The Big Book of Canadian Trivia

1. Ferguson Jenkins: The greatest player to come from Canada and the only Canadian in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Jenkins, from Chatham, Ontario, won 20 games a year six seasons in a row, was awarded the Cy Young Award in 1971, and finished with 284 wins and 226 losses. He threw more than 3,000 strikeouts in his career.

2. Larry Walker: A perennial league all-star, batting champion in 1998, and National League Most Valuable Player in 1997, the only Canadian to achieve this honour. Over his career, the Maple Ridge, British Columbia, native hit 383 home runs, had 2,160 hits and posted a .313 batting average. He is being considered for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown as this book is being written.

3. Jeff Heath: A two-time all-star who had seven seasons in the late 1930s and early 1940s batting .300 or better. Heath, from Fort William, Ontario, had a career average of .298, had 1,447 hits, and 194 home runs.

4. Terry Puhl: The Melville, Saskatchewan, native had three seasons batting .300 or better, a career .993 fielding average, played more than 1,500 games in 15 seasons with the Houston Astros, and had the most career stolen bases by a Canadian with 217 until Larry Walker surpassed him in 2003.

5. John Hillier: In his 15 years with the Detroit Tigers, Hillier, from Toronto, compiled 125 saves, including a then-record 38 saves in 1973. He threw more than 1,000 strikeouts and finished with an 87–79 record.

6. George Selkirk: In nine seasons with the Yankees, from 1934 to 1942, he batted .290, including five seasons of .300 or better. Born in Huntsville, Ontario, Selkirk played in two all-star games and hit 108 home runs during his career.

7. George Gibson: The London, Ontario-born catcher played 1,213 games between 1905 and 1918. Although he only batted .236 during his career, he was a superb defensive player who later managed in the big leagues.

8. Russ Ford: A three-time 20-game winner, including winning 26 for the New York Yankees in 1910, Ford, of Brandon, Manitoba, finished with a 99–71 record over seven seasons.

9. Pete Ward: The Montreal-born player won the Sporting News American League Rookie of the Year Award in 1963 and over 973 games in his career hit .254 and slugged 98 homers.

Sports BITE!

Jack Graney was the first ex-ballplayer to broadcast a game on the radio.

Sports BITE!

Justin Morneau, from New Westminster, British Columbia, is well on his way to a highly successful career in Major League Baseball. Since he joined the Minnesota Twins in 2003, he has already won the Home Run Derby during the All-Star game (2008), received the Tip O’Neill Award from the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame, which honours the country’s top player, not once but twice (in 2006 and 2008), won the American League Most Valuable Player Award in 2006 and was second in voting in 2008. In 2006, he was second in the league in RBI s and tied Larry Walker’s 1997 total for the most RBI s in a season by a Canadian. For his hitting, he won the 2006 American League Silver Slugger Award representing first basemen, only the fourth player in Twins history to do so. With these stats he is well on his way to cracking the Top 12 list.

10. Reggie Cleveland: The first Canadian to pitch in the World Series, Cleveland, from Swift Current, Saskatchewan, amassed a 105–106 record over 13 seasons , from 1969 to 1982.

11. Frank O’Rourke: He had more than 100 hits in six different seasons, led American League second basemen in fielding percentage one year, and had a career .254 batting average over 14 seasons, between 1912 and 1931. O’Rourke, from Hamilton, Ontario, was later a baseball scout for many years.

12. Jack Graney: During his 14 seasons, from 1908 to 1922, he batted .250 and twice led the league in bases on balls. The St. Thomas, Ontario, native was also the first person to pitch to Babe Ruth in the major leagues.

1. George Orton of Strathroy, Ontario, may have been competing for the Americans, but he was the first Canadian to win an Olympic gold medal when he captured first place in the 2,500-metre steeplechase event in Paris, in July 1900. Montreal policeman Étienne Desmarteau was the first to win Olympic gold while competing for Canada when he won the 56-pound hammer throw at the St. Louis Olympics in September 1904.

2. Babe Ruth hit his first professional home run as a member of the Providence Grays, during a game in Toronto on September 5, 1914.

3. The voice of hockey, play-by-play man Foster Hewitt, announced his first hockey broadcast over Toronto radio station CFCA on March 23, 1923.

4. Lela Brooks of Toronto won a world speed skating championship in Saint John, New Brunswick, becoming the first Canadian woman to be a sports world champion, in 1926.

5. Clint Benedict of the Montreal Maroons was the first goalie to wear a mask in a hockey game in the 1929–30 season.

They Said it!

“how would you like a job where, every time you make a mistake, a big red light goes on and 18,000 people boo?”

— legendary NHL goalie Jacques Plante

Sports BITE!

When Marilyn Bell became the first person to swim across Lake Ontario, she took more than 20 hours to accomplish the task. But while the lake is 51 kilometres across, Bell had swum the equivalent of more than 64 kilometres because currents prevented her from swimming in a straight line.

6. Detroit Red Wings great Gordie Howe scored his first NHL goal on October 16, 1946.

7. The Toronto Huskies of the Basketball Association of America became Canada’s first major professional basketball team: 1946.

8. Marilyn Bell became the first person to swim Lake Ontario, a distance of 51 kilometres, on September 9, 1954.

9. The first Canadian Football League regular season game that was played in the United States. The Hamilton Tiger-Cats beat the Ottawa Rough Riders 24–18 in Philadelphia on September 14, 1958.

10. Northern Dancer became the first Canadian horse to win the Kentucky Derby: May 2, 1964.

11. Dave Bailey became the first Canadian to break the four-minute mile (3:59.1) on June 11, 1966.

12. During a bout at Maple Leaf Gardens, George Chuvalo became the first professional boxer to go the distance with American boxer Muhammad Ali in 1966. Chuvalo was never knocked out in 97 career heavyweight fights.

13. Montreal was awarded Canada’s first major league professional baseball franchise on May 27, 1968.

14. Sandra Post became the first foreign player to win the LPGA Championship on June 24, 1968.

15. Cindy Nicholas was the first woman to complete a return, non-stop swim of the English Channel on September 7, 1977.

They Said it!

“I was absolutely thrilled. I remember feeling extremely exhausted and my legs were like rubber. Then we had to jog back to the hotel.”

— David Bailey, recalling the race when he became the first Canadian to break the four-minute mile.

16. Steve Podborski won the men’s downhill skiing World Cup, the first non-European to do so, on March 5, 1982.

17. Vicki Keith was the first marathon swimmer to swim the English Channel using the butterfly stroke on July 10, 1989.

18. Kurt Browning became the first Canadian male to win successive world figure skating championships in March, 1990.

19. Wayne Gretzky became the first National Hockey League player to score 2,000 points on October 23, 1990.

20. The Toronto Blue Jays were the first team based in Canada to win baseball’s World Series on October 24, 1992.

21. The Toronto Raptors and the Vancouver Grizzlies both played their first regular season games in the National Basketball Association (NBA) on November 3, 1995. Toronto beat the New Jersey Nets 94-78 at SkyDome (now Rogers Centre) and the Vancouver Grizzlies beat the Portland Trail Blazers on the road 92–80.

Sports BITE!

The NBA and Canada was always a natural match, as James Naismith the famed inventor of the sports was a Canadian. However, after the Toronto Huskies folded after the NBA ’s first season in 1947 it was more than 50 years before the NBA returned to Canada. The Vancouver Grizzlies only lasted six seasons, moving to Memphis at the end of the 2000–01 season. The Raptors are still going strong in Toronto.

22. Steve Nash, superstar player for the Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association, became the first Canadian ever named to the NBA All-Star Team in February 2001.

23. Mike Weir became the first Canadian golfer to win the Masters on April 14, 2003.

Wherever there are cyclists and cross-country skiers, you’re likely to see Louis Garneau’s name.

After racing for Canada in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and winning 150 races worldwide, the Quebec-based cyclist bought a sewing machine and started making bicycle shorts for his friends on the Canadian cycling team. The company, now known as Louis Garneau Sports Inc. was launched in his father’s garage in Ste. Foy, Quebec.

These days, the company is run by Garneau in St-Augustin-de-Desmaures, Quebec, and is a major manufacturer of clothing, helmets, and accessories for cycling; cross-country ski wear; children’s apparel; bicycles; and fitness equipment. The firm has a manufacturing plant in the United States and most recently set up shop in Mexico. Louis Garneau Sports Inc. has a presence in 35 countries.

As a racer, Garneau gained the experience to lead a company and the will to succeed. He beat legendary Canadian cyclist Steve Bauer in an individual race at Montreal’s Velodrome, was a member of the Canadian cycling team for seven years, and at his peak in 1982 was ranked 11th in the world in the 100-kilometre team time trial event.

Garneau drives his business the way he would cycle a race, by focussing on goals and working with his team. From 1984 to 1990, his vision ran like a well-tuned racing bike: sales doubled every year and by 1985 he was in a 5,000-square-foot factory with 16 employees. By 1989, there were 118 employees in a 32,000-square-foot facility and he was also running a plant in Newport, Vermont.

The recession of 1990–91 showed Garneau the need for innovation. After studying all bike helmets on the market, he designed his own helmet line, which retails in the $30 to $140 range and is among the top three best-sellers in the world. In 2002, helmets made up nearly 40 percent of his business.

The firm has about 50 percent of the market in cycling and cross-country accessories in Canada and is the only company making bicycle helmets and sunglasses in Canada.

Louis Garneau Sports Inc. has 20 distributors in the world and 25,000 accounts in the U.S. and Canada alone. Its lines sell in Canada, the U.S., Europe, South America, Japan, and Australia. Olympic and world champions such as Myriam Bedard, Lance Armstrong, and Curt Harnett wear Garneau products.

Garneau was able to make the leap to international sales because of the helmets and his passion. “I was not a world champion in cycling and some of my friends were, so I decided to be a world champion in business,” he told the Financial Post in 1996. In 2006, Louis Garneau launched his biography entitled Ne jamais abandonner (Never Give Up). All profits are donated to support Little Brothers, Friends of the Elderly.

Louis Garneau Sports Inc. continues to expand and the company celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2008.

Innovative plays, charismatic players, and a handful of outrageous incidents — including the time an over-zealous spectator prevented a touchdown — have highlighted the Grey Cup’s long and colourful history.

Over the years, the annual fall classic has been dubbed the “Grand National Drunk,” because it brings easterners and westerners together for a Canadian party that’s rarely matched. Take a few minutes to revel in some of the trivial and not-so-trivial items that continue to make the Grey Cup a major national happening:

• Most Canadians know the Cup was named after Lord Grey, Canada’s governor general from 1904 to 1911, but were you aware that he also donated an Earl Grey Trophy to horse racing? Grey was an avid sportsman who enjoyed skiing, curling, and golf. He provided prizes for music and drama and tried unsuccessfully during his term to bring Newfoundland into Confederation. The Grey Cup cost $48 to make and, according to Grey, was supposed to be contested “always under purely amateur conditions.” But his intentions didn’t last long: over the years, professionals began infiltrating the game and for much of its history the Grey Cup has pitted professional teams against one another in a bid to win Canada’s top football prize.

• Canadians were playing a brand of football long before the first Grey Cup in 1909. As you watch the next game being played under the lights, don’t for a minute think artificial lighting is a recent innovation. According to the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame, the first night football game on record was back in 1879. The game was played under lights between the Brittania and Montreal football clubs in Montreal. Football was a much different game then, and there was a quaintness about the announcement of the match. An ad told fans there would be “Ice Cream and Strawberries Supplied on the Ground.”

• Anyone who thinks we simply borrowed an American game and adapted it to our style would be wrong. In fact, Canadians actually had a hand in teaching Americans about the game that evolved into what we now know as football. In the mid-1800s, the games of soccer and rugby were played here. The two balls used for the sports were slightly different, with the soccer ball being round and the rugby ball being slightly oblong. Students from McGill University introduced the game of rugby to players from Harvard University in 1874. Two matches had been set up between the two teams. In the first one, the Harvard round ball was used and in the second the McGill oval ball was to be used. However, the oval ball was lost and the round one was used again, but played under McGill’s rules. The game ended in a scoreless tie, but the Americans were impressed enough to adopt the sport, and the editor of the Harvard Magenta called it better than “the somewhat sleepy game now played by our men.” Football spread throughout both countries with different rules being used.

• The Americans can take credit, however, for introducing the forward pass to the game. And the first forward pass thrown for a touchdown in a Grey Cup? That would be Warren Stevens to Kenny Grant of the Montreal Winged Wheelers in the 1931 Cup game against Regina.

• Many great sports heroes have shone during the Grey Cup, but for all-round ability, Lionel Conacher has to receive plenty of credit. Canada’s best all-round athlete of the first half of the 20th century scored 15 points for the Toronto Argonauts in the 1921 Grey Cup game before leaving to play hockey that night for the Toronto Aura Lee of the Ontario Hockey Association Senior League.

• If that seems weird, who can ever forget the Grey Cup of 1962 when Winnipeg defeated Hamilton 28 to 27. Known as “The Fog Bowl,” it was the great Cup game that few people saw. The two teams staged an exciting game that saw the lead change hands, but fog rolling in from Lake Ontario reduced visibility to the point where few people could see what was happening on the field. With only a few minutes left, and Hamilton trailing by a point, the game was stopped and the remaining time played the next day. The contest ended with Hamilton trying to score a single point, but the punt fell short of Winnipeg’s end zone.

• Speaking of weird, how about the Ray “Bibbles” Bawel incident during the 1957 Grey Cup? Bawel, of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, was running toward the Winnipeg goal line with no one in front of him when a spectator near the sidelines tripped him and prevented him from getting a touchdown. Winnipeg was penalized half the distance to the goal line, and Hamilton later scored and eventually won 32 to 7. The spectator later apologized to Bawel and sent him a gold watch.

• Finally, a gold watch award to one of the great Grey Cup quotable quotes. Running back Vic Washington of the Ottawa Rough Riders, while discussing his 80-yard run that was a crucial turning point in the Riders winning the 1968 Grey Cup against Calgary, said: “All I could think as I ran was, I hope I don’t get a cramp.”

Big Ben, originally named Winston, after British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, came to Canada in 1983 from the Hooydonk Farm in northern Belgium. His owner, equestrian Ian Millar, purchased and brought the 17.3-hand chestnut to Millar Brooke Farm in Perth, Ontario.

In 1984, Big Ben started competing in show jumping events with Millar in the saddle. The pair made a glorious tandem, with 40 Grand Prix victories, the World Show Jumping Championship two years in a row, and $1.5 million in prize money.

In 1994 Big Ben retired to the Millar Brooke Farm. He was the second horse inducted into the Ontario Sports Legends Hall of Fame (Northern Dancer was the first) and in 1999 was honoured by Canada Post with a stamp.

At the age of 23, Big Ben was euthanized at Millar’s farm on December 11, 1999, after veterinarians said nothing could be done to ease suffering caused by a persistent case of equine colic. He was buried on a knoll overlooking the farm.

On May 22, 2005, a full-size bronze sculpture of Big Ben and Millar by sculptor Steward Smith was unveiled in Perth at the corner of Wilson and Herriott streets, overlooking Stewart Park.

Millar, a native of Halifax and a nine-time Olympian and show jumping legend was named to the Order of Canada in 1986. He continues to run his farm and also spends time in Florida, where he shows horses. He competes in as many as 25 show jumping events a year and recently participated in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, this time atop In Style, where the Canadian team picked up a silver medal.

Betsy Clifford will never forget her second-place finish in the World Downhill Skiing Championship in 1974 at St. Moritz, Switzerland. “I was neck-in-neck with Annemarie Moser-Proell of Austria,” she recalled. “It came down to one turn and I lost by 2/100ths of a second. There was nothing I could have done better … it was a great race.”

While she lost by the slimmest of margins, Clifford, a native of Old Chelsea, Quebec, just north of Ottawa, still managed to bring home a silver medal to add to a string of honours she would win after learning to ski in the Gatineau Hills of southwestern Quebec at age three.

In 1968, at the age of 14, Clifford became the youngest Canadian skier ever to compete at the Olympics. In 1970, in Val Gardena, Italy, she became the youngest skier to win a medal at the World Championships when she earned gold in the giant slalom; she was named most newsworthy woman in sports in 1971 after winning the special slalom in Schruns, Austria, and the slalom in Val D’Isere, France, to finish second in overall Slalom World Cup standings.

Sports BITE!

Betsy Clifford’s late father, John, was often referred to as a ski pioneer and “the father of popular skiing.” The Ottawa native spent seven decades as a racer, ski centre developer, instructor, and ski resort owner. He is credited with bringing snowmaking technology to Canada in the mid-1950s, adding nearly two months to the downhill ski season each year. “Thanks to John, people now ski into mid-April until they are bored and want to play golf,” said his longtime friend Keith Nesbitt. John Clifford passed away in 2002 in Almonte, Ontario, at the age of 79.

In 1972, she broke both heels while training for a World Cup race at Grindelwald, Switzerland, and vowed to retire. The accident forced her to miss the 1972 Olympics. In 1973, she returned to competitive ski racing and dominated the Can-Am series with five victories, finishing 72 points ahead of her nearest competitor.

Now in her mid-50s, she is a member of the Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame and the American National Ski Hall of Fame.

Clifford has married for a second time and lives in Lanark, Ontario, a town 70 kilometres west of Ottawa. She’s a certified Level 3 ski instructor and has worked as a ski patroller at nearby Mount Pakenham, which was developed by her late father, John Clifford, and is currently owned by her sister Joanne.

Clifford, whose married name is Whitehall, has worked for the federal government since 1981. In 2006 she was working in human resources with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Canadian Coast Guard section.

The bib and Rossignol skis she was wearing in Val Gardena in 1970 when she won the gold medal are in the collection of the Canadian Ski Museum in Ottawa.

No one wants to see a homegrown quarterback shine in the Canadian Football League more than Russ Jackson — if only because it’ll mean people will stop asking him about the issue.

There are many reasons why it hasn’t happened in recent decades, says Jackson, but if it ever does happen “he’s going to have to be someone really special.”

Someone like Jackson. In a brilliant career that saw him lead the Ottawa Rough Riders to three Grey Cup victories, including one in his last season, 1969, Jackson set the standard, not only for Canadian-born quarterbacks, but for quarterbacks, period.

The Hamilton native won three Most Outstanding Player awards, something unprecedented for a homegrown player in the CFL. Given that he started with the Rough Riders in 1958 as defensive back, Jackson’s accomplishments were all the more unexpected. “At that time to think you might make it as a Canadian quarterback was unheard of,” Jackson said in an interview from his home in Burlington, Ontario.

But when two other quarterbacks got injured, Jackson got his chance and proved that being a Canadian at that position was no handicap. But since he retired from the game in 1969, there have been few Canadians who’ve been given the chance to play quarterback. Jackson, however, helped Ottawa to a Grey Cup win in 1960 and led the team to victory again in 1968 and 1969. He picked up his Most Outstanding Player awards at intervals along the way, which he recalled with pride: “winning it over a period of time because you maintained a degree of excellence” was satisfying, he said.

Jackson saved his best for 1969, the year he announced he would be retiring. He enjoyed a stellar season, including a playoff victory over the Toronto Argonauts, whose coach Leo Cahill had claimed it “would take an act of God” for his team to lose to Ottawa after the Argos won the first of a two-game total points playoff. Jackson responded with a memorable performance that saw his team trounce the Argos 32–3 and win the series 46–25. Ottawa then defeated Saskatchewan in the Grey Cup. “To go through that year and end on a high note, that had to make it special,” Jackson recalled.

The quarterback stuck to his word, though, and said farewell to the game. He had been a teacher and vice-principal during his playing days but wanted to be a principal and believed he could do that only away from football. He became principal of an Ottawa high school soon afterward and held that position in different schools in both Ottawa and the Peel Region of Ontario until his retirement in 1992.

He also did a stint as a CFL colour commentator with the CBC in the 1970s and tried coaching for a couple of years in the middle of that decade with the Argonauts. Coaching wasn’t a successful fit for Jackson and he was let go from the team in 1976. He enjoy the commentating, however, noting it was far less stressful than coaching ever was. But of the Argo job, he said that while it was upsetting at the time, “I’m glad I tried it.”

Jackson spoke more enthusiastically of his years as a principal, during which he helped one high school make the transition from being English to unilingual French, saved some programs at another, and helped a new school in Peel get started. “There was always something neat about the schools I was at,” he said.

Jackson coached basketball during his years as an educator and occasionally helped mentor some high school quarterbacks, but when he stepped down, he recalled, “It was time, I was ready. It was like football.”

He did some colour commentating for Hamilton Tiger-Cats games after that and still attends their home games. Ever the quarterback, Jackson watches the action on the field trying to analyze what the defence might do on a particular down. “I enjoy watching the game from the aspect of being the quarterback. It’s kind of fun for me that way.”

Since moving to Burlington, Jackson has kept busy playing golf at nearby Credit Valley Golf & Country Club, skiing in the winter, and doing a great deal of charity work, including raising funds for the football program of his alma mater, McMaster University. He’s still an avid fan of the CFL and thinks the players are better trained and better coached than in his day. Fans still recognize him just about everywhere he goes, and he’s happy to answer questions and talk about the game. “And they recognize my voice which is always interesting.”

Jackson was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada and was voted one of the top 50 CFL players of all time in 2006 by Canadian sports network TSN.

As for the quarterbacks that came after him, Jackson believes there were many good ones but that Doug Flutie in particular stood out. “He had that leadership that made him special. He made good teams into great teams. That’s what a quarterback can do.”

As a young boy, Vancouver native Lui Passaglia remembers hearing the sound of fans cheering on the B.C. Lions wafting over the walls of the old Empire Stadium. His father, who had emigrated from Italy, became a fan of the Lions and would occasionally sneak Passaglia in to watch games.

Fast forward to 1994, and the Grey Cup in another Vancouver stadium, BC Place, featuring the Lions and an all-American team, the Baltimore Stallions, battling it out. With the score tied at 23 and the last seconds of the game ticking off the clock, the hometown boy, Passaglia, steps on the field to try to win it with a 38-yard field goal. In the first Grey Cup to feature an American-based team, Canadian fans hold their collective breath as Passaglia makes contact.

Like he did so many times in his 25-year career, the Vancouver kicker nailed it through the uprights, making the Lions CFL champions. In what was a long and fruitful career for the place-kicker/punter, Passaglia’s 1994 last-second field goal is what most Canadians remember about him.

But as he told us a few years back from his office with the Lions club, where he worked as director of community relations, you can’t define a career by one kick. He acknowledged that the 1994 Grey Cup game was “a standout” and that it took on special meaning because it was Canada versus the U.S. “It was here in Vancouver, it was a pretty good spectacle, and we were the Cinderella team.”

But Passaglia remembered other key moments in his career just as fondly: making the team for the first time in the mid-1970s after graduating from Simon Fraser University and being introduced as a player in his first game; his first Grey Cup played at BC Place in 1983; and the Lions winning in 1985 and the again in 2000 in Passaglia’s last season.

When it was all over, Passaglia had set a CFL record (and, in fact, an all-pro football record) of 3,991 points, one that would stand up for some time. In his final year, as a 46-year-old, the kicker notched 40 of 44 field goals for an astounding 90.9 percent success rate.

As was the case with several CFL players in the 1980s, Passaglia received offers to go to the NFL. He declined, saying that the money wasn’t much better south of the border in those days and that B.C. had made him a good offer. In 1988, he did try out for the Cleveland Browns and was also thinking of retiring, but the Lions still wanted him and offered a series of one-year contracts until he did retire.

Although he lasted longer than most kickers, by 2000 Passaglia says his body was telling him it was time to retire. He went to work for the Lions after retirement and found he missed playing the game for that first year. In his post with the Lions, he had a significant presence in Vancouver, which included the team’s involvement with literacy programs in elementary and high schools as well as connections with amateur football and charities throughout the province.

It’s a position he enjoyed. “Even though I’m removed from the game I’m still involved with the players,” he told us. He resigned from the Lions at the conclusion of the 2007 CFL season to devote his time to his family property development business.

Passaglia, who was inducted into the CFL Hall of Fame in 2004, looks back fondly at his career. He admitted he got butterflies before the games, but once he stepped on the field to make a crucial kick he stayed focussed. “I was never nervous to go in and do my job. Once I was on the field, I thought I could make a difference.”

And the Vancouver boy who dreamed of playing for the Lions and helping them win the Grey Cup certainly did.

“You couldn’t ask for a better script,” he said. “And to do it all in your hometown.”