And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

Date: Mon, 09 Aug 1999 15:10:18 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

HONOURS WELL DESERVED

               Brantford Expositor Staff  August 8, 1999

It's a little more than 50 years since the death of Tom Longboat, one of the greatest 
athletes of the century. Longboat, born at Six Nations in 1886, was one of the 
greatest long distance runners of all time. He won the 1907 Boston Marathon and there 
is a tale of him beating a horse in a 12-mile race. Though he collapsed from heat 
exhaustion during the 1906 Olympic marathon, he went on in the next few years to beat 
all the best runners in the world.

In fact, it can fairly be said that he almost invented the sport. Bruce Kidd, no 
slouch as a runner himself, and the author of a Longboat biography, notes that 
Longboat revolutionized the way runners trained, emphasizing long, slow distances 
while others stressed speed. Before too long, after having fallen behind Longboat in 
too many races, those others started emulating the style of the Onondaga athlete and 
his training regimen caught on.

Though Longboat was as close to an national hero as one could get in the days in the 
early part of the century, pre-televison, it was really only many years after his 
death that steps were taken to honor his accomplishments. In 1985 a plaque was 
unveiled in his honor at Ohsweken. Just last week, Brantford city council decided to 
dedicate a street to him, the appropriately named Tom Longboat Run. And then this week 
came the news that Longboat will be among those great Canadian to be featured in a 
series of new postage stamps called The Millennium Collection. The series, according 
to a Canada Post spokesman, celebrates the people and places that have made Canada the 
country it is today. Among others to be featured are prime minister and Nobel peace 
prize winner Lester Pearson, famed pianist Glenn Gould and folk singer and author 
Felix Leclerc.

Despite attaining great fame at a very young age, Longboat spent his last years in 
obscurity at Six Nations. He lived a simple life, working for a time as a street 
sweeper; he struggled with diabetes and the death of a child. When he died in 1949, 
his resting spot was marked with a simple wooden marker, now long disappeared. But 
Longboat's accomplishments are still with us today. It's good to see both the City of 
Brantford and Canada Post honouring the memory of this remarkable man.


             
               "Let Us Consider The Human Brain As
                A Very Complex Photographic Plate"
                     1957 G.H. Estabrooks
                 www.angelfire.com/mn/mcap/bc.html

                    FOR   K A R E N  #01182
                   who died fighting  4/23/99

                   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
                       www.aches-mc.org
                         807-622-5407

                            

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