North Shore's sprinting champ getting his due
West Vancouver school to rename track for late Olympic sprinter Harry Jerome
It's sports pop quiz time.
Take a sheet of paper. Split it in half. Write down everything you know about Terry Fox on one side and everything you know about Harry Jerome on the other.
Do you have even half as much information on the Jerome side as the Fox one? Most of us would not even get to that point.
This isn't an exercise questioning our reverence for Fox. Coming up on 40 years since his death, the Terry Fox story remains a Canadian inspiration. Coming up on 40 years since his death, he still is raising money and awareness for cancer research. Put his name and likeness on the $5 bill — he merits that kind of recognition.
This exercise instead is to lament how little we know about Jerome, even though the sprinter was the fastest man in the world at one point, even though he set seven world records over his career.
Jerome's story is starting to get a little play again on the North Shore at least. The track at West Vancouver secondary is being rebuilt and will be renamed the Harry Jerome Oval when it's complete, according to a joint announcement from the District of West Vancouver and West Vancouver Schools earlier this week.
There's a community centre in North Vancouver and an annual track meet sponsored by The Vancouver Sun that bare his name, as well a bronze stature of him in Stanley Park. This will be first track named in his honour.
Jerome moved to North Vancouver from Winnipeg with his family in 1951, a month shy of his 11th birthday.
He died of a brain aneurysm on Dec. 7, 1982, in North Vancouver. He was 42.
“He really was a hero,” West Vancouver Mayor Mary-ann Booth said. “I think people may have heard the name or seen the statue, but I don't know if they know the story like they should. The more and more I hear about it, the more and more it resonates with me.
“I'm over the moon that we're going to be able to do this. He lived on the North Shore. He trained here. This was his home. I'm super-proud. This will be one of the highlights of my career.”
We may not know as much about Jerome as we should because he was a Black man and his story involves those difficult conversations about racism.
His sister Valerie talks about how the Jerome children were met by a large, angry group who hurled rocks and chastised them on their way to their first day of elementary school in North Vancouver. She talks about how there was a fire at their home one time and neighbours were drawing their curtains, pretending not to see.
Valerie does frequent school visits and presentations on racism and explains how they're “exhausting, because they're emotionally painful … racism was an acid eating away at our family.”
She heard from Booth about the track project last summer, after Booth came across a story in the North Shore News suggesting that there was a push out of Richmond to do something to honour her late brother Harry.
“Mary-ann Booth didn't do this for votes. She's not going to get any votes out of this. She did it because she feels it's the right thing to do,” said Valerie, 76, a former elite sprinter herself who represented Canada at the 1960 Rome Summer Olympics.
“And, to me, she's also done it the right way. She's called me on everything, every step of the way. She's consulted with me probably on a twice-a-week basis. I'm hugely grateful for how this has been handled. I'm hugely grateful about how collaborative this has been.”
Harry suffered torn leg muscles in the 100-metre semifinals of the 1960 Olympics and in the final of the 100-yard dash at the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, Australia.
The media didn't know at the time the extent of his injuries. They certainly didn't treat him kindly then, either.
The Vancouver Sun lead sports story for its Nov. 24, 1962, edition was headlined Jerome Folds Again.
The story read: “A quitter, as the then immature boy was cruelly called at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, is a harsh word and Jerome had been too good too often to be stuck with it.” The cutline maintains how Jerome “fails again,” under his picture.
Jerome would need surgery. He was back at a world-class level in time for the Tokyo 1964 Olympics, where he won a bronze medal in the 100 metres.
Fittingly all these years later, Sport B.C. gives out the Harry Jerome Comeback Award of the Year.
There's a lot to unpack here. There are layers and layers. There's a hook to bring it all up again at least, thanks to the track rebuilding.
“We want all our students to know Harry's story. It takes the topic of anti-racism and makes it a real local issue,” said Chris Kennedy, the West Vancouver Schools superintendent.
Booth added: “The first step in healing is understanding and learning about what happened. It's about having our eyes opened.”
Kennedy says that the goal is “finish the fundraising so we can cut the ribbon on the Harry Jerome Oval in 2022.”
“The project is a great community initiative bringing together the municipality, school district and the local community,” he added.
Another $1.4 million or so needs to be raised to complete the track and the corresponding amenities.