A Sporting Chance
A SPORTING CHANCE
Achievements of African-Canadian Athletes
WILLIAM HUMBER
Foreword by Spider Jones
Copyright © 2004 by William Humber
All rights reserved. No portion of this book, with the exception of brief extracts for the purpose of literary or scholarly review, may be reproduced in any form without the permission of the publisher.
Published by Natural Heritage / Natural History Inc.
P.O. Box 95, Station O, Toronto, On M4A 2M8
All photographs are courtesy of the author unless otherwise identified. Front cover, clockwise from top left: Perdita Felicien, Courtesy of the University of Illinois Sports Information; Jarome Iginla, Courtesy of the Hockey Hall of Fame; Larry Gains, Courtesy of Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame; Rosella Thorne, Courtesy of Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame.
Back cover, clockwise from top right: Patrick Husbands winning the Queen’s Plate, Courtesy of Woodbine Entertainment, Fergie Jenkins, Courtesy of Leo Kelly; Perdita Felicien, Courtesy of Nike Canada Ltd.; Herb Carnegie, Courtesy of the Carnegie Family Collection; Molly Killingbeck, Courtesy of Tony Techko.
Design by Blanche Hamill, Norton Hamill Design
Edited by Catherine Leek
Printed and bound in Canada by Hignell Book Printing, Winnipeg, Manitoba
The text in this book was set in a typeface named Minion.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Humber, William, 1949-
A sporting chance : achievements of African-Canadian athletes / William Humber ; foreword by Spider Jones.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-896219-99-3
1. Athletes, Black—Canada. 2. Discrimination in sports—Canada. 3. Racism in sports—Canada. I. Title.
GV697.A1H84 2004 796’.089’96071 C2004-905750-2
Natural Heritage / Natural History Inc. acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We acknowledge the support of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and the Association for the Export of Canadian Books.
Contents
Foreword by Spider Jones
1. The Black Experience in Canada
4. Looking Outside Canada for Opportunity
5. Black Baseball’s Early Days in Canada
6. Sporting Immigrants and Their Descendants
7. Running for Canada
8. Lonely Years of Achievement
9. Immigration’s Great Rewards
10. The Fruits of Struggle
11. Hockey: The Canadian Specific
12. Visiting Heroes
13. Into the Future
Epilogue
Sources
Index
About the Author
A history is more than a simple record of the past. It attempts to broaden our understanding of both another time and of our own.
My interest in the sporting achievements of African-Canadian athletes dates back to my research on Canada’s baseball, cycling and Olympic history. I continually discovered that the isolation of many minorities, and in particular that of Black athletes, from the sporting mainstream was not limited to the United States but played a significant role in Canada’s development.
In the process I hope to open a window on the Canadian experience of some of its first citizens. This includes the years in which the Black population was so small as to be almost invisible, to the impact of immigration and the transformation in Canadian sporting achievement. Today issues surrounding race continue to be part of a larger public dialogue, even as a broader understanding of what it means to be Canadian and the rise of a generation prepared to describe themselves as ethnically ambiguous transcends older and more limited definitions of identity.
Thanks to Barry Penhale and Jane Gibson and their extraordinary staff at Natural Heritage Books for making this book possible. A tip of the hat to Ken Pearson and Sheldon Taylor who reviewed earlier versions of this book, and special regards to my favourite radio personality and long time friend Chuck “Spider” Jones.
Others who provided help included my neighbour Hugh Walters, Tony Techko, members of the BigUp Volleyball organization, Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame and its director Alan Stewart, Phil Edwards’ daughter Gwen Emery, Ray Lewis, David Crichton, Karen Clarke, E.G. Hastings, Donna Ford, Bill Linton, Melissa Thomas, Ed Grenda, James Duplacey, David Shury, Kevin Walsh, Renaldo Nehemiah, Woodbine Entertainment, my brother Larry Humber, and many others, including students in my Canadian sports history course at Seneca College.
Appreciation, as always, to my family including Cathie and our children Brad, Darryl and Karen.
I dedicate this book to the almost forgotten Bob Berry, champion rower, barred from competition in a Toronto Regatta, a bare month after Canada became a nation. Let this be a rebuke to the behaviour of small-minded men. Berry was a true Canadian and of that company, as described in Ecclesiastes, whose “bodies are buried in peace but their name liveth for evermore.”
I’ve got a high noon hook-up with a publisher who’s expressed deep interest in another book I’ve been working on. The rendezvous is to take place in downtown Toronto