“This is the side of our grandfather that we never knew.”
Jeannine Jamieson is the great granddaughter of Tom Longboat, a professional long-distance runner, Olympian, and First World War veteran from Six Nations. Longboat is also the subject of a program on The HISTORY Channel that will release in 2023 that was filmed this year in part at CFB Borden. The program will showcase stories about extraordinary Canadians who made heroic contributions to the First and Second World Wars, following descendants as they learn the mysteries of their ancestors to better understand themselves.
As part of the program, Jamieson and her son, Jagger of Six Nations, Ont., visited Base Borden where Longboat completed training prior to his deployment to Europe during the First World War. Filming took place at locations around the base, including Base Borden Military Museum and Legacy Park at the Angus gates.
Longboat was a professional runner who won the 1907 Boston Marathon (the first Indigenous person and third Canadian in history to do so) and broke records before competing in the 1908 Olympics. His running career followed him into the Canadian Armed Forces when he enlisted in February 1916.
He served as a dispatch carrier, or “runner” on the Western Front in France and Belgium with the 107th (Timber Wolf) Battalion. These messengers played a crucial role in the war effort, viewed as more reliable than other forms of communication. The zigzag pattern of the trenches meant that moving even a few hundred feet as the crow flies often meant travelling for miles to get from point A to B, with obstacles like heavy mud and enemy fire along the way. The job has been called one of the hardest and most dangerous of the war. It was common to send two or three dispatchers on different routes with the same message to increase the odds of one arriving to its destination. Longboat himself was thought to have died on no fewer than two occasions but defied all odds by surviving the dangerous job for two years.
“We’ve heard stories about runners [who] never made it past two weeks over there, and our grandfather survived and made it home from the war,” said Jamieson.
She never heard stories about the war from Longboat. To her, he was simply her grandfather.
Touring Borden for the first time as part of The HISTORY Channel production allowed Jamieson to learn more about this part of her grandfather’s history. She is also proud to have it documented through the program to keep his legacy alive for future generations, like her son, who never met his great great grandfather.
“It almost feels like…it almost feels like everybody here knew him,” said Jamieson of coming to Base Borden and walking on the same soil where Longboat once trained. The experience was, at times, emotional for the pair.
“It’s been over a hundred years,” she continued. “We’ve never heard stories, so it’s nice to see that there is history about him.”
This story is being featured in the program Our War, premiering back-to-back on Friday 11 November at 9 p.m. Eastern Time on The HISTORY Channel, and available to stream on STACKTV.
By: Emily Nakeff, Editor
*Please note, this article was updated after publication on 9 November at 1100 hrs.
