Hoop dreams
George Munro didn’t realize that more than 60 years ago he inadvertently lit the spark that turned Hamilton into a girls’ basketball hotbed
Thousands of girls benefit from one simple idea
Have you ever looked at something in your life and thought, if this hadn’t happened then that wouldn’t have happened which means the next thing wouldn’t have taken place and on and on? You suddenly realize that if all those seemingly random forks in the road hadn’t sent me this way or that way, I would never have arrived where I am today. This is one of those stories. Last month, Doug Harrison was having dinner at a friend’s condo in Ancaster. Harrison, for those unfamiliar with his work, is widely considered the father of girls’ basketball in this city. That’s a big deal because this city is a hotbed for the sport.
Close to 100 local club teams have won provincial championships over the past few decades. Hamilton high schools have won dozens of Ontario titles. Players from this town have gone on to populate university teams throughout Canada and the United States. Heck, just last month in the Olympics there were two Hamilton women on the roster and one running the show as head coach.
During the dinner visit, another resident of the condo — a mutual friend of the host — popped in. Harrison recognized him immediately.
A little more than 60 years ago, Harrison was a new teenager growing up on Tolton Avenue near Parkdale Avenue and Main Street. He spent his time playing loads of lacrosse and floor hockey and other sports. Not basketball, though.
“I wasn’t a basketball player at all because there were no nets around,” he says.
“Now you see hundreds of them, but not then.”
Sure, there was a pair of rudimentary structures made of pipes holding up backboards at a playground on Kenilworth — there’s a parking lot there now — but the rims had long been broken off so he didn’t use them. The closest he came to the sport was occasionally tossing an oblong rugby ball into a box his older brother had nailed above the door of the shed. It was hardly thrilling.
Then one day, George Munro asked 10 or 12 of the neighbourhood kids for help. He was a supie with the city’s recreation department charged with keeping the local youth active. He’d decided to fix those broken-down hoops and move them to Parkdale Arena, which was an outdoor rink in those days.
“I just liked basketball,” the now-82-year-old says.
He’d learned the game in Grade 9. A fire at Central High School had burned pretty much everything down. Everything but the gym.
That part of the school was still usable so he’d sneak in, move some stuff out of the way and shoot.
He also spent hours playing at First United Church. Which also burned down.
Anyway, he eventually went on to play football at McMaster where he was a teammate of Russ Jackson. And basketball. He loved the game. So when he found those battered hoop stands, he knew they should be put to use. So he got the local kids — including Harrison, as it turns out — to help lug them to Parkdale. Then he attached baskets to the backboards, positioned them on the outside of the hockey boards so the nets faced in just above the frost fence and threw the kids a ball.
Harrison caught the bug. Any time he could get to the new court, he would. He’d be there for hours. At times he’d be there so long his mom would have to send someone to call him for dinner. On Sundays, he’d climb the fence to get in and just shoot by himself.
“If (Munro) hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have gone into basketball,” he says.
Turned out to be rather important. Harrison eventually had a family. He enrolled his daughter, Vicky, in the sport. Turned out she was a star. When she turned 12 and the existing local basketball program didn’t have a team for her age group, he started Transway. That was 1979. From that spark grew a powerhouse and a major part of the engine that drives girls’ basketball in this city. So much so that Transway has over 200 tournament titles and the most victories of any club in Ontario. For those efforts, Harrison has been inducted into the Hamilton Sports Hall of Fame, the Ontario Basketball Hall of Fame and was named Hamilton Sport Volunteer of the Year. Hundreds, maybe thousands of girls have been positively affected.
All because Munro put up those baskets. “Oh, he’s stretching it,” Munro laughs.
Harrison doesn’t think so. He hadn’t seen his old supie in over six decades. Yet when they met at that dinner the other day he immediately flashed back to his youth, to that day they carried those hoops to the arena and his passion for the game was born.
Which is why he says Munro is really the unknown hero behind the history of Hamilton girls’ hoops. Even though, for more than 60 years, Munro himself had no idea what he’d started.
“Everything I have done in basketball,” Harrison says, “all started when George took some teenagers to pick up some basketball structures.”
Nope, you never know when you’re going to come across one of those life-altering forks in the road. Or be one.