SPORTS COLUMN BY DINK CARROLL
The Montreal Gazette
Thurs., July 4, 1980

Frank McGill was a great Canadian

Air Vice-Marshall Frank McGill, who was 86 when he died a few days ago in the Montreal general Hospital, was one of the most gifted and versatile athletes in this city in the early years of the century. He was a great competitor and a winner at everything he took up.

His athletic activities and those of his lifelong friend, George Hodgson, who won two gold medals in swimming events at the 1912 Olympic games in Stockholm, were centered around the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association. It was hardly an accident.

“George and I attended the Montreal High School when it was located where the Sheraton-Mt.Royal is today,” he once told us. “The MAAA was only a block away and we used to go there every day after school. We spent a lot of time in the swimming pool and the gymnasium.”

Frank Carlin, who played with Frank on the MAAA water polo team that won the Canadian championship three years in a row – 1921 to 1923 – was talking about him yesterday.

“The others on that team were Paul Earl, George Hodgson, Bobby Logan and George Ritchie,” he said. “Frank was also the centre on the MAAA hockey team that played in the Senior Amateur League. I think the other teams were the Nationales, McGill and Loyola.

“Those were team teams but one year he finished first in a series of events spread over 12 months and was named the outstanding athlete. The events included things like track and field, swimming, diving, speed skating and snowshoeing.”

Was a quarterback

He quarterbacked the MAAA Winged Wheelers when football was resumed in 1919 after World War 1. That year they won the championship of the Big Four (now the Eastern Conference of the Canadian Football League) and the story of how they beat the Toronto Argonauts in the deciding game of the season keeps bobbing up.

The huddle had yet to be invented and the quarterback barked the signals at the line of scrimmage. Late in the game, the Wheelers had the ball on the Argos’ 20-yard line. The Argos had held Moe Herscovitch, the Wheelers’ hard-running back, to a few yards and Frank suspected that they knew the signals. He switched to French for this particular play and Moe.

Myer Insky, who was president of the CFL when it was known as the Canadian Rugby Union, remarked recently on Frank’s close association with football since his playing days.

“I think he attended every Grey Cup game in the last 40 years,” Myer said. “he was a trustee of the Schenley Awards in the 1960s and I saw him at the Awards Committee’s luncheon last month. He was always thinking of ways and means of improving the game.”

It’s a different game now from when he played, though the fundamentals are the same. But there are some things about the modern game that he criticized.

Better conditioned

“The teams are better conditioned, better drilled, they handle the ball better and the games are exciting.” He conceded. “The players are bigger too, but they don’t hit any harder than we did and the tackling is sloppy.”

He maintained that the blocks which cause injuries to the knees and ankles are thrown from the side and not from rear. He thought that blocking below the waist should be illegal rather than from the rear, which would reduce the risk of injuries and help the officials.

As an aviation pioneer and a pilot during World War 1 in addition to being a fine athlete, he was a glamor figure to many young Montrealers in the 1920s. his son John emulated him up to a point by playing centre on the McGill football team and, upon graduation, embarking on a career in civil aviation.

We have kept this piece on Frank’s excellence as an athlete, but we are also aware of the many ways in which he served his country and his community. He was much more than just an outstanding athlete. He was a truly great Canadian.