By Nick Fonda

Local Journalism Initiative

In his three seasons with the Montreal Alouettes, Gordon Ross never got to pose triumphantly with the Grey Cup. The Als won the Cup in 1949, the year before Gordon first suited up for the team, and they’ve won the Cup several times since he hung up his cleats, including this year when they came from behind in the final minute of the game to beat the much- favoured Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

However, last Friday, 71 years after playing his final game, and thanks to the team at the Wales Home, Gordon Ross held the Al’s newly-won Cup while a dozen guests took pictures and three video crews (including CBC) recorded the moment.

Before Gordon was presented with the Cup by Alex Gagné of the Als, the Executive Director of the Wales Home, Brendalee Piironen, gave a short overview of Gordon’s life, and also explained how the Cup came to the Wales Home, a case of family connections.

The Wales Home has always had at least one doctor. At the present time, in addition to Dr. Frazer, Dr. Sophie Bourbeau attends to the medical needs of the Home’s residents.

It was common knowledge that Gordon was not only an Alouettes’ fan but also a former player. After the Alouette’s victory, Brendalee voiced the sentiment that it would be special for Gordon, who turned 100 this year, to get to hold the Grey Cup.

Sports teams have active public relations departments and a request to the Alouettes’ front office for a special visit might have eventually borne fruit, but it turned out that there was a much easier way to ask. Dr. Sophie Bourbeau’s sister, Pascale, is the life partner of Pierre-Karl Péladeau, the owner of the Montreal Alouettes.

So it was that less than four weeks after Alex Gagné (who played for the Université de Sherbrooke and is nick-named Captain Quebec by his Alouettes team-mates) hoisted the Cup in Hamilton, he passed it into the arms of Gordon Ross.

Gordon was born in Sherbrooke, the middle child and only son of Alexander Ross who owned an ice delivery company and who served as mayor of Sherbrooke from 1942 to 1944. Athletic and active, Gordon grew up playing hockey, basketball, football, and rugby. He grew to be 6’3” and 210 pounds at a time when the average Canadian male was 5’8” and weighed 160. He particularly loved contact sports and had his nose broken twice. In his 20s, just before household refrigeration became common, he worked for his father, collecting, storing and delivering ice (25,000 tons of it in 1948) that was then sold in blocks that weighed 25 – 100 pounds.

It was making ice deliveries to the Sherbrooke Hospital that he came to meet a nursing student from Danville, Mabel Elizabeth McCullough. A few years later, in 1952 when he was 29 and Betty was 26, the couple were married in Sherbrooke. For Gordon it was the beginning of a new phase of his life but also the end of his playing career.

Gordon had joined the Alouettes in 1950 as a lineman, playing center, guard, or defensive end. At some point he earned the nicknames Beef and Bruiser. There may have been renown and glamour to playing professional football in the 1950s but there wasn’t much money. Gordon was paid $25 when he attended a practice, and $100 when he played a game. By way of comparison, the minimum annual salary in the CFL in 2023 was $70,000.

In 1950, the Montreal Alouettes franchise had only been in existence for five years. They were part of the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union along with the Ottawa Rough Riders, the Toronto Argonauts, and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Teams dressed 37 players compared to 45 today and a season lasted a dozen games rather than 18. Out of town games meant travelling by train, only two hours from Montreal to Ottawa but six and a half to Hamilton. When Gordon had to stay overnight in Montreal, it was at the YMCA.

Two years after his retirement from the Alouettes, Gordon returned to football as a coach with the Bishop’s Gaiters where he won the championships that had eluded him as a player. He coached from 1954 to 1961, a time during which Bishop’s played against Loyola College, MacDonald College, the Royal Military College, and St. Patrick’s College. His teams won the league three years in a row, winning 18 of 19 games over that period. Yet, at 38 and after seven years of coaching, Gordon wanted to give more time to his growing family.

By the early 1950s households were replacing ice boxes with refrigerators and the job that had seen Gordon through his late teens and early twenties disappeared. For a time, he and Betty managed an oil delivery business until Gordon opted to start work at the Ingersoll Rand factory where he stayed until retirement. He continued to enjoy physical labor and helped out at a moving company as well as at the W.H. Hunting & Sons Ltd. saw mill, and the C. Wilson & Sons music and furniture store on Wellington Street.

Gordon and Betty raised three children: Peter, Catherine, and Paul.

“Both Mom and Dad were athletic. Peter and I inherited some of their athleticism and we were involved in numerous sports,” says Catherine Ross, “but neither of us had that extra drive, determination, and mental toughness that our father had that put him into the professional ranks.”

Gordon and Betty were active in the Trinity United Church and also involved with various social organizations like the Rotary Club and the Y’s Men’s Club, which hosted track and field meets.

“My father liked people,” she says, “and people liked him. He was a very modest, humble person who never really talked about himself or his accomplishments. Over the past two weeks, thanks to this wonderful event the Wales Home has put on, we were prompted to go through our family archives to pull out facts and photos on Dad’s career.”

“Dad’s been at the Wales Home now for about three and a half years, and he’s very happy here. And we’re very happy with the care and compassion that he gets from everyone here,” she says.

Those who attended the event at the Wales Home learned that Gordon is not the only centenarian former athlete in residence. As a prelude to the Grey Cup ceremony, Brenda-Lee Piironen introduced Keith Baldwin. Keith and Gordon are only a year or two apart in age, and, when they were in their teens, they played competitive hockey against each other on Sherbrooke’s outdoor rinks.