Gladstone Athletic Club

A kitchen was a priority at Joseph J. Piccininni Community Centre when it opened in the 1980s. But even before that, the old Earlscourt Community Clubhouse was equipped to cater for special events like luncheons, awards dinners, and even weddings (click here for a post about the clubhouse).

One special dinner was the 1929 banquet of the Gladstone Athletic Club, reported in the January 23, 1929 Globe newspaper. It was the running club’s 20th anniversary year and the members were clearly in the mood to celebrate at their annual awards dinner.

The Gladstone A.C. had relocated its club headquarters a few years before to the Earlscourt Community Clubhouse, where groups could apply to rent space. This arrangement apparently worked well for Gladstone A.C., which stayed based at the park through the 1950s. The club’s 30 years in Earlscourt established the park as a destination for west-end runners. A track was first built in the 1930s, and the club provided opportunities for cross-country and marathon running in and around Earlscourt Park. Today, Gladstone A.C. continues its tradition of developing some of Toronto’s best track and field athletes as part of Etobicoke Track.

For many years, the Bloor Street Business Men’s Association sponsored a 15-mile (24 kilometre) road race on Good Friday. A Globe and Mail photographer took this picture at the March 29, 1929 race. A Gladstone Athletic Club racer is among the leaders, wearing the club’s maple leaf tank top at the left of the photo . He is probably Charlie Snell, who finished third in this race, after Galt’s Bill Reynolds and the first-place runner, Johnny Miles of the Hamilton Olympics club. Photo credit: City of Toronto Archives, Globe and Mail fonds, Fonds 1266, Item 16010.

At the dinner, the members of the Gladstone A.C. installed the executive members for 1929 and applauded the year’s award winners. The toasts given that night highlighted the club’s and the city’s great success in track and field. City Controller Joseph Gibbons attended on behalf of the mayor and pointed to the support Toronto was giving its athletes. The Globe noted Controller Gibbons’ report that there were “forty athletic fields and over 2,000 acres of parks. The Controller stated that over 9,600 permits for sport were issued last year, and also that the city was backing to the utmost the Coliseum track project.” This initiative was a critical step forward to provide indoor track and field facilities, on the Exhibition Grounds.

A few toasts celebrated the 1928 Olympic team, which included several Toronto track athletes, although the Gladstone A.C. had just missed the mark to be included. One of the team’s coaches, Art Scholes, had had other Olympic disappointments, having been passed over for earlier games, despite qualifying at least twice. Scholes did compete on the four-man marathon team for Canada at the 1920 Olympics, along with the Indigenous runners Albert Smoke and Norman General and his Gladstone teammate James Dellow, who was the fastest marathoner in the British Empire that year, finishing 13th overall.

Scholes ran many other marathons in his long career, including multiple Boston Marathons, and he shared his experiences as a coach. He reportedly helped his Olympic teammate Albert Smoke, an outstanding Mississauga Ojibway runner from Curve Lake Ontario, train for his first Boston Marathon in 1922, where Smoke finished third (Boston Globe, April 3, 1926). Albert Smoke’s running career is highlighted at the Peterborough and District Sports Hall of Fame and Museum (click here for a link). The coaching relationship seems to have been mutual. Scholes (who was born and raised in Parkdale) became a trapper like Smoke. Walking his trap line north of Toronto was an important part of Scholes’ daily training routine.

Gladstone A.C. runners competed in all kinds of races, but were especially known in the early days as national and international leaders in the marathon. At the 1929 awards dinner, the team once again celebrated a team championship win at the 1928 Detroit Marathon, with a four-man team of Ray Meads, James Potter, Orville Garbutt, and Charles White taking the trophy. These runners, along with Lewis Wilson, were also in the top five finishers in 1928 for the Gladstone A.C.’s annual qualifier race for the Boston Marathon. This 24-mile road race was held each spring, starting in Brampton and ending in Earlscourt Park. An example of the team’s reputation comes from the Boston Globe newspaper preview of the 1926 marathon: the banner headline reads, “Flashy Runners from Toronto Will Add Interest to the Patriots’ Day Marathon” (April 3, 1926).

Three of the Gladstone A.C.’s 1926 Boston Marathon team are pictured from the April 3, 1926 edition of the Boston Globe newspaper. They are Art Scholes, who always ran with his eyeglasses on which got him named “the bespectacled speed merchant”, Robert Noakes, and veteran runner James Dellow. The trainer that year, also pictured, was James Kinniburgh, from the Broadview Y.M.C.A.

A final highlight celebrated at the 1929 Earlscourt dinner was congratulations to the club for their part in Toronto’s celebration of the 1927 jubilee of Canada’s confederation. That year, 33 members of the club ran a 24-hour, 286-mile relay marathon from Toronto to Ottawa. When they arrived at the Dominion Day event on Parliament Hill on July 1, they delivered a letter of greetings the team carried to the Prime Minister from the Premier of Ontario, and another from the Mayor of Toronto.

It was the longest relay known to have been held in Canada, and a point of pride for the city as well as the team. The run was gruelling but the team’s intensity was not diminished. They not only finished the marathon in time, but 28 of the Gladstone members ran exhibition races at the Jubilee track and field meet in Ottawa just three days later. After the race, each team member was presented with a Jubilee Medal by the young American aviator Col. Charles Lindbergh, who had become a massive celebrity just a few weeks before for being the first person to complete a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. No pictures of the event have turned up yet, but it is easy to imagine the runners and the famous flyer recognizing in each other the grit and endurance they most certainly shared.