Brothers’ football tie goes back 65 years
Bernie Langill calls it the great “Hurrah.”
On Sunday afternoon, when the Ottawa Redblacks face the Hamilton Tiger-Cats at TD Place, 88-year-old Bernie will be there.
So will his 84-year-old brother, Lorne, and their brother, Len, 81, up from Long Sault.
Completing the band – kid bro George, who will turn 80 in February.
The Langill football reunion at TD Place comes some 65 years since Bernie and Lorne sold Rough Riders programs at Lansdowne Park out of Bernie’s 1930 Model ‘A’ Ford.
They started around 1949 or ‘50, and did it for five seasons.
“The programs were a quarter,” Bernie says.
“We made two-and-a-half cents for each one, and we got into the game free.”
As Lorne says, “it was the ‘game free’ part that got us. They could keep the money.”
Bernie would park his Model ‘A’ near the East Gate, close to the Aberdeen Pavilion.
They packed 500 programs into the back of that blessed car.
“They’d all be gone by the time the game started,” Bernie says. “We’d cash in at halftime, and then go back to our seats.”
Of course, the sooner they sold the programs, the sooner they could be fans.
So, Lorne learned to bark like a newsboy on the streets of New York City. For example, if the Hamilton Tiger-Cats were in town, with star player Frank Filchuk, Lorne would shout:
“Come and see the Rough Riders! Against Frankie Filchuk and the Tiger-Cats!” Who could resist the two-bits? The boys would drive home in the Model ‘A,’ with so many people clamouring for a ride, they’d pack seven or eight into the old car for a romp down Bank Street.
Lorne played football at St. Pat’s High School from 1946-49. His contemporaries included Frank Chiarelli, father of Edmonton Oilers general manager Peter Chiarelli, and Bill Dineen, patriarch of the hockey-playing Dineen boys and an NHLer himself with the Detroit Red Wings.
In the mid 1940s, Lorne was a waterboy for the Ottawa Trojans, part of the old Ontario Rugby Football Union (ORFU).
Just thinking of some of the old names of Ottawa sportsmen brings chills.
“I almost start crying,” Lorne says. “I wish we could bring back those days.”
Bernie was 12 when the Second World War broke out in 1939. At 15, he joined the flock of boys who dropped out of school when jobs were opening up all over the city because of the war effort. He started working at Campbell Motors, repairing cars, then joined the staff at Laurentian Air Services at Uplands, reconditioning airplane engines.
Bernie worked there with a friend, two kids so young they were nicknamed “The Colts” by other employees. ‘Colt’ Bernie turns 89 in January.
They would strip the engines down, clean the parts and set them out for re-assembly. Worn or broken parts were replaced.
War news dominated the front pages and newsreels, but football was still of mind, foremost of some minds after the war. Bernie’s knowledge of the game paid off handsomely one afternoon when, while working as an electrician during construction of the Montfort Hospital in the early 1950s, he bet his week’s paycheque ($10) on the Rough Riders. The Riders were playing Hamilton, and Bernie figured Ottawa would win easily. A Scot named George Winship took on the bet and lost.
“George almost went through the floor,” Bernie says. “He thought sure he was going to get my paycheque.”
At 18, Bernie joined the Canadian Armed Forces, though the war ended before he got a chance to serve overseas. The veteran’s association sponsored his studies as an electrician.
Growing up, the Langills lived off Preston Street, on Larch. John Cyrus Langill, father of 10 children (five are still living, including the boys’ baby sister, Bernice), drove a streetcar on the Ottawa Electric Railway system for nearly 50 years. The Rockcliffe run would connect along Preston. The boys’ mother would send them out to greet the streetcar and deliver John his lunch.
Proudly, John wore gold bars on his jacket sleeve, each bar representing five years of service with the OER.
“He had nine of those bars, and four years unaccounted for,” Lorne says. Bernie still has the bars, a family keepsake.
All the boys loved going to the football games. Even little Hubert, the smallest. When the Langills and their friends would scramble over the Lansdowne fence to sneak into a Riders game, Hubert had an awful time trying to scale it in his hard leather shoes. Once, a policeman saw Hubie dangling from his arms atop the fence, took pity on him and boosted him up and over.
Some of their favourite players from the 1950s: Twinkletoes Turner, Choo Choo Roberts and Tom the Bomb Tracy. How great were the old nicknames?
Coach Frank Clair “put Ottawa on the map,” Lorne says. The 1960s brought Grey Cups.
Throughout the long, tangled history of football in Ottawa, the Langills were along for the ride. Bernie and Lorne contributed $200 each to the ‘Keep Football Alive in ‘55’ campaign, when the franchise was threatened.
When the Riders died in 1996 and a new team was founded in 2001, Bernie sent owner Brad Watters a six-page letter outlining his faith in Ottawa football plus a suggestion for a team name — the Ottawa Valley Metros, a nod to the Valley and the metropolitan growth within. Watters and his group went with the Renegades. They died after 2005.
Now the second-year Redblacks are in the east final, and Bernie saw the occasion as an opportunity to rally the troops. Considering most of his brothers have had hip and/or knee replacements, it’s no small task getting even courageous octogenarians into their seats. But Bernie was impressed with the assistance he received from stadium staff when he attended a game this season with son, Marc and grandson Jonathon. Walkers, wheelchairs, golf carts were used to help the elderly. He called up his brothers and went down to buy tickets.
“It took a lot of coaxing, I was ready to give up,” Bernie admits. “When I believe in something, I like to go all the way with it.”
“It’s going to be a special day,” Lorne says, warming to the idea of a punctuation mark on the family’s long love affair with football.
All that’s missing is the old Model ‘A.’ And the two brothers, gone before.
“Earl and Hubert would be thrilled at this,” says Bernie.