I was watching an old movie recently on TV about the legendary American athlete Jim Thorpe when it struck me that Canada once had an all-round athletic champion who would have left Thorpe in the shadows.
I’m referring to Lionel Conacher who was known throughout Canada as “The Big Train.” While Hollywood has immortalized dozens of other American sports heroes, such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gherig and Ty Cobb, as well as Jim Thorpe, it has ignored Lionel Conacher. You can bet a big buck that had Conacher been an American, Hollywood would have made him into their number one sports icon and the top role model for their young athletes.
While we are beginning to honour our athletic champions, (Marilyn Bell was awarded the Order of Ontario, and there is wide support for her receiving the Order of Canada), we should do a lot more to celebrate our champion sports figures in order to inspire our young athletes to reach for the top in international competitions.
We could start by naming some public schools after great champions like Ned Hanlan, Tom Longboat and Nancy Green. Lionel Conacher, though, because he was head and shoulders above any other Canadian, or American, athlete before or since, belongs in a class all by himself. Conacher excelled in football, hockey, baseball, basketball, lacrosse, boxing, wrestling, rowing and running. He once ran the one hundred yard dash in 10 seconds when the world record was 9.2 seconds.
On another occasion, after hitting the winning homer in a baseball game, he dashed across Toronto and scored the winning goal in a lacrosse game. Conacher also played on the old Triple A Maple Leafs baseball team when they won the American League Championship. If Conacher was a fictional character he would have had to be relegated to the comic pages because no one would have believed his exploits to be true.
Lionel Pretoria Conacher was born on May 24, 1901 in Toronto, and died on May 26, two days after his 53rd birthday, in Ottawa in 1954. Conacher first came to the attention of sports writers by winning the Ontario amateur wrestling championship when he was 16 years old.
Then he really made a name for himself when he turned professional and was undefeated in all of his 27 matches in both Canada and the U.S. Turning his hand to the prize ring, Conacher became the Canadian Light-Heavyweight Boxing Champion and again, retired undefeated. His next target was football.
He was the key player on the Toronto Argonauts team that blanked the Edmonton Eskimo’s 23 to zilch in the 1921 Grey Cup.
The Big Train scored 15 of those 23 points. Conacher was on the Toronto Canoe-Club-Paddlers’ hockey team that won the Memorial Cup in 1919, and played in the NHL for twelve years, (1925-37) where he was on two Stanley Cup winning teams, the Chicago Black Hawks, (1933/34). (where he was named first-team all-star), and the Montreal Maroons, (1934/35).
A six-footer, weighing in at 190lbs, Lionel Conacher was also a champion brawler who broke records for time spent in the penalty box. He even came to blows with his brother Charlie (also a star player in the NHL), from time to time.
Over the years in his hockey career, Conacher had his nose broken about a dozen times and picked up over 500 stitches. Ben and Elizabeth Conacher produced eleven children, six boys and five girls. They were all athletically inclined and remain the only family in Canada that can boast three brothers in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Lionel was inducted into the Lacrosse Hall of Fame (1951), the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame (1955, the Canadian Football Hall of Fame (1963), the Hockey Hall of Fame, (1994), and was voted the best athlete of the half-century (1900/50) by the Canadian Press in 1950. There is also the Lionel Conacher Award for best Canadian male athlete of the year.
After leaving the professional sports field, Conacher decided to try his hand at provincial politics and was elected Liberal MLA in 1937. Moving up to federal politics, Conacher was elected to the House of Commons in 1949 and again in 1953. In 1954, the Ottawa MPs softball team, which included Lester B. (Mike) Pearson, was playing the Ottawa Press-Club team in their annual game. Conacher was holding on third base after hitting a triple when he dropped dead of a heart attack.
Conacher’s funeral in Toronto was the biggest the city had ever seen. All flags were lowered to half-mast, and the rich and the powerful came from far-and-wide to pay homage to Canada’s greatest athlete.
At 86, Bert Conacher, who was a promising hockey player until he had to quit because of an eye injury, is the last of Lionel’s siblings, though there are numerous descendents of the mighty clan still on the scene.
Some of them, Pete Conacher, Murray Henderson and Dick Duff, to name a few, were also star athletes.
Some day we’ll get around to honoring Lionel Conacher for his incredible athletic feats. Some day there’ll be a movie of Conacher’s life, and Canadian kids will have a peerless role model in this champion-of-champions.
Some day Conacher will be as well known throughout Canada as Babe Ruth.
Some day everyone will know who we mean when we mention the name of the one and only Lionel Conacher: Canada’s “Big Train.”
