Jimmy Duffy
1914
 If
any of Canada's Boston champions ran and drank and roistered,
as Tom Longboat was caricatured to have done, the description
probably belongs most accurately to Jimmy Duffy. He lived his
short life to the hilt, flexing legs and elbow with equal
ease. Duffy loved nothing more than a good time and seldom
passed up a party. When he burst victorious across the finish
line at Boston in 1914, and was helped into the BAA Clubhouse
by trainer Tommy Thomson, his first request was for a
cigarette."And, true
enough," the Boston Post recorded the next day. "Thomson drew
from his pocket a silver cigaret case and handed the young
Irishman a cork-tipped cigaret, and then held a match while
Duffy sat down and enjoyed his first cigaret since twelve
o'clock.
And no sooner had Duffy been weighed and examined by
physicians at the clubhouse than he asked for a bottle of
beer, and this in turn was supplied to him. "Outgoing and
self-assured, Duffy loved action and people and was loved in
turn by all who knew him. He had an ear for song, befitting
his Irish roots, and made friends wherever he went, his
rollicking lifestyle a contrast with the moderate lives of
most marathon runners. Trainers wrung their hands at his
tendency toward reckless abandon but it was hard to be angry
with him. Instead he evoked in friends the urge to protect him
from his faults.
This was evident in a Hamilton Herald editorial congratulating
him on his victory at Boston.
"Duffy is an athletic marvel —
all the more so because he does not take such care of himself
as successful athletes generally do, does very little training
and is by no means abstemious in his habits. He should be a
member of the team which will be organized to represent Canada
at the Olympic games in Berlin in 1916. But during the time
intervening he should be in the hands of trainers under
obligation to see that his physical condition two years hence
will be such as to enable him to do justice to the wonderful
powers with which nature has endowed him. "
How much Duffy abused his body
and fell short of his athletic potential is uncertain. At his
death one writer described him as an inveterate smoker who
loved his pint of bass, forcing trainers to work him twice as
hard to compensate, (35) and the
assessment seems fairly accurate. Newspapers made frequent
references to his freewheeling habits. But his athletic record
spoke for itself and the fondness for him was such that there
was a reluctance to criticize.
The Boston Post
quoted Duffy as saying that cigarettes and beer were a fixed
part of his training regimen. When The Spectator got hold of
the account and reprinted it for readers in Hamilton it raised
eyebrows and caused considerable gossip, prompting Duffy to
issue a denial.
Claiming that The
Post printed a retraction the day after the story appeared
(a), Duffy complained that
his reputation had been unfairly soiled. ''Why shouldn't I be
sore over a story that is not true?'' he asked. But the
protest seemed half-hearted and if Duffy did try to mend his
ways, in keeping with his status as Boston Marathon champion,
it didn't last long. He soon fell back on his old
happy-go-lucky lifestyle.
Duffy was born May
1, 1890, in Sligo County, Ireland, but moved as a child to
Scotland and grew up in Edinburgh, the site of Powderhall
Stadium and the celebrated marathon races that were billed as
the world professional championships of the day. Duffy lived
with his parents at 12 Mary Street. He appears to have been an
only child.
In 1911, Duffy
emigrated to Canada, part of the population migration of the
day, and found work as a craftsman in Toronto. He worked first
as a tinsmith and later as a stone cutter, spending his
leisure hours at the Central YMCA where Fred Smith, the
director, spotted his talents as a runner. Duffy told Smith he
had run cross-country races in Scotland, winning enough of
them to make something of a reputation for himself. Impressed,
Smith dressed him that fall in the Y's colors and entered him
in the Ward Marathon, the biggest Toronto race of the year.
Duffy ran so well he might have won the twenty-mile event had
he not stopped along the way to argue with supporters of a
rival runner. He had to content himself with second place
after being overtaken by Bob O'Brien, a runner from Gananoque,
Ontario. The following spring Duffy went to Hamilton for The
Spectator Marathon, a rival event to the Herald's race around
Hamilton Bay.
The Spectator race
of 1912 served as the Canadian trial for the 1912 Olympic
Games in Stockholm, Sweden. Shortened to nineteen miles that
year at the request of the Canadian Olympic committee, since
it was thought unnecessary to put runners through a full
marathon to select the team, the race was run May 24 over the
course around Hamilton Bay. For competitors, it was a blessing
that they did not have to run twenty-six miles because the day
was smotheringly humid. Roads were soft and soupy from
overnight rains and high winds buffeted the runners over much
of the course. A time limit of two hours and fifteen minutes
was imposed, after which stragglers were ordered out of the
race. Twenty-five runners started. Only eight finished.
"Training in damp
cold weather, the runners were far from prepared for a hot
day," noted The Herald. ''The sun gave them all kinds of
trouble, even the eight who did finish showing this in the
time that was made and the manner in which they ran. Their one
demand was 'water.' Seemingly they could not get enough of
it."
Because it was an
Olympic trial, special rules applied. All runners had to
produce a doctor's certificate, proving they were fit to
compete, and they were also required to pass examinations the
day of the race. Attendants were barred from the course and
the stricture against drugs was rigorously enforced. While it
was a national trial, however, the race was open to all
amateurs, including foreigners, and several Americans were
entered. One of them, Harry Jensen of New York City, turned
out to be the winner.
The victory was
one of experience. Jensen paced himself carefully, allowing
rivals to speed to the front as the field threaded over the
spit of land across the entrance to Hamilton Bay and swung
into the rolling terrain on the opposite side. Jimmy Duffy,
his impulsive nature on full display, led the way in defiance
of the oppressive conditions, at one point building up a
half-mile margin over his nearest competitor. But he paid
dearly in the closing miles, wilting on the brutal Valley Inn
hill and fading as he headed back into downtown Hamilton.
Jensen surged past him in the final mile, sprinting down York
Street to win in 2:01:15. Duffy lost by twenty seconds but was
the first marathoner named to the Canadian team.
The Stockholm race
turned out to be another broiler, run under a cruel sun on the
afternoon of Sunday, July 14, 1912. That morning, Duffy went
to mass with several other Roman Catholic athletes, Americans
as well as Canadians (36). The mood
was strained and gloomy on both sides. Runners from each
country felt their chances in the race had been compromised by
overzealous coaches whose ignorance of marathon subtleties had
left them too drained for a peak effort over twenty-six miles.
The soaring mercury and clear blue sky as they left the church
only added to the foreboding mood.
Duffy started the
race cautiously, respectful of the heat and mindful of his
lesson at Hamilton. Setting a pace he felt he could hold he
let others gamble this time as the field of sixty-eight
runners struck north from Stockholm toward the marathon
turnaround point near a church at Sollentuna. So far back when
he reached it that his position was not recorded, Duffy's
strategy began to pay off nonetheless. By the first return
checkpoint he had recovered to sixteenth place and with four
miles remaining he had moved all the way up to fourth,
overtaking one flagging runner after another. The rest of the
race became a battle to hold onto fourth spot as Duffy found
himself locked in a duel with Andrew Sockalexis of the United
States. Sockalexis prevailed by eleven seconds and Duffy
settled for fifth with a time of 2:42:18, six minutes off the
winning time of 2:36:54 run by Kenneth McArthur of South
Africa. Duffy was the top Canadian, followed by Edouard Fabre
of Montreal who finished eleventh in 2:50:36.
A tragic footnote
to the marathon was the death, apparently by sunstroke, of
Portuguese runner Francisco Lazaro. Rushed by ambulance to
hospital after falling to the ground at nineteen miles, he
tossed about in a delirious state through the night, still
imagining himself to be in the race, and died in the morning.
Another debate on the humaneness of marathon running ensued,
reminiscent of the one that took place in 1908 when Dorando
Pietri was helped stumbling and half-conscious across the
finish line at the Olympics in London.
Duffy competed in
the Olympics as a member of the Eaton Athletic Club of Toronto
and reigned as the club's foremost runner on his return to
Canada. That fall, on October 3, 1912, he won the Ward
Marathon, atoning for his loss the previous year, but the
circumstances of his triumph were criticized. Supporters
following his progress by auto hurled so many insults at his
chief rival, a French runner from St. Mary's, Ontario, named
James Dellow, hat the abuse was said to have affected the
outcome (37).
Duffy spent much
of the fall of 1912 in Hamilton, a city that appealed to his
rambunctious Irish heart, training under the guidance of Tommy
Thomson, a famous athletic trainer of the times
(b). Thomson urged Duffy
to move to Hamilton, and Duffy found the invitation appealing,
but he put off making a decision.
The Ward Marathon,
questionable sportsmanship aside, made Duffy one of the
favorites for the race around Hamilton Bay three weeks later,
on October 28, 1912. Thanks in large measure to Thomson, he
was fit and full of confidence when he checked in at the
Herald offices the morning of the race. The lone drawback, for
Duffy and all other runners, was the condition of the roads.
Often in poor repair, they were almost nightmarish in 1912.
Several weeks of rain had left them sloppy and badly rutted,
conditions so severe in the vicinity of the Jockey Club that
the way was all but impassable. Thomson gave Duffy
last-minute instructions at the starting line and handed him a
bottle that he carried throughout the race. The newspapers
noted that it contained a solution of "dope" but Duffy never
made use of its contents. He didn't need to. Springing into
the lead at the crack of the starting pistol, he never once
trailed. Two pacers tried to stay with him but quit exhausted
at twelve miles and climbed into a carriage. Jim Corkery also
fought a losing battle to keep Duffy within range.
Duffy skipped over
ruts and danced around puddles as though the outing were a
lark, the outcome never in doubt. The course record going into
the race was 1:48:43, set in 1904 by Sammy Mellor of New York,
the man who in 1902 succeeded Jack Caffery as champion of the
Boston Marathon. Mellor was in Hamilton that day, handling a
runner named John D. Gallagher who had travelled up from
Washington to run the race, and it never occured to him or
anyone else that the mark might be threatened. But Duffy
smashed it nonetheless, dashing through the final miles all
alone to cross the finish line in 1:46:15. Timekeepers
double-checked their watches to make sure there had been no
mistake, scratching their heads in amazement when the clocking
was confirmed. Mellor could only echo their surprise. "I
didn't think he'd do it,'' the New Yorker said.
When Duffy
accepted the Herald's victory trophy, presented that night
between acts of The Merry Widow at a Hamilton theatre, he had
made up his mind to accept Thomson's offer of full-time
coaching. The Herald trumpeted the news the next day.
''Jimmy Duffy,
winner of yesterday's record-breaking race and holder of a
record that will take some beating, will not go back to
Toronto. Duffy has been here for the past six weeks and he has
taken a liking to the city under the mountain, so much so that
he will stay here. He ran under the colors of the Eaton A.A.
of Toronto yesterday, but hereafter will represent the
Ramblers club, along with George Richards, winner of last
year's race."
Thomson brought
out the best in Duffy. In one stretch under the Hamilton
trainer's tutelage, Duffy won seven straight marathons,
including Boston and a taxing marathon at Yonkers, New York.
When Duffy went to
Boston in 1914 marathon racing was a shadow of the sport it
had been. Public fascination with marathoners had waned, the
professional craze was all but dead and newspapers, to a large
extent, had turned their attention elsewhere, their interest
taken up with baseball, horse racing, football, hockey and
bowling. In the years when Hamilton sent no runners to Boston,
a sign of the times in itself, city newspapers scarcely
mentioned the grand old race.
Duffy changed
things briefly. His string of spectacular successes coupled
with the force of his engaging personality revived interest
for a period — so much so that the entourage accompanying him
to Boston echoed the days of old, a ragtag assembly of
runners, trainers, sycophants and well-heeled gamblers.
Thomson was there
as was Stuart Allan, the Canadian ten-mile champion of the day
and one of Duffy's closest friends; J.W. Bryan of the Hamilton
Herald; David Goldberg, Duffy's manager and owner of the New
Commercial Hotel; and the irrepressible Webber Bessey, now
proprietor of the Mountain View Hotel. Goldberg, Bessey and
Thomson were armed for a killing, having carted along fifteen
thousand dollars among them to gamble on the race.
Untortunately tor
the trio Duffy's reputation had preceded him and Boston
bettors were wary. If the Canadian was likely to win, as
seemed the case, they would not be burned again. As a result,
the Hamilton gamblers searched in vain for bets, offering odds
as high as three to one as the race neared. But no takers were
to be found. For Bessey in particular, whose Boston Marathon
windfalls went back to the days of Caffery, it was
heartbreaking. Duffy was a walking gold mine and they couldn't
make a nickel. Not a single bet was made.
"Consequently,''
the Boston Globe noted afterward, "the three Hamilton
bonifaces are going back with their fifteen thousand dollars —
all save what they spent in Boston. They are loyal good
sportsmen and fellows and ever welcome to the Hub.''
If the trip was a
financial flop, it was an athletic triumph for the Canadians,
a race destined to stand as one of the most memorable in the
annals of Boston. Duffy ran like a champion from start to
finish but needed every ounce of strength he could muster,
pushed as he was the entire distance by another Canadian,
Edouard Fabre of Montreal. Duffy and Fabre knew each other
from Stockholm, where they ran together in the 1912 Olympics,
and they exchanged light-hearted barbs as they ran. But the
joking belied the fierceness of their struggle. Duffy tried
time after time, in his headstrong way, to pull away from
Fabre but the Quebecer matched every surge for the first
twenty-four miles of the race.
Hundreds of
automobiles, their access to the route unimpeded, tried to
follow the race, throwing up a boiling pall of dust and
exhaust. In places the jam was so bad the vehicles functioned
as a blockade between the leaders and the rest of the field.
Of the eighty-one starters, the last to challenge the
Canadians were Joe Lorden of Cambridge and Ville Kyronen of
Brooklyn. But they, like so many before and since, succumbed
to the rigors of the Newton Hills, leaving Duffy and Fabre to
fight it out to the finish. At Lake Street, with the last of
the hills behind, all but the vehicles bearing flags of the
BAA or the Boston newspapers were turned away by police, and
here the race became one of titans. Sixteen times over the
next three miles, until the pair reached Coolidge Corner,
Duffy tried to pass Fabre and sixteen times he failed. Each
time he surged a few grim inches to the front, Fabre snatched
the advantage away with a burst of his own.
The outcome was
decided in the final mile when Duffy, gathering the last of
his strength, threw it all into one furious assault and inched
slowly ahead. Fabre tried with a final surge on Exeter Street
to close the gap but Duffy was too far ahead to catch. Duffy
won by fifteen seconds, breaking the tape at the clubhouse in
2:25:01. Shouting supporters picked him off his feet and
shouldered him inside while Fabre, exhausted and scarcely able
to speak the few words of English he knew, was helped from the
finish line by two Boston policemen. The two runners met in
the clubhouse and shook hands, Fabre consoling himself that in
four races over the Boston course it had been his best
marathon. Joe Lorden finished behind him in third, with a time
of 2:28:42 1/5 while Walter Bell of the Shamrock Amateur
Athletic Club in Montreal was fourth in 2:30:37 2/5, giving
Canada three of the top four places.
"I made up my mind
at Coolidge Corner that I was going to make a fight of it
right then and there," Duffy said. "I passed Fabre. My trainer
told me I had about twenty yards on him and this I figured
would be hard to hold. I felt a little cramp in my stomach
when near the Beaconsfield hotel but this passed off as
quickly as it came. I came in feeling as fine as when I
started with the exception of a few blisters in the sole of my
right foot, caused by the gravel which sifted into my shoes."
(38)
That night Duffy
was guest of honor at the Colonial Theatre where he watched
The Queen of the Movies. The race seemed scarcely to have
tired him at all, judging by the questions he had for his
hosts about the production. Most of them, it was noted later,
concerned the female members of the cast. The next day he was
honored at a banquet given by the BAA. Toasts were raised in
his honor, a band played and he was presented with a souvenir
by George V. Brown — the shell of the cartridge fired to start
the marathon at Ashland.
While Jimmy Duffy
was being honored a marathon postmorten was going on in Boston
athletic circles, led by Arthur Duffey of the Boston Post.
Duffey was a former sprinter who thought Boston deserved
better than the one finisher it had managed to place in the
top four runners.
"The time has come
when local marathoners will have to wake up if they want to
retain their prestige as real distance runners," he wrote.
"There is no reason why America or New England should not
produce just as good runners as they do across the border....
The trouble with many of the local grinders is that they don't
know how to run the race. Such runners as Joe Lorden, Tom
Lilley and Festus Madden, and other pluggers who could be
mentioned, are as good marathoners as any in the game but they
don't seem to run their best on the local course. Considering
that the Ashland to Boston course is right at hand, and they
have a chance to get thoroughly acquainted with the course, it
is hard to understand why the great race should go to some
athlete outside New England."
The lament was
music to the ears of the Canadians as they departed Boston and
journeyed back to the celebration that awaited in Hamilton.
The first man to shake Duffy's hand as he stepped from the
train at the T.H. & B. Station was Jack Caffery, the memory of
his own Boston victories bound up with the occasion. Duffy was
placed at the head of a fifteen-car parade and, preceded by
the 91st Band, carried through downtown streets to the
Ramblers clubhouse, thousands cheering as he passed. Caffery
rode behind with his old trainers, Tommy Powers and Dan
Donovan, and was persuaded to say a few words in tribute.
Duffy, in turn, spoke of Caffery's glory days and heaped
praise on Boston and the BAA, something no one had felt
inclined to do in earlier times.
"'I doubt if I
ever had a better time in my life,'' Duffy said. "Nothing was
too good for me. The mayor of the city went out of his way to
make our stay there a pleasant one. Autos were placed at our
disposal for the entire stay and we had the free run of the
theatres and ball park. I can't tell you just how well they
treated us."
Duffy's trophy,
large and ornate, was placed on display in the front window of
the Herald offices and scores stopped to admire it, gathering
in clusters on the sidewalk. The next Olympic Games were
scheduled just two years away at Berlin
(c) and the talk was happy and confident that
Duffy would win for Canada the marathon victory that had
eluded Tom Longboat in 1908.
The matter quickly
became academic, however. Shortly after returning from Boston
Duffy decided to take a fling at professional running, the
little of it that remained. The announcement was made, his
loss to amateur ranks mourned and his first professional race
arranged. It took place June 3, 1914, at Kingston and his
principal opponent turned out to be Edouard Fabre. Fabre had
not turned professional and was, in fact, mired in a dispute
with the Quebec branch of the Canadian Amateur Athletic
Association trying to preserve his amateur status. Why he
chose to run against Duffy, knowing if found out it could only
worsen his case, is a mystery. But the assumption is that he
was so anxious to avenge his Boston loss to the Hamilton
runner that he took the gamble. They raced five miles on a
half-mile track normally used for horse racing and Fabre won
by three hundred yards, waiting until Duffy attempted to break
away and then flying past the Irishman with a feverish sprint
of his own.
Duffy earned a
mere one hundred dollars for his professional debut and some
of his closest friends wondered openly whether he had made a
terrible mistake by throwing away his amateur status so
casually. But Duffy entertained no such doubts, setting out
instead to line up as many professional races as he could over
the balance of the season. Yet they were races, for the most
part, that he was destined not to run.
Instead, the
outbreak of war in Europe intervened and when the call for
Canadian soldiers went out Duffy was among the first to
enlist. Although he was urged to complete the races he had
arranged before leaving, he refused to hear of it. The war to
Duffy was irresistible, appealing to his patriotism and sense
of adventure. He could scarcely wait to leap into the fray of
battle. When the train carrying Hamilton volunteers pulled out
of the T.H. & B. Station Duffy was described as the happiest
man on board. Before leaving he promised friends he would run
in only one direction while overseas — "Toward Berlin."
Duffy took the
oath of entry into the Canadian Army at Valcartier, Quebec, on
September 23, 1914, one of dozens of Hamilton men who enlisted
on the same date. He was assigned to the 91st Argyle Regiment
and plunged happily into military life. Superiors noted in his
regimental file, "His habits are good.'' A few weeks later he
was transferred to the 16th Battalion (The Canadian Scottish)
of the Canadian Expeditionary Force and that fall he sailed
for England aboard the HMT Andania. Duffy stayed in England
until the following spring when the 16th Battalion crossed the
English Channel to the battlefields of France and Belgium.
On April 19, 1915,
Duffy was not in Boston, as he thought a year earlier he would
be, defending his Boston Marathon crown. Nor could he know
that another Canadian, one he had matched and beaten before,
was running to victory in his place over the storied
Massachusetts course.
Duffy was huddled
that day with the men of the 16th Battalion in dank trenches
dug into the rolling countryside outside Ypres, a small town
in west Belgium. Ypres is recalled with particular horror in
the annals of the First World War because it was the place
where poisonous gas was first used in human combat, catching
Allied troops unaware and cutting them down en masse. The
soldiers of the 16th had been outside Ypres for several days,
shoring up positions held by French soldiers they had been
called in to relieve. The task was a messy one of reinforcing
parapets, constructing latrines and removing the putrid flesh
of the dead. Duffy looked forward to the following day when
the Canadians were due to be relieved themselves and would
retire to billets for a welcome rest.
Relief came on
schedule but the break was short-lived. Two days later the
Canadians were back at the front, fighting alongside other
Allied troops to hold a three-mile front that was the only
remaining barrier between advancing German armies and the
strategic channel port of Calais. The fateful moment occurred
at five o'clock on the afternoon of April 22. Suddenly and
silently, after what had been an almost beautiful day of
warmth and spring sunshine, clouds of gas billowed up from the
facing German lines and drifted on prevailing breezes toward
the Allied trenches. French soldiers, to the left of the
Canadians, took the brunt of the attack, floundering in
defenseless bewilderment. Choking and gagging, they stumbled
in retreat, allowing the Germans to surge forward into the
vacuum.
The charge gave
the Germans control of the French trenches and they also took
command of a small wood containing four British machine guns.
But the Canadians managed to regroup and form a new line that
held the advance from going further. Then as darkness fell,
and with it a tense silence, Canadian soldiers received orders
to counterattack under cover of night and retake the captured
wood. The task, one that was little short of suicidal, fell to
the 10th and 16th battalions, a direct charge into the face of
concentrated German troop fire. A few minutes before midnight,
the wood no more than a blur before them in the starlight, the
Canadians moved out, almost certainly knowing the fate that
awaited them. They advanced in eight lines, overcoats and
packs removed, bayonets fixed in place. What gave them away
was the faint sound of bayonet scabbards clinking on a wire
hedge. A German flare was sent aloft to check. When the light
exposed the Canadian advance the German guns erupted. The
slaughter is recorded in the 16th Battalion's official war
history.
"The battlefield
became as bright as day. The ranks wavered and swayed for an
instant; they got their balance; they merged one into the
other; the charge recovered momentum, and the mass went
lunging ahead. The crash of rifle fire bewildered the senses.
The bullets made resounding cracks on either side and hit the
eardrums like blows of a hammer.'' (39)
The Canadian
attackers did manage to rout the Germans from the Bois des
Cuisiniers that night. But the cost was terrible. Bodies fell
in lines, toppled by the staccato chorus of German machine
guns, and in heaps, as men were cut down trying to leap the
corpses of those who had fallen before. At dawn, when it was
over and the guns were silent, the casualties could be picked
out by the color of their kilts, the yellow stripe of the
Gordons, the white of the Seaforths, the red of the Camerons,
the dark green of the Argylls. Of three hundred soldiers and
five officers in the 16th Battalion, only twenty-seven
survived the night. Jimmy Duffy was not among them.
Fatally wounded,
Duffy was carried to a field hospital set up in a nearby farm
house. He died within hours, battlefield doctors unable to do
more than comfort his final moments. The date of his death was
April 23, 1915. On that same day, far across the Atlantic in
Montreal, newspapers were trumpeting the homecoming of Edouard
Fabre, the new champion of the Boston Marathon.
Duffy, like scores
of soldiers who died with him, was buried in West Flanders. A
simple white cross, one in the endless acres of white crosses
that remain as a memorial to the human lives lost in deciding
the outcome of the First World War, marks his grave in the
cemetery at Vlamertinghe — Plot 1, Row F. Grave 14.
The news did not
reach Hamilton until a week after the fact, and was a blow to
Duffy's many friends and admirers when it arrived. The war
seemed all the more real and harsh because of the widespread
affection Duffy had generated in his brief time as a resident
of the city. Tributes poured forth and a day of remembrance
was planned in his honor.
Tommy Thomson,
Jack Caffery, Billy Sherring and others mourned his passing
and recalled him fondly, Thomson especially so since only
days earlier he had received a letter from Duffy indicating
that all was well.
"He was a real
good pal as well as an athlete,'' said Thomson. "I feel his
death keenly .... I know that Jimmy received his wounds like a
hero. He was one of those fellows who did not have the
slightest idea of what danger really was."
George Richards,
an accomplished runner and friend, had trouble accepting the
news. "I hoped that the report of Duff's death was not true, "
Richards said. "He and I were the best of pals and I can't
convince myself that he is dead. He was a great runner and a
fine fellow."
On May 1, 1915, on
what would have been Duffy's twenty-fifth birthday, the
Hamilton Evening Times appeared with the following verses
penned in his memory.
Forgetful of himself he went to fight the country's foe
His mind upon one object bent: to answer blow with blow;
And thus he faced the shrieking shell, nor faltered in his pace,
And thus he fought and thus he fell and thus he ran his race.
True lover of an honest game; a leader in the run;
He left it all for country same, and marched against the Huns.
The grit which won him many a race now urged him 'gainst the foe,
Nor did he falter from his place til death had laid him low.
Down through the years Jimmy Duffy's name shall never be forgot;
Though rough the course it found him game, exchanging shot for shot;
He served his king and country well, nor feared the foe to face;
And thus he fought and thus he fell and thus he won his race.
Robert J. Devine
Three weeks later, on Victoria
Day in St. Catharines, there was another less altruistic
tribute to Duffy. It occurred at the annual ten-mile race put
on by the Martin Athletic Club, the same race where a year
earlier he had run second to his good friend Stuart Allan.
Runners of German parentage or extraction, of which there were
many in southern Ontario, were barred from competing.
Footnotes
(a) Surviving records of
The Post, contained on microfilm at the Boston Public Library,
show no evidence that a retraction was published.
(b) Born in Ancaster, near
Hamilton, Thomson trained four winners of the Hamilton Herald
race and also managed Pete Scott, a boxer who once won the
Canadian lightweight title. Thomson was also an accomplished
cyclist, competing in more than four hundred races and winning
an estimated two hundred and fifty prizes.
(c) The Games were
cancelled because of World War 1. |
