Note: This story was written and submitted to a couple of publications as the centennial of Tom Longboat's Boston Marathon win approached in the spring of 2007. It didn't make the grade, but deserves to be read by those interest. So it will be posted here, and eventually the search engines will pick it up and it will be available for all. Photos are at the end of the story.
SIX NATIONS RESERVE, ONT. -- It's the first morning of summer here on the Six Nations Reserve in southern Ontario -- a holiday known as Aboriginal Solidarity Day. The schools and some businesses have closed, and about 150 people of all ages have gathered on a perfect day outside the I.L. Thomas School.
They are here to honor Tom Longboat, the most famous person to ever come from this area. Longboat rose out of complete obscurity in less than a year to win the Boston Marathon on April 20, 1907, and went on to hold the unofficial title of the world's greatest distance runner.
While the event on the Reserve is called “The Tom Longboat Run,” it actually includes walkers and bicycle riders as well. There's no competition; it's simply a matter of promoting fitness and a healthy lifestyle. After a half-hour ceremony that includes a speech about Longboat's life and a display of his four trophies that have survived through a century, the group heads out for a jaunt around the block ... a block that is a little more than six miles around.
As participants travel around the rolling course, they see undeveloped lands that look the same as they did when Longboat was running on these very streets as a boy. At the second of four intersections, the athletes change direction at Tom Longboat Corners. If they need inspiration at about 4 1/2 miles, they can see the site of the Longboat family's log cabin, which was only recently demolished. The course also is said to pass the location of Longboat's grave, which by Native tradition is rarely visited.
One of the runners this day is Ellie Joseph, who teaches physical education at Six Nations Reserve and lives there. Joseph had missed qualifying for the 2006 Boston Marathon by only a minute and 42 seconds, but rebounded a year later at age 52 in a May marathon outside of Toronto to qualify. Her time was 4 hours, 2 minutes and 25 seconds, beating the standard by 2:35. She'll be racing in the centennial of Longboat's record run in the 2007 edition of Boston's fabled race on Monday.
“Any runner from here has read about Tom. He's the epitome of goal-setting. To a runner, it doesn't get any better than that,” Joseph said that summer day between accepting congratulations on her Boston qualification from other Longboat participants. “I did myself a favor by qualifying [for Boston] this year, because last year would have meant I'd run in Boston the year before [the centennial]. This happened for a reason.”
Perhaps the roads of the reserve still hold a little running magic. They did for Longboat, whose story certainly ranks as one of the most remarkable of all the Boston winners.
“Longboat was one of Canada's best marathon runners, if judged against his peers on athletic terms alone. But he has a stature that reaches beyond the world of running,” said David Blaikie, author of a book on Canadian runners, “Boston: The Canadian Story,” that included a chapter on Longboat.
Born in 1887 with the Indian name of Cogwagee, the member of the Onondaga Tribe had almost every imaginable obstacle thrown at him. Longboat's father died when Tom was five, turning the family's economic situation from bad to worse. When Tom was 12, he decided he had had enough of a government plan that forced him and other Native children into church-run boarding schools. He ran away from school once, was caught at home, and ran away again. Authorities the second time didn't look for him at his uncle's house, and young Tom was forgotten about. His formal education was over.
As a teen, Longboat worked on area farms to earn a few dollars for his family, and he liked to run when he had some leisure time.
“There's a story about him,” Joseph said. “He was going down toward Caledonia [a nearby town], and somebody in a horse-and-buggy offered him a ride. He said, "No, I'm in a hurry,' and he ran off and he beat them.”
