15 April 2007
Longboat's legacy
From this past weekend's Globe and Mail.
Before there was a Wayne Gretzky, before there was a Bobby Orr or Maurice Richard, and even before there was a National Hockey League, Canada had an enduring sports legend.
Tom Longboat, who wore running shoes, not skates, was the fastest man of his age. The Boston Marathon, scheduled for Monday, marks the 100th anniversary of the record-setting victory by the member of the Onondaga Nation in one of the world's most famous sports events.
Time has struck down most who would remember Longboat, but nothing erodes his legend. He braved sleet, driving rain and bitter cold winds to win that year in 2 hours 24 minutes 24 seconds, a Boston record by almost five minutes and a time that still would rank him 27th among 20,000 runners last year.
In the course of the 1907 race, he had to beat a freight train to a level crossing. Most remarkable: After running a punishing 25 miles, Longboat, six weeks before his 20th birthday, showed a mature runner's power and endurance to gallop the last mile in 4:45, when the world record for the mile was 4:15. The Boston Globe heralded Longboat as "the most marvellous runner who has sped over our roads."
[. . .] When his racing career was past its prime, Longboat enlisted in the army in 1916 and used his talents for Canada on the battlefields of France, in the dangerous role of messenger between posts. It was joked he could outrun bullets -- most of the time. Longboat was wounded twice, and mistakenly reported dead. He returned home in 1919, only to find his wife Lauretta had remarried.
According to David Blaikie, author of Boston: The Canadian Story, Lauretta elected to remain in her new marriage. The heartbroken Longboat eventually accepted the loss and married Martha Silversmith, a woman from his own Six Nations reserve. They had four children.
He was unemployed for stretches after the war and the only key to success he had known, his running career, was over. Longboat took several mill and factory jobs in Southern Ontario, then tried farming in Alberta, only to encounter dustbowls and the Depression. He pawned his racing medals to make ends meet.
Eventually, Blaikie writes, Longboat returned to Ontario where he found work with the City of Toronto. He drove horses, swept leaves and for the most part collected garbage. He had an arrest for intoxication, but more often, it was found that other men were posing as Tom Longboat, seeking free drinks and getting into trouble.
"Longboat remained an employee of the city for nearly 20 years, a dependable man who worked quietly, owned a car, provided for his family and had a circle of close friends. But in the eyes of the public . . . he had fallen to the bottom," Blaikie says. "Collecting garbage was an ignominious end for someone who had risen to such fame and glory. A newspaper writer once described him as '. . . an Indian rubbish man whom young boys no longer look up to.' "
Redemption of his name took time.
In 1999, Maclean's magazine proclaimed Longboat the top Canadian sports figure of the 20th century, ahead of any star of the rink or boxing ring or race track or pool.
