There have been many sports heroes to come from The Great White North.
There are of course, the hockey greats like Wayne Gretzky, Hayley Wickenheiser and Gordie Howe.
But there are many others.
Bobbie Rosenfeld.
George Chuvalo.
Steve Nash.
Christine Sinclair.
While in Canada’s early history, sports heroes were in short supply.
Iin Toronto, one man ignited the nation.
And became Canada’s first sporting hero.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today we’re rowing through time to share the life of Ned Hanlan!
For this story we gotta go way back…
One of the earliest references to oarsmanship and rowing as a sport comes from an Egyptian inscription from 1430 BCE that praised Amenhotep for his abilities.
Whether this meant he competed as a rower is up for debate, but some scholars believe that it does.
During the Middle Ages, there are scattered references to rowing as a sport or game, but the first modern races began among professional watermen in the United Kingdom in the late-18th century.
Wealthy owners of riverside houses gambled on the outcomes.
With money the competitions grew
Oxford held its first races in 1815, followed by Cambridge in 1827.
The sport arrived in present-day Canada by1818, with the Royal St. John’s Regatta. The Regatta still runs to this day and is the oldest organized sporting event in North America.
Throughout the 1840s, rowing clubs popped up in places like Toronto, Brockville and Halifax.
By the time of Canadian Confederation, rowing was a huge sport in urban centres.
And nowhere was it a bigger deal than in Toronto.
In 1872, the Toronto Argonaut Rowing Club was established. Founded by a group of oarsmen who called themselves the Orioles, they chose the blue colours of Oxford and Cambridge for their uniforms.
In Greek legend, the Argonauts were a band of 50 heroes who went with Jason in the ship Argo to fetch the Golden Fleece.
Argonauts for a rowing team the name makes sense…but for football?
Ever wonder why the CFL team from Toronto is called The Argonauts?
Well, it is because of this rowing club.
At its inception many members from the rowing club also played football, and in 1873 they founded the Argonaut Rugby Football Club.
That team eventually became a professional football club and when it was sold in 1956, the funds of the sale went to fund rowing activities.
And that is the origin story of the Toronto Argos.
But this episode isn’t about the Argos.
It is about the Boy in Blue, Ned Hanlan.
Ned Hanlan was born on July 12, 1855, in Toronto to John and Mary Hanlan, he was one of four children.
Ned was always surrounded by water. Literally…his family lived on the east end of Toronto Island.
When he was five, he made news when he rowed across Toronto Bay to see the arrival of the Prince of Wales
That’s not all… you know the saying “When I was a kid, I walked 10 miles to school in a blizzard, uphill- both ways”??
Well Ned rowed twice a day, to and from the island to attend George Street Public School on Toronto’s mainland.
As a teenager, he began his competitive career.
At 16, he entered his first race as a member of a three-man crew of fishermen.
He lost, but it would be one of the few losses in Ned’s life on waters.
By the time he turned 18, he was the amateur champion of Toronto Bay and became a common sight on the water by wearing his signature blue shirt and headband.
It made it easy for people to identify him and cheer him on while he trained, and even more so when he raced.
In 1874, he raced Thomas Loudon, a local champion, three times in succession. He won each time. And he had good reason beyond pride, in one of the races Ned bet $100 on himself to win.
The following year, Ned became the Ontario champion and the recipient of the Dufferin Medal, awarded by the Governor General of Canada, Lord Dufferin.
In 1876, he went to the Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia.
He left Toronto just in time as the police were closing in on him for a liquor bootlegging operation he was conducting on the island out of the back of his parent’s hotel.
When he arrived in Philadelphia, he was joined by the man he beat to win the Ontario Championship, Billy McKen.
In the first two heats of the exhibition, Ned Hanlan defeated both of his American opponents.
This shook the gambling scene as many had a lot of money riding on Ned’s loss, so they fixed the odds in their favor.
That night, they poisoned Ned’s beer in an attempt to put him out of commission.
The next day they were astonished to see him walk up to the race and was not only perfectly healthy but went on to win the final heat and the exhibition championship.
Billy McKen was not so lucky.
The gamblers had confused the two men and poisoned McKen’s beer instead.
He was sent back to Toronto on a stretcher.
But don’t worry, he survived.
Meanwhile Ned Hanlan returned to Toronto on the SS City of Toronto, with a hero’s welcome.
Bands played and tugboats blasted their horns as thousands crowded on the dock to greet him, letting out cheers as soon as he appeared on the deck of the boat.
The Toronto Globe wrote,
“Had Hanlan been a victorious general returning with a brilliant military record, the hero of a hundred fights, he could not have received a greater or more hearty reception.”
As for the police who were after him before he left? well it wouldn’t look great to arrest a conquering hero right? so the bootlegging charges quickly became a fast-fading memory and were soon forgotten.
Plus, Ned didn’t need to break the law to make money anymore anyways.
With his star rising, a group of Torontonians formed the Hanlan Club to back him financially so he could compete without the worry.
Their goal was to win the Canadian, American and British championships.
The club raised money to also buy him a top-of-the-line English-made shell and equipped it with a sliding seat and swivel oarlocks.
The club also hired trainer James Heasley to train him. The club even managed his races, so that he could in their words,
“row, eat, exercise and sleep”.
In 1877, The Boy In Blue, as he was known became the champion sculler of Canada by defeating Wallace Ross in front of 25,000 people in Toronto Bay. He also earned $1,000 in prize money.
One year later, he was the champion sculler of the United States by defeating Ephraim Morris of Pittsburgh.
It was a good year for Hanlan, he also won $10,000 after defeating American Charles Edward Courtney in a race in Lachine, Quebec.
But some cried foul over that win.
The two men were neck-and-neck, and as they approached the finish line, barges filled with spectators drifted between them and the finish line, forcing both rowers to pause.
When they resumed, Ned won by one-and-a-quarter lengths of his boat, but many wondered if Courtney would have won if the barges had not interfered with the race.
Some claimed that the latter was bribed $4,000 to lose the race, which the Toronto Globe called pure nonsense and Ned said,
“Mr. Courtney is a very honourable man. There is no reason why we should not row a square and honest race. Once and for all, let this be the last of it, if there has been any arrangement to insure my winning, I know nothing of it and I feel confident that Courtney rowed to win if he could.”
By the end of the 1870s, Europe, the home of competitive rowing, called… he needed to test himself against the best in the world.
On June 16, 1879, Ned Hanlan took on W. Elliott of Blyth, the English champion. They rowed from Mansion House to Scotswood Bridge on the River Tyne.
The Boy in Blue won the race with a record time of 21 minutes and one second and finished ahead of Elliott by a full 11 lengths.
One sportswriter wrote,
“On the water, Hanlan and his boat are as much in harmony as an animate and inanimate object can be.”
After the win Ned returned to North America and on Oct. 16, 1879, he and American Charles Edward Courtney had a rematch.
It was dubbed The Hop Bitters Race and was held in Mayville, New York in front of 100,000 spectators, and more than 100 reporters were in attendance to cover the event.
The morning of race day, it was discovered that someone had sawed Courtney’s boat in half. He refused to use another boat, and the race was cancelled.
Once again allegations swarmed. But niceties ended when Ned Hanlan called Courtney a coward, while the American blamed the Canadian for the sabotage.
People alleged that Courtney was offered $2,000 to lose in the race, while $3,000 was promised to Ned if he allowed Courtney to win.
None of the allegations were proven true.
Meanwhile Ned had won the Canadian, American and English championships, which meant the Hanlan Club would disband, having accomplished their task.
He had taken over the rowing world in North America, and even beat some of the best in England.
Now he had a new challenge.
Ned Hanlan wanted to be the world champion.
But what made Ned Hanlan so good?
He was a marvel at the sport.
With a smaller build, he mastered the sliding seat technique. This gave him greater reach thar reduced the number of strokes per minute he had to accomplish to lead a race.
While his opponents rowed at a rate of 42 strokes per minute, Hanlan averaged 36. This conserved energy through the race, allowing him to hold a lead over his rivals.
And his opponents just couldn’t keep up.
The more he won, the more flamboyant he became.
He would slow down to allow his opponents to catch up, just to race out ahead of them again To the delight of the spectators, he sometimes stopped and blew kisses to them, talked to them, or rowed in zigzags to make the race a bit more fun for him.
Across Canada, he was idolized.
Scarves with his picture on them sold as soon as they were stocked, as did snuff boxes, ties, shirts and belts with his name or likeness on them.
Canadians may have loved him, but the English hated him. The British press lectured at length about his antics on the water, which they said sullied the sport.
He didn’t care. He was enjoying himself, and he just kept winning.
Before Ned Hanlan challenged for the world championship, he once again went up against his rival’s full name Courtney.
In May 1880, the two men met once again on the Potomac River in front of 100,000 spectators.
Courtney took an early lead, but it wasn’t long before Ned Hanlan overtook him. To catch up, Courtney began to row erratically, with his smooth technique Ned quickly put more distance between the two and easily won the race.
With the win he was ready to take his flamboyant racing style to Australia to challenge for the world title.
For that Ned Hanlan had to go through a man considered the best in the world.
Edward Trickett.
Trickett was the first Australian to be world champion in any sport.
In his first race at the age of 10, he finished second.
By 14 he was winning races on his way to becoming the Australian Professional Sculling Champion.
In 1876, he defeated two-time world champion Joseph Sadler in England.
For the next four years, Trickett he defended the title until a Canadian upstart named Ned Hanlan came along.
No one believed the little canuck stood a chance.
Trickett was an imposing man. He was six-foot-four and was 50 pounds heavier than the Canadian A giant of solid muscle.
The race between the two rowers took place on Nov. 15, 1880, on the Putney to Mortlake course on River Thames.
Prior to the race, Trickett’s trainers publicly mocked Ned which angered him so much that he vowed to embarrass the Australian on the water. Along the banks, 100,000 people waited to see the winner and it didn’t take them long to find out.
Ned Hanlan was so far ahead of Trickett that he showed off a bit for the crowd.
The Evening News reported,
“The young champion, in order to relieve the monotony of the proceedings, had lain himself down flat on his back. In this position he rested until Trickett got within a length and a half of him, when he sprung up laughing and dashed off into fast sculling again.”
With his win, Ned Hanlan became the first world champion from Canada in any individual or singles event.
Ned Hanlan arrived back in Toronto; a flotilla five kilometres long welcomed him home.
Using $25,000 from his winnings Ned Hanlan built a grand hotel just north of his family home on Toronto Island.
The hotel featured a lush lawn, beautiful fountain and a windmill.
After that accomplishment on land, he went back to the water…back to racing.
Australian Elias Laycock challenged him and was beaten.
Over the next two years more challengers were defeated first Englishman R.W. Boyd and then Edward Trickett again where, Ned rowed out and won the race, then turned around and met Trickett on the water and crossed the finish line ahead of Trickett a second time.
Essentially, beating him twice in one race.
Completely humiliated, Trickett never raced in a first-class competition again.
But some were off the water, in1883, Ned battled typhoid and came close to death so close that his demise was falsely reported in the newspaper.
Soon after his recovery he went back to the water to defeat Americans James Kenedy and Wallace Ross in two different races.
Versus Wallace Ross was an eight-to-one favourite, but Ned beat him easily.
In all, from Feb. 14, 1881, to May 22, 1884, Ned Hanlan faced six challengers for his world title and defeated them all.
He was so good that newspapers in the United States began to claim him as American, citing that he had most of his successes there.
But Ned stated he was Canadian without a shadow of a doubt by saying.
“There is no harm in them calling me an American, but I am not an American in the sense that they want to have it. I was born in Canada, and I am Canadian.”
The Toronto Globe called him Canada’s best immigration agent.
It seemed he would never lose again.
But in the end all champions must fall.
It happened to the Montreal Canadiens of the 1970s.
It happened to the Edmonton Oilers of the 1980s.
And it would happen to Ned Hanlan.
On Aug. 14, 1884, Ned Hanlan faced off against Australian Bill Beach at Parramatta Sydney.
Bill Beach was an up-and-coming rower who idolized Edward Trickett. He had made his debut as an oarsman just after Trickett lost to Ned Hanlan the first time.
When he challenged Hanlan, he was five years older than the Canadian and had never won a major championship.
What he did have was an exceptionally strong upper body thanks to years of working as a blacksmith. AND He had also mastered the sliding seat technique.
There were also other factors at play before the race.
Months before the race Ned dealt with a second bout of typhoid that weakened him. Added to this was eight months of constant travel and a near collision during one race with a chartered steamer.
But Ned Hanlan seemed unstoppable. Few people gave Beach a chance at winning.
The race would be over 5.13 kilometres, and it shocked the rowing world.
Beach won by seven lengths with a time of 20 minutes and 28 seconds.
That was faster than every world championship Hanlan had won except one.
Turf, Field and Farm wrote,
“It is to be feared that the many victories of Edward Hanlan caused him to underrate his opponent.”
Despite the loss, Ned wasn’t done. He remained in Australia for seven months, getting his strength back and recovering.
During that time, Bill Beach defeated Thomas Clifford in a world championship challenge. His next race would be against Ned Hanlan, who hoped to regain his title.
It was not to be.
Beach won again on March 25, 1885, with a time of 22 minutes and 51 seconds.
Following the second loss, Ned returned to North America but now took more care in choosing his opponents.
He was no longer invincible, but he could still dominate.
He also kept his eye on the world championship prize.
After Peter Kemp became the world champion in February 1888, Hanlan challenged him only a few months later on March 5, 1888.
Kemp emerged victorious, defeating Ned in 21 minutes and 36 seconds.
Hanlan challenged Kemp again.
On Sept. 28, 1888, Kemp won once again with a time of 21 minutes and 25 seconds.
It seemed elite rowers had finally caught up to Ned Hanlan.
It was the last time Ned Hanlan raced for a world championship, but he didn’t hang up the oars just yet.
In 1891, with fellow Canadian William Joseph O’Connor, he won the American Doubles Championship.
Sadly, O’Connor died the following year, and Ned Hanlan was never able to win that title again.
Ned officially retired in 1897, ending one of the most illustrious sporting careers in Canadian history.
Over the course of his rowing career, he competed in 300 races, and only lost six times.
Retirement meant he could enjoy the fruits of his labour Along with race winnings, he sold his beautiful hotel for $50,000 and moved his family to Toronto to live in a large sandstone house built for him by his admirers.
He kept himself busy by staying close to rowing, and the affairs of the city.
In 1897, he became the first head coach of the University of Toronto Rowing Club.
A year later he ran as an alderman in the Toronto civic election, winning Ward 4 and being appointed to the Toronto Harbour Trust.
Outspoken on issues related to recreation and the waterfront, he advocated for new bike lanes, public swimming pools and a new public library.
In 1898, he was removed from the Harbour Trust after he condemned it for its role in sewage being dumped into Lake Ontario. Then he lost his seat in 1900.
After losing Ned attempted to become the deputy harbourmaster, but was refused by Mayor Ernest Albert Macdonald, who was not an admirer.
For the next few years, like an old general recounting his famous battles, Ned sat at the Argonaut Rowing Club and regaled younger members with stories of his many victories.
On Jan. 4, 1908, Hanlan died at the age of only 52 from pneumonia.
10,000 Torontonians paid their final respects at the church where his body lay in state.
One citizen said,
“The last outings Ned had with the Argonauts were shortly before his death when, on the odd Sunday morning, he’d pile on three or four old sweaters and stroke the club’s gig to the Humber. Off the Old Fort he would strip off his clothes then dive overboard and swim and blow round the gig like a walrus, then, dripping and refreshed, resume. The Boy in Blue never really grew up.”
And since his death, Ned Hanlan has been honoured many times.
In Australia, the suburb of Toronto, New South Wales was named after Ned’s home city in his honour.
In 1926, a larger-than-life bronze statue was unveiled at the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition.
It was later relocated to Toronto Island to an area called Hanlan’s Point also named after Ted.
Joseph Thompson, Speaker of the Ontario Legislature, said at the ceremony,
“If the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then I can safely say that Vimy Ridge was won on the rowing courses and stadia of Canada.”
In 1932, the Ned Hanlan tugboat was named for him which operated in Toronto Harbour until 1967, and today it sits on display at Hanlan Point.
In 1955, he was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame as one of the first inductees.
In 1980, a postage stamp was issued to honour him, and in 2002 he was inducted into the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame.
But Ned Hanlan’s legacy and name is much more important than you might realize, and it has become a symbol for one of the city’s oldest Queer spaces.
Hanlan’s Point the western side of the Toronto Islands
Has a beach… and if you go now, it’s clothing optional.
It is recognized by the City of Toronto as one of the ten oldest surviving queer spaces in the world.
It is also Canada’s oldest surviving queer space, and the site of Canada’s first Gay Pride in 1971.
From May to late September Hanlan’s Point is a location for nude sunbathing.
It started in 1999, when Toronto City Council approved a one-year pilot project following a proposal by the gay naturist organization and it was extended 2000, for another two years until in 2002, the clothing-optional beach was made permanent.
The beach has become a massive tourist destination and increased ferry traffic, and it appears to be a profitable component of public- and private-sector advertising campaigns.
Police and park officials now work in partnership with the beachgoers to maintain the friendly atmosphere.
And Torontonians keep Ned Hanlan’s name alive as they fight for this space, in 2023, a plan was revealed for a concert and festival venue right next to Hanlan’s which would possibly eliminate the clothing optional beach.
“Friends of Hanlan’s” fought back, and the city dropped the idea and instead proceeded to work to improve the beach including a brand new cultural marker and signage that will inform visitors about the beach’s prominent place in LGBTQ history and a giant Pride flagpole that will be permanently installed at the south end.
[OUTRO]
