Last of the great Grads dies at 96
Team of ‘real trailblazers’ still inspiring women several generations later
EDMONTON—“Pickles, ketchup, chow, chow, chow.
“Eat ’em up, chew ’em up, bow, wow, wow.
“Cannibal, Hannibal, zisboom-ba.
“Commercial Graduates like to ra, ra, ra!”
This was the chant of the Edmonton Commercial Grads basketball team that Kay MacBeth, the last surviving member of Canada’s most successful basketball team, still remembered even at the age of 96.
MacBeth passed away in Toronto last weekend.
She joined the Grads at 17 in 1939 and played in the team’s last season before they disbanded. For 25 years the Grads, a basketball team of McDougall Commercial High School graduates, lost only 20 of 522 games, making them the most successful team in Canadian history.
They captured their final Canadian title in1940, which MacBeth was a part of, after which they disbanded.
Dr. James A. Naismith, the Canadian who invented the game, called them “the finest basketball team that ever stepped out onto a floor.”
According to Ann Hall, author of The Grads are Playing Tonight!, MacBeth was one of the few players who was not a graduate of McDougall Commercial. She went to Westmount High School instead.
In 1935, Bill Tait, who was the coach of Gradettes, the feeder team from which players would then move on to play for Grads, came to Westmount to give the students a basketball lesson.
“Kay had never laid eyes on a basketball before. She had never even seen the game or never shot. She was13 years old at that time and he saw a potential basketball player in her,” Hall said. “He suggested that she come to McDougall Commercial High to try out for one of the teams.”
McDougall had a number of basketball teams, and when MacBeth came, she first joined the junior team Wasps in 1936 and later, a team called the Cubs. She jumped from the Cubs to the Grads, the only player on the team not to have played for the Gradettes first.
Ryan Bennett, a Heritage Minutes producer who relied on MacBeth as a “historical witness” for a Grads segment last year, remembers her as “whip smart … she had a fantastic sense of humour, devilish really.”
Joanne Archibald, program co-ordinator for Heritage Minutes, was inspired by MacBeth and her experience with the Grads.
“This was real group of women who were friends with each other but also were amazing athletes at a time when it wasn’t common for women to be such high profile athletes,” Archibald said. “I think she took that responsibility of being part of the Grads pretty seriously. She really felt like she was playing on a team with all these other amazing women who were real trailblazers for women in sport.
At a little shorter than fivefoot-five, MacBeth was not the tallest player, nor did she consider herself all that fast, but Archibald says she considered herself a good playmaker. “That was her best skill,” she said.
MacBeth got married in 1946 and continued to play softball and basketball. She had two children and retired from sports in 1951. She lived in Comox, B.C., for most of her life until a recent move to Toronto.
The Canadian Sports Hall of Fame finally inducted the Grads last year, with MacBeth in attendance.