Edouard Fabre
1915
 February
1, 1930, dawned bright and clear in Quebec City, a pristine
morning in which boots crunched on the snow and breath escaped
in plumes into the air. Light reflected across the sliding
expanse of the St. Lawrence River, turning facing windows
gold, and wood smoke rose straight upward from stone chimneys
to vanish in the cold. Through the streets this Saturday,
bundled in thick coats and stepping with an air of expectancy,
citizens began to converge early on Jacques Cartier Square,
first in a trickle and then a flow, men, women, noisy
children, most on foot but some in sleighs and chugging autos.
By eight o'clock the square was bustling with activity; by
eight-thirty it was difficult to move. The police, fearful of
losing control, called in extra squads to maintain order.
The focus of attention was a
roped-off area next to St. Francois Street which contained a
handful of warmly-dressed men and a team of leaping, barking
dogs.
The men included Oscar Auger, the mayor of Quebec City;
EmileTrudel,the chief of police, and two wealthy businessmen,
Sam and Allan Bronfman, executives of Distillers Corp. Ltd. in
Montreal. The dogs, which handlers had trouble holding in
place, were harnessed to a sled lashed with a cargo of medical
supplies, and looming over the scene, draped along one full
side of the square, was a large green ribbon,
(40) conspicuous in the morning
sun.
They were there to supervise the start of the Usher's Green
Stripe Snowshoe Marathon, a unique six-day race that would be
run in daily stages ranging from twenty-six to fifty miles.
Totaling one hundred and ninety miles in length, it would take
competitors on a taxing journey over snowbound roads along the
rugged north shore of the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City
to Montreal. A spectacle the newspapers had been talking about
for weeks, it had attracted nineteen of the best endurance
athletes of the day, drawn by the large sum of
twenty-five-hundred dollars the Bronfmans had offered in prize
money. The winner would collect one thousand dollars, a
princely sum in the Depression economy of the day.
(a)
Usher's
Green Stripe Snowshoe Marathon
Quebec City to
Montreal
February 1-5, 1930
RACE RULES
Contestants must at all times
walk as near as possible to the centre of the road and at all
times must follow the course. Night controls ranging in
distance of approximately fifteen to twenty miles apart,
according to condition of the road, climate, etc., will be
specified from time to time.
All entrants must arrive at
control points each night by midnight; a failure to be clocked
by twelve o'clock midnight will disqualify the entrant.
Contestants shall not ride or
be assisted through means of a vehicle of any kind or
character whatsoever, either rope line or other means, but
must travel on their own independent motion.
Roads between control stations
will be policed by officials of the marathon and everything
possible done to make the going as easy as possible.
— Chronicle Telegraph
January 31, 1930
The racers were hidden from
view until shortly before the start, closeted in the nearby
St. Roch's Hotel for medical examinations and race
instructions. When they appeared, striding out a side door and
waving to the crowd, a roar went up from the packed square.
Each carried a pair of sturdy snowshoes with floppy leather
bindings and each wore a race number framed by the words
''Green Stripe" on top and "Quebec-Montreal" below. One member
of the group drew more attention than the others.
His name was Edouard Fabre and
he was remarkable for his years, still a competitive endurance
athlete at the grand old age of forty-four. Fabre was a lithe
muscled man nearly six feet tall, dressed on this occasion
entirely in black — black moccasins, trousers, jacket, gloves
and tight-fitting cap. Dark hair, eyes and swarthy complexion
enhanced his appearance, causing some to conclude that he was
of Indian origin.
An athletic marvel, Fabre had
been competing for decades in endurance races of every
description, road races, cross-country races, team races,
track races, races against horses, and every winter, races on
snowshoes, the sight of him pummeling through the drifts an
athletic joy to see. Racing was in Fabre's blood and had been
all his life. His Montreal home was filled to bursting with
the trophies he had won over the years, hundreds of them,
filling shelves and closets. His appetite for competition was
legendary and had scarcely diminished with the years, although
there were some who thought him foolish at forty-four to
tackle so grueling a challenge as the Green Stripe Marathon.
Fabre paid no attention, drawn as always by the call of the
contest and the conviction that he could still hold his own
with the best.
As the nine o'clock start
neared Oscar Auger fingered the starting pistol, waiting for
the signal from Armand Vincent, the race director, that all
was in readiness. A hush fell as the moment neared,
timekeepers poised to start official watches, racers crouched
on the starting line. Auger held his hand aloft and squeezed
the trigger. The explosion shattered the stillness, the crowd
roaring as the long green ribbon fell away, and the racers
leaped forward. One fell in his haste but recovered his feet
quickly and was off with the rest, the dogs and medical sled
bounding along in unison. Eight other sleds, carrying
managers, race officials and journalists, joined the
procession as the racers bounded westward through city
streets, headed for the river shore and the road to Montreal.
The destination for the first
of the six days of racing, in which competitors would be
judged on the basis of total elapsed time, was the town of
Donnacona, twenty-seven miles upriver. Crowds cheered the
cavalcade out of the city and noisy knots of spectators waited
at each hamlet beyond, drawn by the color and drama of the
spectacle. Between settlements families came out from farm
houses to stand at the roadside and shout encouragement. Some
decorated their homes for the occasion and waved flags. Some
offered the racers hot soup and steaming mugs of tea. Others
hopped cutters and sleds of their own and rode along, their
snorting horses and jangling sleigh bells adding color to the
scene.
Fabre let younger racers set
the early pace, content to bide his time and find a gait that
felt comfortable. He felt strong and optimistic, unbothered
for once by the rheumatism that had nagged him in recent
months. His mind flashed ahead to Montreal and the finish that
awaited the racers, a single indoor mile on a snow track at
the Montreal Forum. If all went well his wife and three
children would be there to greet him when he arrived.
Fabre's sponsor for the race
was La Patrie, a Montreal newspaper that had backed him in the
past and was confident he still had it within his
tightly-knit, one-hundred-and-sixty-pound body to perform
athletic miracles. A journalist had been assigned to follow
the race and file detailed daily accounts of Fabre's progress.
Three runners paced the field
in the Green Stripe Marathon, swishing rhythmically through
the drifts as the sun gleamed down on the white Quebec
landscape. They were Frank Hoey, a young Irish runner from
Montreal, Didace Martineau of Quebec City and Phil Granville,
a black runner from Hamilton, Ontario, who often found himself
racing against Fabre. No racer in the field had more respect
for Fabre's abilities than Granville and before the day was
out Fabre once again demonstrated why.
As the clock ticked from
morning to afternoon and the cavalcade advanced toward
Donnacona, Fabre quickened his step and began to gain on his
rivals. Drawing on that well of endurance that had won him so
many races in the past, he overtook his opponents one by one,
age invisible in the powerful stride that propelled him
forward. Several miles outside Donnacona he forged into the
lead, grinning as he did so, and left the field behind, first
by a few yards, then a few hundred, finally by so much that no
one was in view behind him. The old man had it all to himself.
Fabre arrived in Donnacona to a
hero's welcome, forty-four minutes ahead of his nearest
competitor. The whole town was there to welcome him,
undeterred by a biting wind that blew in from the river. He
was met by Hermes Saint-Denis, the town's newly-elected mayor,
and invited to take part in opening ceremonies at the hockey
game that night between Donnacona and the neighboring town of
Portneuf. Accepting, he was led away to a hotel to rest.
Fabre's official time was five
hours and five minutes flat (5:05:00) with Frank Hoey crossing
the line second at 5:49:00 and Phil Granville third at
5:50:12. Fabre's lead worked out to exactly a minute for each
of his celebrated forty-four years, the joke among his rivals
that night being that things might have been worse — Fabre
could have been older. He celebrated with a hot bath, a big
meal with beer, a visit to the hockey rink and a sound night's
sleep.
The next morning, for the
second stage of the race, a twenty-eight-mile trek to the
village of Ste. Anne de la Perade, Fabre awoke raring to go,
glad to be off when the field was sent on its way at eight
o'clock by Mayor Saint-Denis. Not all were as ready. One
runner was unable to start, broken from the effort of the
first day, and another gave out on the road, unable to
continue in the face of a stiff south wind. Still another was
disqualified for failing to complete the stage within the
established time limit.
It was a day of drama
nonetheless, the event seizing the imagination of each
succeeding village and town. Fabre, a wonder to all who
watched, led the stage from start to finish, holding crowds
spellbound as he swept past. So great was the crush on his
arrival at Ste. Anne de la Perade that a fire hall balcony
collapsed, the occupants tumbling in terror to the ground.
That no one was injured was looked upon as a small miracle.
Fabre won the stage by eighteen minutes, stretching his
overall lead to an hour and two minutes.
"How's that for an old man of
forty-four?'' Fabre inquired of his trainer, Eddie Crevier,
that night at the Cadet Hotel. Crevier, who had joined the
race that morning at Donnacona, clapped Fabre on the back and
laughed.
For the twenty-seven-mile third
stage that took the racers to Trois-Rivieres, the weather
turned brutally cold, the thermometer plunging to twelve
degrees below zero Fahrenheit and an Arctic wind throwing snow
into the faces of the runners as they pressed through the
miles. Yet Fabre seemed immune. Nearing Trois-Rivieres he
again bounded away from the field, ending the day with a
tremendous sprint along Saint Maurice and Laviolette streets
and adding another thirteen minutes to his lead. ''I'm
hungry," he announced at the Chateau DuBois, where he was
examined by Dr. Henri Lacroix and found to be in such
extraordinary condition that he passed up an afternoon nap and
mingled with crowds in the hotel portico as other runners
arrived.
''His breathing is absolutely
normal,'' said the doctor, "and his pulse rate is seventy."
The fourth stage, twenty-six
miles to Louiseville, brought with it another piercing
headwind that taxed the will of the racers. Some wilted in the
blast yet nothing seemed to slow Fabre down or prevent crowds
massing to see him from growing steadily larger. Whole
communities stood in awe at the sight of this man who seemed
impervious to his years. Young people, among the most
inspired, ran out to offer coffee, chocolate and slices of
bread.
"Vive Fabre,'' the cry went up.
''Vas-y Edouard.''
Once again Fabre was the first
to finish the stage, extending his overall lead to an hour and
forty-eight minutes and finding a sheaf of telegrams waiting
when he checked into the Lafleur Hotel at Louiseville. So far
had news of his remarkable run spread that congratulations
flowed in from well-wishers in Boston, Ottawa, Maine,
Montreal, New Hampshire and communities across Quebec. The one
that warmed his heart most, however, came from his wife in
Montreal.
''Run to victory for me and the
children," it read. (41)
The message arrived at an
emotional moment for Fabre. Although the two longest stages of
the journey remained, he was conceded certain to win barring
injury or mishap. Fabre believed it himself and decided to
make the race a grand last hurrah for his family. Telling
journalists it would be his last snowshoe race, he said, ''I
will make the biggest human effort to win for my wife and my
children.''
The fifth stage of the marathon
was a formidable fifty-mile march from Louiseville to
L'Assomption, nearly twice the distance of previous stages and
a task to drain body and soul. Conditions were unimaginably
difficult. The stage began in sub-zero cold at seven o'clock
in the morning with headwinds already gusting off the river
and whipping snow into drifts on the roadway. Portions of the
way were close to impassable, the snowshoes of the racers
sinking deep into the shifting drifts. Horses drawing
accompanying sleds were so exhausted by Berthierville, the
halfway point, that they were unharnessed and replaced.
Somewhere in the early miles of
the stage a soreness crept into Fabre's leg and began to nag
with each step. He pressed on, hoping the discomfort would
subside, but it worsened with the miles until his pace
slackened and Phil Granville caught and edged past to take
over Fabre's familiar spot at the front of the field. Fabre
struggled to hold Granville within reach and by Berthierville,
where the cavalcade stopped for a meal, trailed only by a
couple of hundred yards. Yet the leg was beginning to swell,
raising questions about the wisdom of continuing and causing
some to wonder if the old man had not pushed too hard in the
first days of the race. But Fabre refused to yield, as always,
and for the rest of the day put on a heroic demonstration of
his vast willpower, athletic courage and ability to accept
pain.
His limp increased with the
miles but he would not allow Granville to leave him behind.
Together they raced far to the front of the field, fighting
the cold, the roads and each other every step of the way to
L'Assomption. Toward the end, with darkness falling and both
men exhausted from the struggle, Fabre somehow reached down
and found the strength for a closing sprint into town,
shuffling across the finish line two minutes ahead of
Granville to win his fifth straight stage. It had taken him
ten hours and three minutes to cover the fifty miles but his
overall lead now stood at an almost laughable three hours and
twenty-eight minutes. Granville, who started the day in fourth
place, moved up to second, forty-five minutes ahead of Frank
Hoey.
Fabre sniffed smelling salts to
revive his numbed brain as a doctor examined his leg. To the
amazement of all concerned no serious damage seemed to have
occurred. The limb was puffy and inflamed from the abuse it
had taken but that was all. Medicine was prescribed to reduce
the swelling and Fabre slumped into a grateful sleep, relieved
to know he would probably be able to continue in the morning.
His rivals, meanwhile, were still struggling over darkened
roads to finish the day's arduous journey. The last, Didace
Martineau and Adjutor Cloutier, stumbled in only twelve
minutes before deadline.
''All, without exception,
runners, seconds, officials and journalists arrived at
L'Assomption completely exhausted,'' reported La Patrie."
(42) "The fatigue of each is beyond
description. Choinard and Letourneau were disoriented but in
the best shape. Cloutier arrived late, overwhelmed, frozen,
and Martineau was in a pitiful state."
The final stage of the marathon
was broken into two sections of sixteen miles each, the first
from L'Assomption to Clifford House in east Montreal, where a
resting stop had been arranged, and the second a closing
emotion-charged run through Montreal streets to the Forum and
the finish before cheering thousands. Besides the special snow
track which the racers would circle for the final mile, the
Forum had also been equipped with an ordinary running track
and a fifteen-mile race had been scheduled to entertain crowds
as they waited. Among those entered was Johnny Salo, a New
Jersey policeman who the previous year had won a
transcontinental race from New York to Los Angeles. Phil
Granville had run the same race. Salo was also on hand at
L'Assomption to start the racers on the final day of the
snowshoe marathon.
Fabre began the day cautiously,
the leg stiff and painful, while Granville again pressed into
the lead. This time Fabre let him go unwilling to risk the
certain victory that awaited at the Forum for the sake of
winning the last stage. Police kept the way open as crowds
gathered to watch. At Charlemagne, just east of Montreal,
citizens massed on bridge and sent Granville through with a
spine-tingling ovation. Fabre came next, pausing at the
insistence of photographers for pictures, then continued
onward. At Clifford House he trailed Granville by seven
minutes but the leg seemed revived enough that Fabre confided
to friend he would try to make up the deficit in the final run
to the Forum.
He almost managed it. The last
miles became a triumphant sprint for the weathered old
veteran, still dressed in jet black racing uniform. The course
clear and fast before him, he swept through Sherbrooke and
Dorchester streets on waves of adulation from applauding
throngs. At Pie IX Boulevard his lead over Granville was
twenty-five yards; at Sherbrooke and Dorchester it was six
hundred. The moment was one of heart-stopping drama when he
burst into the Forum and a crowd of more than four thousand
came to its feet and shook the building with its welcome. The
fifteen-mile race, still in progress, was forgotten. Fabre, a
startling sight with ice encrusting his eyebrows and six-day
growth of beard, circled the track in victory, a band playing
''IL a gagneses epaulettes," and Mme. Fabre and children
waving from a box seat. Martineau, who had overtaken
Granville, swept in and he and Fabre circled the track hand in
hand, finishing in a blaze of flash bulbs.
Usher's
Green Strike Snowshoe Marathon
Quebec to Montreal, February 1-5, 1930
Day Total Lead
Quebec/Donnacona (27 miles)
Fabre 5:05:00 5:05:00 44:00
Hoey 5:49:00 5:49:00
Granville 5:50:12 5:50:12
Donnacona/La Perade (28 miles)
Fabre 5:13:30 10:18:30 1:02:28
Hoey 5:31:58 11:20:58
Martineau 5:46:43 11:36:55
La Perade/Trois-Rivieres (27 miles)
Fabre 4:44:00 15:02:30 1:25:20
Martineau 4:50:55 16:27:50
Hoey 5:11:00 16:31:58
Trois-Rivieres/Louiseville (26 miles)
Fabre 4:30:00 19:32:30 1:48:10
Martineau 4:52:50 21:20:40
Hoey 5:53:28 22:24:26
Louiseville/L'Assomption (50 miles)
Fabre 10:03:00 29:35:30 3:28:17
Granville 10:05:00 33:03:47
Hoey 11:24:00 33:48:26
Montreal East (16 miles)
Granville 3:02:37
Fabre 3:10:15
Martineau 3: 17: 15
Forum (16 miles)
Fabre 1:33:00
Granville 1:40:00
Cusson 1:45:20
L'Assomption/Forum (32 Miles)
Granville 4:42:37 37:46:24
Fabre 4:43:15 34:18:45 3:27:39
Hoey 5:47:20 39:35:46
Fabre's elapsed time for the
one hundred and ninety-mile odyssey was 34:18:45, a margin of
three hours, twenty-seven minutes and thirty-nine seconds over
Granville. But the Hamilton runner had one consolation. His
combined time for the two sections that made up the final
stage was thirty-eight seconds faster than Fabre had covered
the same stage. The old man was denied one small aspect of
triumph. The racers were ushered into dressing rooms made
available for the occasion by the Montreal Canadiens hockey
club, and luxuriated in hot baths while those still to arrive
completed the race. Ten of the original eighteen managed to
finish, the last with a total elapsed time of 43:26:52.
There was a twist of irony to
Fabre's being taken for an Indian athlete in the Green Stripe
marathon. Although born to French-Canadian parents at Ste.
Genevieve on August 21, 1885, he may have had Indian ancestry.
Elmer Ferguson, (b) the
Montreal Herald sports editor who recorded many of Fabre's
feats, wrote following the snowshoe victory, '"Fabre had the
temperament of an Indian, and possibly his stamina and natural
loping style are traceable to some touch of Indian blood."
(43)
Whether Ferguson was right or
wrong, Fabre did grow up among Indians. Orphaned at an early
age and placed in a home for abandoned children in the St.
Henri district of Montreal, Fabre fled the place on foot one
night, crossing the Victoria Bridge to the south shore of the
St. Lawrence and crawling exhausted into a clump of bushes on
the Indian Reserve of the Caughnawaga Iroquois. Discovered the
next day and taken in by a reserve family, Fabre remained
there, catching the Iroquois passion for running and also
becoming a bridge and construction worker like many of his
adopted brothers. The impact of native culture carried over to
his own family in later years.
"Some people thought we were
really Indians,'' a daughter, Mrs. John Hefferman, recalled
decades afterward when her father was inducted posthumously
into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1964. "When I was a girl
working at City Hall they used to jokingly call me the little
papoose.''
Fabre is said to have run, and
won, his first footrace on March 4, 1904, in St. Henri and two
years later to have paid his own way to the Athens Olympics of
1906. He was also credited at the time of his death with
competing in the 1908 and 1912 Olympics and having been the
first runner to defeat Tom Longboat in a marathon
(c). But whatever the
exploits of his early years he seems not to have attracted
much notice until 1911 when he ran third at the Boston
Marathon to a new young champion named Clarence DeMar. Later
that year Fabre also won the Montreal Herald's annual race
around Mount Royal, the first French-Canadian runner to do so,
winning honor for the National Amateur Athletic Association,
in whose colors he competed, and praise from the writers of
the Herald.
The Herald also noted with
satisfaction that year that its race, a ten-mile event started
in 1906, had become an established feature on the Montreal
sports calendar. ''Thanksgiving Day in Montreal without the
Round the Mountain race would be as tough as Thanksgiving Day
without turkey,'' the newspaper observed. ''The Montreal
public have come to look upon the event as a sort of immovable
feast."
Fabre dropped out of the 1912
Herald race, stricken with a side stitch, but returned in 1913
to become the first double winner of the event. The following
year he joined the Richmond Athletic Club and journeyed to
Boston where he ran a stirring second in the 1914 Boston
Marathon, then resumed home to almost lose his amateur status
in a controversial race against Hamilton's Jimmy Duffy at
Kingston. Fabre claimed not to have shared in the forbidden
spoils of professionalism and was let off, after an
investigation, with a lengthy suspension.
Of all Fabre's competitive
years, 1915 was the most memorable, highlighted by race after
race in which he was all but unbeatable. The greatest of his
victories was the 1915 Boston Marathon but it was a race he
entered with doubts and misgivings, having gone four times
previously to Boston and lost on each occasion. To prepare for
Boston that year Fabre logged more than a thousand miles in
the three months leading up to the race, awesome for the time,
but he fretted about his health. A kidney infection bothered
him through the winter, a leg muscle nagged and the week of
the race he came down with a severe cold. All these subtleties
were lost on the Boston newspapers, however. Recalling his
stirring battle the previous year with Jimmy Duffy, and
Duffy's absence from the 1915 field, the press hailed Fabre
the favorite.
Sixty-six runners started the
marathon, springing away at the stroke of noon from a line on
the road at Stevens Corner in Ashland. Fabre ignored the early
leaders in deference to the thermometer which would push past
eighty before the race was over, making it the hottest Boston
Marathon since the broiler of 1909. As many as two dozen
runners sometimes ran ahead of him, causing crowds to wonder
if the Canadian had been overrated. But the strategy paid off
when he reached the latter stages of the race. The restrained
pace kept him away from the cloud of dust and exhaust fumes
churned up at the front by accompanying vehicles and allowed
him to conserve strength for a closing rush. Fabre began to
press in the Newton Hills, sailing over the three ascents with
ease and overtaking runner after runner. But he very nearly
left it too late.
With two miles to go six
runners remained between Fabre and the lead. Four of them were
within close reach while the fifth, Clifton Horne of the
Dorchester Athletic Club, was a quarter mile beyond, and the
sixth, Hugh Honohan of the New York Athletic Club, was a full
half-mile away, holding the lead as he had for nearly eighteen
miles. Honohan, however, had run himself to the brink of
exhaustion and slowed suddenly to a walk, allowing Horne to
catch and sweep past him into the lead. The Dorchester runner,
clad in white and cheered wildly by the Boston crowds, looked
at that point like a certain winner. But no one foresaw the
amazing sprint Fabre would make in the final mile. The Boston
Post described Home's dismay as the Canadian passed the first
four runners between him and the lead, then picked off the
spent Honahan and finally closed in for the kill.
''Pat, pat, pat, pat sounded
the approaching steps of the Frenchman, and each step sounded
nearer to the tiring Home. He concentrated his mind again upon
the limbs that had served him so well up to this stage of the
run and this time they seemed to respond more readily.
"But always there was that pat,
pat of the Canadian's shoes, until at a loss to account for a
man gaining upon him at such a pace and after so long a grind,
Horne half turned to look over his shoulder.
"A pleasantly smiling face
greeted him. He saw the rhythmic play of the leg muscles,
joyous in their strength. He noted the even heaving of the
opponent's chest. He observed the freshness of his condition
and turned again to the runner's face. Was that a smile or was
it a menacing grin, he asked himself. It seemed the latter and
with a shudder he turned again to his work, but this time with
hopelessness written on his face.
"A remarkable accomplishment is
not to be downed. The crowd, which had been almost wholly in
sympathy with the local runner, and who even then honored him
for his wonderful efforts, could not but note and applaud the
work of that smiling Edouard Fabre as he closed the last yard
of space between him and Horne and then proceeded to forge
ahead." (44)
Fabre made the final turn onto
Exeter Street and sped to the finish, grinning as he swept
through the tape held by black-suited members of the BAA
executive. He was clocked in 2:31:41 1/5. Horne followed in
second at 2:33:01 while Sidney Hatch of the Illinois Athletic
Club in Chicago took third in 2:35:47. Honohan struggled home
fourth in 2:37:02 2/5. Waiting to greet Fabre were his
trainer, Emile Lefebvre, and five Guyot brothers, friends from
Montreal who had come to watch him race. Their lapels
decorated with pins of the Richmond Athletic Club, to which
they belonged along with Fabre, the brothers accompanied the
new champion into the BAA Clubhouse where he was checked by
doctors and pronounced in excellent condition despite loss of
weight from racing in the heat. Fabre celebrated by calling
for first one beer, then another and another until the seat on
which he sat, while answering questions from Boston reporters,
was ringed with half a dozen empties.
"Fabre lost seven and a half
pounds.'' one journalist wrote, "but when he was ready to go
into the street he had regained much of it."
That night Fabre was introduced
at the Boston Arena where an exhibition match was being staged
by Jess Willard, the newly-crowned heavyweight boxing champion
of the day. The two men shook hands at centre ring as crowds
cheered. The next day Fabre went to a baseball game, toured
the Boston park system as guest of the city, had dinner with
the mayor and went to the B. F. Keith Theatre where motion
pictures of the marathon finish were being shown, little more
than twenty-four hours after the fact. The Boston Post hailed
the feat as ''one of the quickest examples of motion
photography ever made.''
So much attention was heaped on
Fabre that he missed the train he was expected to take back to
Montreal, scuttling plans for a gala reception arranged in his
honor. Fifteen hundred well-wishers and dignitaries waited in
vain for his arrival at Bonaventure Station while decorated
cars stood empty at the curb and a hundred special Chinese
lanterns flickered at the Richmond Clubhouse for a homecoming
celebration that never took place.
"We feel pretty cheap about
it,'' club president Edward Scullion said. "We don't know when
he'll be back.''
When Fabre finally turned up,
several trains late, clutching the silver trophy of victory
under one arm, he was met by a welcoming committee but not a
large crowd. A delayed celebration, smaller than the one
planned originally, was held and Fabre apologized for being
late, explaining that he had not understood the extent of the
festivities planned in his honor. Amends seemed to have been
made, although some resentment may have lingered on the part
of Edward Scullion.
The president and Fabre were
embroiled soon afterward in a dispute over Fabre's expense
account from Boston, Scullion accusing the champion of
submitting a tally to the club that exceeded by sixteen
dollars the account he had turned in to the amateur athletic
union. Tempers flared and the issue came to a head one
Saturday at noon about three weeks after the marathon. The two
got into an argument on the sidewalk outside the club's Notre
Dame Street West headquarters and Fabre, furious at something
Scullion said, threw a punch that blackened the president's
eye (45). Fabre was arrested and
carted off to jail on a charge of assault. Released shortly
afterward on one hundred dollars bail, he insisted his
expenses were in order.
"I have receipts to show for
all the money I spent in Boston for the living expenses of
myself and my trainer,'' he told the press. ''That is the only
money I wanted from the club.''
The quarrel, and the headlines
it occasioned, upset the club, one of the most prominent in
the city, and Fabre's days as a member were assumed to be
over. But cooler heads prevailed and the charge seems to have
been withdrawn. Scullion was replaced as president and Fabre
continued his winning ways as the club's star athlete. On June
1, 1915, he won a ten-mile race at Lowell, Massachusetts,
against a strong field. On June 24 he demolished the
competition in the Casquette Marathon at Montreal and just
five days later won the Star Cup at the five-mile Caledonian
Road Race, an event sponsored by The Montreal Star. On July 4
he ran and won a twelve-mile race at Roxbury, Massachusetts,
against Cliff Home, defeating the Dorchester runner by a full
lap before an Independence Day crowd. All Fabre had to do to
win a race, it seemed, was enter.
For winning the Boston
Marathon, Fabre was awarded a trip to San Francisco in the
summer of 1915 to compete in the second biggest race of the
year, the Panama Exposition Marathon. But he was given only
two hundred and twenty-five dollars to make the trip, an
amount that scarcely covered his own expenses let alone those
of his trainer. Fabre, who spoke little English and relied on
his trainer to translate for him, appealed in Montreal for
extra funds, arguing that he would be representing both Quebec
and Canada in the marathon. But the plea fell on deaf ears.
Fabre journeyed across the continent alone, the only
well-known athlete without a trainer, completing his training
when he arrived in San Francisco's comfortable summer climate.
Among those he ran with were Cliff Horne and Hugh Honohan.
Fabre won the marathon with
ease despite a slow time of 2:56:41 4/5, caused in part by a
route that included several miles of sandy roadway. Honohan
was second, nearly five minutes behind. Fabre wired the news
back to Montreal. '"Won the race going strong,'' said a terse
cable received at the Richmond Club headquarters. This time
Fabre did not miss the victory celebration arranged for his
return. He arrived on schedule and was paraded through the
streets a hero to the blare of a loud brass band. He ended the
1915 season with an unprecedented third victory in the
Montreal Herald's race around Mount Royal, dodging a lunging
dog at one point and an errant car at another, and was awarded
permanent possession of the ornate trophy presented annually
to the victor.
"The big Frenchman is the
perfection of running form,'' wrote Elmer Ferguson. "He
combines the energy-saving style of Shrubb in the action of
the upper part of the body, with the bounding stride of a
sprinter, giving the impression of unending strength and
energy. Fabre can uncover a terrific burst at any portion of
the race, for it is said that he can rip off a hundred yards
in time that would be creditable for many who make the sprints
their hobby. In short, Fabre has everything a distance runner
could have — gameness, strength, vitality, endurance and
speed.''
Fabre never duplicated his
heady racing feats of 1915 but his zest for running continued
unabated. As he advanced through his thirties and into his
forties he became an athletic oddity, the newspapers referring
to him as "old Ed Fabre.'' Yet all continued to respect his
athletic abilities. In 1927, at age forty-one, Fabre led a
team from the North Branch YMCA in Montreal to the team
championship at the Boston Marathon, placing sixth personally
in the overall standings with a time of 3:06:12 2/5. With him
on the team were Henry Benoit, Bill Gillespie and two
brothers, Jack and George Bird.
A flurry of professional
racing, prompted in part by the much publicized
transcontinental Bunion Derbies of American promoter C.C.
Pyle, occurred in Quebec in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Fabre had resisted professionalism all his life but was
finally persuaded to take a fling at racing for money before
his athletic years ended.
''The pity," observed Elmer
Ferguson, "is that Fabre did not become practical many years
ago.''
Fabre's crowning achievement as
a professional was victory in the Usher's Green Stripe
Snowshoe Marathon (d) The
triumph brought him not only a measure of public recognition,
something that had eluded him most of his life, but it
provided a financial boost for his growing family. La Patrie
started a subscription for funds and, with help from the
Montreal Canadiens' and Maroons' hockey clubs, the size of his
one-thousand-dollar purse was doubled.
A film was made of the snowshoe
marathon and Fabre travelled about the province showing it to
groups and organizations (e).
The Bronfmans offered him a job but whether he accepted is
unclear. In later years he worked as an accountant, possibly
in the employ of the Bronfmans, but he was destined to end his
life in other circumstances. Tragedy befell the man who was
known as the French-Canadian Iron Man and hailed as the
greatest runner of his day. In 1937, at age fifty-two, Fabre
was stricken by a stroke, bringing his days as an athlete to
an abrupt and anguished halt.
One of the legs that carried
Fabre to so many conquests was left all but useless and an arm
dangled at his side, fully paralyzed. He lay near death for
days in a Montreal hospital before rallying. Doctors tried to
restore the lost function and he recovered enough to hold a
job as a nightwatchman for a time on St. Helen's Island. He
enjoyed the island because it kept him in contact with the
outdoors but was an invalid for the rest of his days. One of
the last recollections friends had of Fabre was the sight of
him hobbling to a neighborhood fire hall to gossip away
afternoons with cronies. He died July I, 1939, of a second
stroke.
His wife Blanche and children,
Marcelle, Marie-Blanche and Edouard, inherited his large
collection of trophies, awards, cups, gold watches and
plaques. The dates and inscriptions ranged back through nearly
four decades of running pursuits. Included was the large
silver trophy from Boston, once stolen but later recovered by
police, slightly damaged. Fabre was destitute enough at times
over the years to consider selling some of his mementos. But
he never did and shortly before his death he told why.
"I can't sell them — they're
all I've lived for. They were given to me for the best things
I did in life. Now that I'm through I want to keep them."
(46)
Footnotes
(a) The following summer Distillers Corp. Ltd.
sponsored an even grander five-hundredmile race for two-man
relay teams from Montreal to Quebec City and back again. Top
runners shared ten thousand dollars in prize money.
|
(b) Ferguson (1885- 1972)
was bom in Prince Edward Island and began as a
three-dollars-a-week copy boy at the Moncton Transcript in
1902. Considered by many to have been the greatest of ail
Canadian sports journalists, he left the Maritimes in 1910 and
settled in Montreal after spending a period in Boston. For
thirty-nine years, until its demise, he wrote for the Montreal
Herald, later joining the staff of the Montreal Star.
(c) Records show Fabre
competed in the 1913 Olympics at Stockholm but his name does
not appear in accounts of the 1906 or 1908 games.
Longboat'sfirst marathon loss was in the 1908 Olympics.
(d) Fabre also finished
third, with a Finnish partner, Ollie Wanttinen, in the
fivehundred-mile Peter Dawson relay race over Quebec roads in
the summer of 1930.
(e) The film is preserved
at The Seagram Museum in Kitchener, Ontario. |
