Essay On Tom Longboat

In today’s society, indigenous athletes are treated the same as any other athletes. An example of this would be Carey Price, an indigenous athlete from British Columbia. Price is a goaltender and plays for the Montreal Canadiens and has been treated with the same basic respect as any other athlete. It hasn’t always been this way. Hundreds of years ago, indigenous athletes were treated with prejudice. An example of this would be Tom Longboat. Tom Longboat is a Canadian hero; he had a hard childhood, had many accomplishments and overcame many challenges.

Tom Charles Longboat grew up having to overcome many challenges in life. Longboat was born on a Six Nations reserve on June 4, 1887, and is a member of the Onondaga Nation. At the early age

of five, Longboat's father died leaving him and four other siblings to pitch in and help their mother every day. There were chores to be done around the farm. Even at this young age, Longboat found ways to practice running and showed excellent leadership skills. At the age of 12, Longboat got sent to residential school; this took a toll on him. The school took away his language and culture and most important of all to Longboat; he couldn't run. Longboat escaped twice from residential school because he couldn't put up with it any longer. Finally, on the second time, he found his uncle who would hide him from the authorities. Longboat must have endured a lot of pain and stress from these challenges. However, he was able to overcome this anguish and go on to be a successful athlete.
Despite all the criticism and challenges, Longboat faced he didn't let them stop him from being a great athlete becoming and becoming a Canadian hero.

Longboat ran his first competitive race at age 17, although he didn't win, it gave him a feel of what it is like to run and pushed him to improve his strength and endurance. The training paid off for Longboat, winning him the Victorian Day race, with more than 400 yards ahead of the nearest competitor. The next race for Longboat would be the Hamilton Herald Around the Bay race along a 19-mile course. When he lined up at the starting line, no one there had ever heard of him, and he was given one hundred to one odds at winning. By the end of the race, everyone knew who he was. Next, Longboat had in his sights was the Boston Marathon, and he won the race with a record time. With the Boston Marathon won, it was time to face the London Olympics. Sadly, he could not finish this race due to the heat. Another one of Longboat's accomplishments came when war broke out, and he signed up for war and was a messenger running between command post delivering messages when communication was down. Throughout all these achievements, they didn't come easy, and Longboat had to overcome many

things.
Even at an older age, Longboat still had challenges to face many of which had to do with his talent.

Tom Longboat was a fantastic runner and had a different training style which he got called lazy for and was told he didn't care. Even though in today's world his style of training is what we use. After winning the Boston Marathon, Longboat got lots of criticism from the newspapers being called a "redskin," "obstinate" and "the original dummy" (Kelly). One newspaper congratulated his trainers for "having such a docile pupil. "Longboat didn't let all the criticism bother him and just pushed it aside and kept running, many times he would address it as people just being jealous. On many occasions, Longboat was discriminated against for being indigenous and accused of using narcotics because of his

race.
Tom Longboat is a Canadian hero; he had a hard childhood, had many accomplishments and overcame many challenges. Even at an early age, Longboat showed great skills of leadership and bravery, When it came to helping out at home and training to be an athlete. Even At an older age Longboat Showed these skills again, when he overcame all the comments about him and when he joined the Canadian army.