atlantic Ocean off St. John’s, Nfld., and set out to run across Canada, few had heard of Terry Fox.

By the time the 22-year-old with a mop of dark curls and a determined run-and-hop gait made it to Northern Ontario, he had run deep into the hearts of Canadians.

Fox ran 5,373 kilometres — averaging a marathon a day — from April 12 to Sept 1, 1980, to raise money for cancer research. He did that, certainly, raising more money than any individual had before, but he also changed peoples’ attitudes about disability and inspired Canadians with his unbreakable spirit.

Days before Fox was finally forced to stop near Thunder Bay — the cancer that took his right leg had returned, this time in his lungs — he hadn’t felt well but, with people lining the road to see him run, he didn’t want to disappoint. For 143 days he had kept going, but eventually he couldn’t.

“All I can say is that if there’s anyway I can get out there again and finish it, I will,” Fox said.

He wasn’t able to — he died on June 28, 1981, one month before his 23rd birthday — but Canadians continue his Marathon of Hope through the annual Terry Fox Run.

He started out as a stubborn young man with a dream; he became national symbol of courage and determination.

A Western win

The Grey Cup had been pitting West against East since 1921 but it wasn’t until 1935, the 11th time a team from Western Canada had challenged for the football supremacy of the Dominion, that they found a way to win.

The ’Pegs — the team from Winnipeg had yet to be dubbed the Blue Bombers — travelled to the Hamilton Amateur Athletic Association grounds, stunned a crowd of 6,405 and came away with an 18-12 victory, marking the first time a non-Eastern team has hoisted the cherished Cup.

Before that, teams from the West had lost 10 games by a combined score of 236-29.

The ’Pegs broke through, however, helped by some of the first American “imports” to the Canadian game like punt returner Fritz “The Golden Ghost” Hanson, who ran back a kick for a touchdown.

James “Tip” O’Neill

Born nine years before Confederation in tiny Springfield, Ont., O’Neill was the first true baseball icon the country produced. Nicknamed later in his life as “Canada’s Babe Ruth,” the truth is Ruth probably could have been known as the “American Tip O’Neill” given the Canadian’s exploits.

A left fielder and a pitcher in a 10-year major-league career, O’Neill was an astonishingly productive hitter. Twice he won American Association batting titles, his 1887 season was amazing — winning the Triple Crown with a .435 batting average, 14 home runs and 123 runs batted it. Despite winning a Triple Crown, one of only 15 players in history to do it, O’Neill was not voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, although he was an inaugural inductee into the Canadian Hall in 1983 and the annual award given to the country’s best baseball player is the Tip O’Neill Award.

First Hockey Night in Canada broadcast

Hockey games on television in Canada are ubiquitous, one just about every night of the week, a $5.2-billion network investment that means markets are flooded with games.

And it all began in English Canada on Nov. 1, 1952, when the iconic voice of Foster Hewitt called a game in Toronto between the Maple Leafs and Boston Bruins, starting a tradition like no other in Canadian sports and television history. Rene Lecavalier had done a French broadcast a couple of weeks earlier of a Montreal-Detroit game, but it was Hewitt who launched the nationwide staple of Saturday nights.

With his legendary opening — “Hello, Canada and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland” — Hewitt became the voice of the game for decades.

Those certainly were different times. The games were joined in progress, first at 9 p.m. and then 8:30 p.m. until 1968 when the entire game was shown.

Gordie Howe

Is there a better, more “Canadian” sports story in all of time than that of a kid born in rural Saskatchewan, one of nine siblings who becomes one of the icons of the NHL? A kid who quit hockey as a youngster so he could work as a labourer to help his family during The Great Depression before striking out on his career path as a teenager that would ultimately lead him to the Hall of Fame?

Howe, of Floral, Sask., became the gold standard for hockey longevity, playing 26 seasons in the NHL, another six in the WHA, played in five different decades and competing when he was 52 years old. He was a teammate of his sons and was “Mr. Hockey” to so many contemporary fans.

Howe was as rough and tumble as they come — the Gordie Howe Hat Trick is a goal, an assist and a fight in the same game — while remaining a dignified and venerated figure off the ice.

Richard Riots

The passion of Montreal Canadiens fans knows no bounds and they exploded into one of the darkest moments in NHL and Canadian sports history on St. Patrick’s Day in 1955.

Four days earlier, Quebec icon Rocket Richard had punched linesman Cliff Thompson in the face after Richard himself had been hammered in head by the stick of Boston’s Hal Laycoe.

Richard was suspended by then-league-president Clarence Campbell for the rest of the season and the Stanley Cup playoffs. Ill-advisedly, a defiant Campbell attended the next game at the Forum in Montreal. Fans were incensed, tear gas bombs exploded, the building was evacuated and the riot continued unabated in the street.

It wasn’t until the next day, when Richard went on local radio station to plea for calm, that order was restored.

Tom Longboat

Just two years after he started running, he crushed the field in the 1907 Boston Marathon and his record time achieved over hills and through sleet stood until the course was made easier. An Onondaga from the Six Nations of the Grand River, Tom Longboat’s languid, long-limbed stride was deceivingly fast.

At the 1908 London Olympics, Longboat held an astounding pace on a tough course through the afternoon heat and when he collapsed 10 kilometres from the finish line, theories ranged from the heat to sabotage, possibly even by his own handlers, as part of a sports gambling scheme. The following year, at 21 and the peak of his career, he faced England’s Alfie Shrubb in New York’s Madison Square Garden. Longboat took the lead in the closing kilometres to win the “race of the century.”

Throughout his life, Longboat struggled with prejudice and First Nations stereotypes but, on his day, he was unbeatable and the best long-distance runner the world had ever seen.

Steve Nash

A kid dribbling a tennis ball to improve his basketball-handling skills, a two-time NBA most valuable player and arguably the best basketball player Canada has ever produced, a documentary film-maker, social activist, member of the Order of Canada, part owner of Major League Soccer’s Vancouver Whitecaps, Olympian and the managing director of Canada’s senior men’s basketball team.

It’s been some ride for the South African-born, Victoria-raised Nash.

The 43-year-old was a self-made star on the court who helped revolutionize the NBA with the up-tempo Phoenix Suns, an activist who once wore a T-shirt proclaiming: “No war – Shoot for peace” at an NBA all-star game.

Fervently Canadian despite living in California, Nash produced a documentary on Terry Fox that relived the Marathon of Hope and was one of four athletes to light the cauldron at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

Willie O’Ree

The youngest of 13 children, Willie O’Ree grew up in Fredericton, N.B., where his grandparents had arrived on the Underground Railroad, escaping slavery in the United States.

He was a passionate hockey player from a young age and determined to make it to the National Hockey League, a place no Black man had ever skated. As a teenager he was struck with a puck and lost the vision in his right eye and he kept that injury a secret knowing it would keep him from his dream.

On January 18, 1958, thanks to O’Ree’s determination and immense skill, he became the first Black man to play in the NHL when he took to the ice with his team, the Boston Bruins, who beat the Montreal Canadiens that night at the Montreal Forum.