Samuel Conteh

Samuel Conteh’s nomination letter, written on his behalf by a member of ECI’s staff, is so much more than what he has accomplished on the field as a member of the Rams football team. It is about the man he has become, the leadership roles he has embraced, and the future that he is blazing for himself. Whether it is on the football field or among the groups that he has assisted with at school, he has the ability to unite everyone together for the cause at hand and make things brighter for all. He is now following his dream as a member of the University of Toronto Blues football team and creating a life he never knew was possible. He certainly had people cheering for him when he wore ECI’s green and gold, and he is proud to say this support is still alive and well.

Zeke O’Conner

Zeke O’Connor was born in New York City in 1926. As a boy, he was encouraged by his parents to play all kinds of sports. But it wasn’t until he entered high school at Mt. St. Michael Academy that he participated in organized sport, with a particular talent in football and basketball.

While attending the University of Notre Dame, his team won the national Collegiate Championships. He graduated from Notre Dame in 1949, and went on to receive his masters at Columbia University.

His professional football career includes playing with the Buffalo Bills, Cleveland Browns and the New York Yanks. Zeke soon moved to Canada to play for the Toronto Argonaut’s, and is best remembered for scoring the winning touchdown in the 1952 Grey Cup.

His accomplishments go far beyond the realm of sports. He worked for Simpson Sears for more than 30 years, most notably as the Assistant Vice President of Public Affairs, but spent much of his free time volunteering with several organizations. Some of these include The Easter Seals Society, Special Olympics, and The Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada.

He took early retirement at the age of 57 so he could dedicate more time to these worthy causes, including, The Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation, which he founded in 1974 and continues to play an active role. In 1987 Zeke founded the Special Olympics in Nepal.

One of his biggest thrills was as honorary coach of the Canadian Special Olympics team, and leading them into the opening ceremonies during the (1987) World Games at Notre Dame.

Zeke is most proud of his three children and seven grandchildren.

Walter H. Jackson a.k.a. “Pete”

Walter H. Jackson, more commonly addressed as “Pete”, began his teaching career as a mathematics and physics teacher at Etobicoke High School, now called Etobicoke Collegiate.

Because of his interest in sports, he volunteered to coach various teams at the school. Coaching teams was not a job requirement for Pete, but he assumed the role of Etobicoke Collegiate’s football coach for 27 years, from 1932 to 1959.

During that time, Pete coached the junior football teams to victory in the TDIAA (Toronto District Intercollegiate Athletic Association) in 1942, 1943, 1949 and 1950.

Following this success, the senior teams were victorious in 1951, 1952, 1954, 1955 and 1956, and were chosen as TDIAA representatives in the Red Feather (now United Way) games in 1951, 1952, 1953 and 1955.

In 1944, under Pete’s guidance as substitute coach, the junior and senior basketball teams and the track and field teams won championships.

Pete continued his career as vice-principal for 7 years, then principal for 1 year at Royal York Collegiate before retiring as principal of West Humber Collegiate in 1970.

Pete excelled as a respected coach for over 27 years, touching the lives of hundreds of students, believing in the values of team play and encouraging sportsmanship achievement.

Bill Fry

To reach the top in any endeavour, whether as a player or official, one needs a large measure of dedication, talent, discipline, and a high level of physical fitness. These were qualities which Bill Fry possessed in abundance, and which enabled the long time Etobicoke resident, in a span of forty years, to reach the top officiating position in the Canadian Football League.

After moving to Toronto from his native Montreal in 1954, Fry began his remarkable career as a football official, joining the Toronto Officials Association and refereeing at the high school, college, junior, intermediate and semi-pro levels with the Ontario Rugby Football Association.

In 1959 Bill Fry joined the Canadian Football League and quickly progressed to the position of game referee. In 1977 he was named the league’s director of officiating.

An example of the esteem in which Fry was held as an official was shown in 1973 when he officiated three national championship games — the junior title match between Regina and Ottawa, the Intermediate showdown between St Vital and Bramalea, and the Grey Cup game between Edmonton and Ottawa.

As a legacy to his days as an official, Fry wrote “The Mechanics of Officiating Football” which continues to be the top manual in the field.

And while Fry is best known for his work in Football, he was also a long time official and administrator with the Toronto Hockey League.

Annis Stukus

Over the course of his 50-year career, Annis Stukus was a standout quarterback, a brilliant marketer, the founder of two professional football teams and the general manager who lured NHL superstar Bobby Hull to the World Hockey Association. And that is only a snapshot of a gregarious sports lifer who also worked for basketball and soccer clubs and lent his outsized personality to the airwaves and newspaper pages.

Football fans of a certain vintage will remember “Stuke” as the eldest of the Stukus brothers, who formed a fearsome presence on the backfield for the Grey Cup winning Toronto Argonauts teams of 1937–38. With help from brothers Bill and Frank, Annis was named an all-star in 1938, the year he led the lead in scoring.

Stukus honed his promotional abilities at an early age. While an Argo he had a day job reporting for the Toronto Star, an arrangement that sometimes saw him play in a game and then write about it in the sports section.

After his seven-year CFL career was cut short when the league suspended operations at the outbreak of the Second World War, Stukus became a player-coach with the Toronto Indians and Balmy Beach of the Ontario Rugby Football League, as well as the HMCS York Bulldogs, a navy team he played with while in the service.

Back from the war, Stukus consulted for the Toronto Huskies basketball team during its lone season. In 1949, with his pro playing days behind him, he went west to make his mark on two future CFL clubs as an executive. He first took on coaching and GM duties for the Edmonton Eskimos, overseeing that club’s return to the Western Interprovincial Football Union. “Stuke” recruited top players and added some flair to the proceedings when he came out of retirement to handle the Eskie’s place kicking.

Having resurrected football in Edmonton, Stukus next headed for the coast. He was coach, GM and promotions director for the B.C. Lions from 1953 until 1955, and his energy and drive laid the foundation for the club’s future success. His efforts to revive the sport in Western Canada earned Stukus a spot in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame as a builder. The CFL’s coach of the year award is named in his honour. The versatile executive ran the Western Hockey League Vancouver Canucks before moving to the Winnipeg Jets, which offered Hull a then-unthinkable million-dollar contract to jump to the WHA. Stukus’ flashiest gamble yet stunned the sporting world and gave the nascent league instant credibility. For a man called “the loquacious Lithuanian,” commentary was a natural fit.

Stukus wrote for the Vancouver Sun and worked the sports desk at CFUN Radio in Vancouver among other broadcasting jobs. Newspaperman Peter Worthington called his one-time Toronto Telegram colleague “arguably the most colourful sports personality in the country…with a gift for making headlines wherever he went.” The Toronto native and Canadian Sports Hall of Famer died in 2006 at age 91 at his home in Canmore, Alberta.

In a tribute, veteran sports journalist George Gross quoted a colleague who described Stukus as a fun-loving storyteller: “He loved to tell stories about the good old days of playing and coaching and he loved to have a group around him. He would go out at a drop of a hat to any function that asked him, whether it was two people or 200 people. He would soon have them laughing.”

Leo Cahill

Leo Cahill lived in Etobicoke for 18 years. In that comparatively short time he made his presence known in much the same way as he made himself known in professional football circles.

It began in the early 1960s in Montreal, where Cahill was an assistant coach with the Montreal Alouettes football team. His move to Toronto shortly thereafter, which coincided with the start of nearly two decades of residency in Etobicoke, saw him take over direction of the Toronto Rifles of the Continental Football League. He made the move to the Argonauts as Canada celebrated its Centennial.

In his eight years as Argonaut coach, spread over twelve seasons, Cahill brought football to the forefront in Metro. Suddenly, the Argos were popular again and playing no small role in that popularity was Leo Cahill himself.

Among his coups as coach, and later as general manager, none was as notable as outbidding the NFL for the services of quarterback Joe Theismann.

Away from his professional life Cahill always found time for the City of Etobicoke, either running clinics for the area’s up and coming stars or doing a variety of charity work.

Murray Dowey

Inductee Murray Dowey led the Royal Canadian Air Force flyers hockey team to the gold medal at the 1948 Winter Olympics, setting a standard for goaltending excellence yet to be matched.

Dowey racked up a phenomenal goals-against average of only 0.62 in the eight games the RCAF Flyers played on their way to the Gold in St Moritz, Switzerland. It’s a record for Olympic hockey goaltending which still stands.

Yet, Dowey wasn’t originally slated to be a member of the Olympic team. He was working at his Toronto Transit Commission job on a January morning in 1948 when he received a call from the manager of the RCAF Flyers, inviting him to be their starting goalie in the upcoming Olympics.

Dowey had to scramble to make his way to Europe, leaving the day he received the call to board the Queen Elizabeth for a trip across the ocean with other members of the team. Holding the rank of Aircraftsman 2, Dowey took leave from his TTC jobs to play in the Olympics.

Born in east end Toronto, Dowey played with the Birchcliff Midget teams in the Toronto Hockey League. He was recruited by the Toronto Maple Leafs, who wanted him to play for their junior team, the Toronto Marlboroughs, but he couldn’t come to terms with then Marlie owner Harold Ballard.

Dowey said playing in the Olympics on outdoor rinks was a huge adjustment after normally skating indoors at rinks such as Varsity Arena and Maple Leaf Gardens. “At one of the games both teams had to shovel snow off the ice and the fans were throwing snowballs” he recalled of the Olympic experience.

Dowey has lived in the Scarlett Road and Eglinton area of Etobicoke since 1976.

Glen Johnson

Glen Johnson has retired from a successful career in software development and presently works for the Canadian Premier League of Soccer as their executive VP.

He spends quality time with his family and yet takes the initiative to improve sports in this country at every opportunity, through professional amateur and volunteer actions, by sharing his time and expertise.

Glen began umpiring baseball in the Red River Valley Sports League in Manitoba at the age of 12. His 24-year umpiring career culminated as Canada’s baseball umpire at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, GA. Concurrently, at the age of 18, he started officiating football, including 24 seasons in the Canadian Football League. Beyond Glen’s exemplary on-field career, he has held an amazing number of volunteer positions nationally and internationally as a builder of officiating and sport overall in Canada., and has been inducted in both the Manitoba Baseball Hall of Fame (2017) and Manitoba Football Hall of Fame (2020). He has also been nominated to both the Canadian Football and Baseball Halls of Fame.

Glen recently retired from coaching elite baseball at the Etobicoke Rangers organization for seven years at the 2005 age group, with teams winning four Toronto Baseball Association AAA Championships, double-digit tournament wins in multiple provinces, and Ontario Baseball Association finalists. He was a volunteer leader for the Challenger Baseball Program in Etobicoke, ON, in 2018 2019. He was also a dedicated coach for minor hockey with both the Humber Valley and West Mall organizations for over ten years.

Freddie Black

Freddie Black was always an all-round athlete. He played on a variety of organized Etobicoke sports teams, including lacrosse, baseball and hockey, on the team sponsored by Kingsway Lumber, but after graduating from St. Michael’s High School he joined the Toronto Argonauts. His nick-name was “Blue Steel”, and he played in three consecutive decades in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s – during their “Glory Years”.

He was active in football from 1948 through to 1961, although he did sit out the 1958 season to get married.

In 1957, he was chosen co-captain of the Argos. Always a versatile player, that year he played both offence and defence – as an offensive linesman (guard and centre) and on the defence as end and linebacker. The results of the All-Star balloting showed Freddie with the greatest number of votes of any player – but unfortunately not the most votes in any one position. Since he couldn’t be named on position, they decided to name him an Honorary All-Star.

He played 132 regular season games and 13 play-off games. That included two Grey Cup encounters – 1950 and 1952.

He lived in Etobicoke for more than 40 years, and in that time has generously given back his football expertise to the community by helping to coach both the Lakeshore Bears and the Etobicoke Colts during many of their unbeaten seasons.

George Kapasky

George Kapasky was born in Etobicoke south, and still lives here. He attended George R. Gauld Public School and graduated from Mimico High School. He is married to Marie Duff, who is also from Etobicoke. They have 3 sons: George, Gordon and Glenn.

As a boy, George played all the sports available to him – baseball, hockey, lacrosse, football and basketball. Then in his final year at Mimico, he was selected to the Toronto Telegram all-star football team as a running back.

He also played lacrosse in Mimico, until its minor league activities were suspended and, with Dave “Porky” Russell, Paul Henderson, and Ross Bonar, he transferred to Long Branch and began a successful decade of winning games and capturing championships.

George was a naturally skilled player and team leader. He co-captained the junior teams and captained the senior ones. His Long Branch teams won 3 consecutive Eastern Canadian championships from 1953 to ‘55, culminating in the Minto Cup as Canadian Junior Champions. Then George captained the Port Credit Sailors to the Mann Cup senior championship. In all, he played in six Canadian final series, winning 2 national championships.

George played at the highest levels of competition and was regarded as one of the best Lacross players of his era, directing the play, playing the point and setting up the offensive. He was awarded the Merv McKenzie trophy in 1964 and ‘65 for his defensive skills.

In 1957, George introduced Morley Kells to the game. Not only did Morley play, but he raised the profile of the game. With these new opportunities, George played professionally with Toronto Maple Leafs and the Toronto Tomahawks. In 2004 he was inducted into the Ontario Lacrosse Hall of Fame.