Legends of Autumn: The Glory Years of Canadian Football

John Walker is a professor of Spanish studies at Queen’s University.

Given the fragile state of the Canadian Football League in recent years,
it may come as a surprise to younger readers and sports fans that this
national institution had its glory days too. In the 1950s and 1960s,
although even then dominated by U.S. coaches and players, Canadian
football attracted thousands of fans every weekend.

This book, a labor of love produced by veteran journalist Denny Boyd
and editorial director Brian Scrivener, is an amalgam of anecdotes, game
reports, reminiscences, and color commentary. Each of its nine more or
less uniform chapters is dedicated to one of the teams and the cities of
that era. The story of each club’s achievements is told through the
colorful lives and miracles performed by one or two players. For
example, the Toronto Argonauts are represented by Joe Krol, the Last of
the Leather Helmets; the Edmonton Eskimos by 01 (Spaghetti Legs) Jackie
Parker; the Montreal Alouettes by Sam (The Rifle) Etcheverry, and so on.
The working-class warriors of Steel Town Hamilton were led by Jake
Gadaur and Ralph Sazio, while the Winnipeg Blue Bombers under Bud Grant,
the Grey Fox, won four Grey Cups. The ups and downs of the wild and
woolly western B.C. Lions are captured here, along with the local heroes
of the Saskatchewan Rough Riders, under the Little General Ron
Lancaster, who matched the community pride. The now-extinct Ottawa Rough
Riders, under coach Frank Clair and all-Canadian Golden Boy Russ
Jackson, were a force to be reckoned with in their day.

Legends of Autumn is rounded out by a multitude of illustrations,
tables of statistics, and a useful guide to further reading. If rumors
of the CFL’s impending demise are indeed realized, the league will at
least have, in this pleasant book, a record of its glory days in the
1950s and 1960s, when life was simpler and football was an integral part
of Canadian culture.