“This legendary Canadian has been ignored for too long,” Eglinton-Lawrence M.P.P. Mike Colle said after Ontario members of parliament unanimously passed a resolution on April 15 declaring June 4 as Tom Longboat Day in Ontario.
April 29, 2010: Volume 37 #9, Page A9
Tom Longboat was born June 4, 1887 in the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford Ontario. He is one of the most celebrated and accomplished long distance runner athletes in Canadian history. Longboat also served as a dispatch carrier with the 107th Pioneer Battalion in France, delivering messages around the most treacherous battlegrounds of Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele.
“Tom Longboat was a brave Ontarian, who demonstrated strength and poise in the face of discrimination and ridicule,” Colle said.
“Proclaiming June 4 as Tom Longboat Day in Ontario will provide our children and all Ontarians the opportunity to learn about and be inspired by Tom Longboat’s story, allowing his legacy…to live on.”
Many families along the James Bay coast are headed out onto their ancestral lands during this time of year.
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