Sidoo can thank dad for work ethic
Football pioneer being recognized for contributions to sport in B.C. and Canada
Dave Sidoo thinks about a lot of things these days. He thinks of his father, Mall Singh, who emigrated to Canada from the Punjab, worked the sawmills on Annacis Island and instilled in his son the virtues of family, community and hard work.
He thinks of Frank Smith, his coach at UBC, who put his arm around his young player after his father died and told him, “You’re going to play professional football and take care of your family.”
And he thinks of his own family — his wife, Manjy, whom he met at UBC; his sons, Dylan and Jordan — and the foundation, Sidoo Family Giving, he established in their name.
Mall Singh died in 1980 and didn’t see his son win a Vanier Cup at UBC, didn’t see him become the CFL’s first Indo-Canadian player and didn’t see him become a giant in his hometown. But he did know what he instilled in him and knew it was the bedrock on which an honourable life is built.
On Wednesday, Sidoo received a great honour when he was announced as the recipient of the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame’s W.A.C. Bennett Award for his many and varied contributions to the sporting life of this province and country. They include his pioneering role in the CIS and the CFL and his part in helping to rebuild the football program at his beloved alma mater.
It’s also an honour for all those who came before him. Sidoo is variously listed as a money man, an industrialist, a multimillionaire and a philanthropist, and he’s all those things. But mostly he’s a Vancouver guy with a Vancouver story to tell and he’s never forgotten his roots or the lessons of his father.
“I was just starting out and he didn’t see what I could do or what I’d become,” Sidoo says. “But he gave me so many things.”
And the son has always been good about repaying his debts. Just ask anyone connected with UBC.
On this day, Sidoo is speaking on the phone from Melbourne, Australia, where he’s just pitched his latest venture, a massive lithium mine, before he moves on to Hong Kong for another round of meetings.
He’s asked if he has done a little recruiting for head coach Blake Nill and the Thunderbirds in the land Down Under.
“You never know where you can find a great player,” he says with a laugh, before he gets serious.
“UBC gave me everything,” he continues. “It’s where I met my wife. It’s where I met my best friends, and they’re still my best friends. I came up from nothing and had to work for everything. “I owe this school so much.” And, like we said, he’s never forgotten a debt.
In 2013, UBC launched — well, we’re still not sure what it launched, but it was an ominous-sounding review of all varsity sports. The football program, which was losing on the field and costing millions, seemed to have a bull’s-eye on it.
About the same time, Sidoo helped start the 13th Man Foundation, a group of alumni that advertises itself as a support arm to the football team but, in reality, is the life blood of the program.
Sidoo’s goal was to raise $500,000 a year over a five-year period, an investment that has resulted in the new million-dollar Football Academic Centre, the hiring of Nill, improvements to Thunderbird Stadium — now known as Dave Sidoo Field at Thunderbird Stadium — and a 2015 Vanier Cup, a thrilling 26-23 win over the University of Montreal.
Sidoo won’t say how much he’s poured into the program, but it’s comfortably in the seven figures. As for the payback: “I was standing on the sidelines (before kickoff at the national championship game in Quebec City) with Manjy and some of the seniors came up to me,” Sidoo says. “They said, ‘Thanks for changing our lives.’ I started crying. Manjy started crying.
“Those are the things you don’t forget.”
As for the Thunderbirds’ program, there have been grumblings from other CIS schools about their recruiting practices. The case of quarterback Michael O’Connor, the Ottawa product who redshirted for a year at NCAA giant Penn State before decamping for the UBC campus, came under special scrutiny but, as Sidoo says:
“No one was complaining when we were losing. Then we started winning and something dirty had to be going on.”
“I’ve built my reputation on integrity,” he adds. “I would never break a rule. But you’ve got to keep pushing. You can’t stop pushing, or you’ll be back to drawing 200 fans.”
Sidoo fell under the game’s spell at an early age. When he was nine he remembers watching an NFL game on TV with San Francisco 49ers quarterback John Brodie throwing to Gene Washington and thinking, “That looks cool.”
A neighbourhood friend then got a J5V (CFL regulation size) football for Christmas and he was hooked. Sidoo was sleek and fast. The game gave him purpose and an identity, even if he didn’t have a lot of role models to follow.
“Nobody in my community played football,” he says. “I remember being excited when I saw (former Indian tennis star) Vijay Amritraj on TV.
“Sports was such an equalizer. It made things a lot easier. You’re all the same colour on the field.”
After winning the Vanier Cup with the Thunderbirds in 1982, Sidoo was drafted by the Saskatchewan Roughriders, where he spent five seasons before finishing his career with the B.C. Lions. When he arrived in Regina, some of his American teammates took a look at the colour of his skin and just assumed he was from the U.S.
“They’d go, ‘UBC. What’s that? The University of Boston College?’ ” Good one. Here’s another one: Sidoo is now negotiating to buy the B.C. Lions from David Braley.
“My wife used to say, ‘Why are you doing this,’ ” Sidoo says about his effort to resurrect the UBC program. “You’re working 16 hours a day, and you’re not getting paid.
“But you just keep pushing and pushing.”
And you don’t stop, because a long time ago you learned the value of hard work.