A Sporting Chance. William Humber

in 1933, “the waters of Toronto Bay fairly boiled in the wake of lumbering fours-with-keel, pairs, doubles and singles.” Physical supremacy and prizes varying from £7.10 to silver sculls provided motivation for those competing in what were derisively referred to as barges. Among the early stars was Richard Tinning whose wharf was at the foot of York Street. There were no distinctions between amateur and professional. Everyone competed for money and races were often interrupted by emergency calls to save nearby sailors in distress.

      ROBERT BERRY: CONFEDERATION-ERA ROWER

      For working-class citizens, a rowing competition was an extension of their daily work. In the first month after the birth of the Dominion of Canada on July 1, 1867, members of the Toronto Rowing Club, the premier such organization in the country, passed a resolution “Precluding any coloured man to enter in any but the fisherman’s race at the upcoming regatta.” The club’s president, Angus Morrison, was both a Member of Parliament and a future Toronto mayor. Their actions were directed against a man many knew and had competed against. The “coloured” man was Robert Berry, a fisherman by trade who worked for the Ward family, after whom a Toronto island was named.

      A letter writer identified only as “ JUSTICE” commented in the August 9, 1867, Globe, “Your correspondent would like to enquire…why such an order has passed in a Canadian club, where justice and freedom is claimed for all men. If the coloured man is so made inferior to all other classes of men, why should our generous Club admit one of the humblest of the people in the fisherman’s race, and allow him at a former regatta to take some of the principle prizes. And if such a frivolous distinction has been forced on the coloured citizens simply on account of the colour, it should meet with the strongest disapproval by all logical men.”

      The Globe agreed with the letter writer and said, “The Regatta Club has acted unjustly, illiberally, and illogically. If coloured men are not fit to run all the races they are not fit for the fisherman’s race. This is the first instance within our memory of a stigma being attached in Canada to the colour of a man’s skin in an open and public manner. No injustice of that sort would be tolerated in England. It is an importation of one of the least excusable Yankee prejudices.”

      Another writer of August 13, 1867, and identified simply as “A Voice From the Bush” in the County of Simcoe (and possibly a Black resident for whom the “bush” often described lands such as the Queen’s Bush in Wellington County which were part of the Crown reserves and therefore not open to titled ownership) wrote, “It was with feelings of astonishment and indignation, that I learned by your paper of yesterday, that the Toronto Regatta Club had prohibited coloured people from competing in their races. I am a loyal man, and endeavour to instill loyalty in others. But loyalty, Sir, implies not simply devotion to our Queen, but attachment to the constitution, to the laws, and to the force of moral feeling which prevails in our country. Now, Sir, I contend that the constitution, the monarch, the laws, and the people of Britain frown upon this miserable distinction of colour—a distinction which is nothing less than an insult to our Creator.

      “I lament that in the capital of the Province of Canada, and in the midst of all the light which extended education and science throws on our days, such an outrage on the fair fame of England should have been perpetrated. I look upon this war of colour as a vile Republican prejudice, imported from our neighbours…

      “Let me remind them that one of the greatest men of whom England could ever boast, Dr. Samuel Johnson, appointed his servant Francis Barber, formerly a slave in Jamaica, to be his residuary legatee, a position which no British nobleman would have objected to hold…

      “God grant we may have no repetition of doings so unseemly and anti-British.”

      Robert Berry was one of the first significant Black athletes in Canada in an era in which records are sketchy. He was a friend of the Tinning boys, the Ward family and later Ned Hanlan, the greatest Canadian athlete of the 19th century. One year before Confederation, Berry combined with J. Durnan, son of the lighthouse keeper, and W. Montgomery to row their boat Silver Arrow to victory and a prize of $30 at the annual regatta of the Toronto Rowing Club.

      This club, formed in 1856 with clubhouse and rowing quarters at Tinning’s Wharf, was captained by E.G. O’Brien. Over time separate prizes were provided to the gentlemen amateurs of the club. Fishermen were assumed to have an unfair advantage because their occupation contributed to their prowess. Such logic was eventually used to rationalize the establishment of the amateur movement. Although elitist in character, that movement was not explicitly racist.

      This lithograph, A Sculling Match—Toronto Harbour, circa 1870s, captures the atmosphere in which Bob Berry competed, The rower may, perhaps, even be somewhere in the scene.

      Robert Berry competed against the leading rowers of his day including Richard Tinning’s son, Richard, who once cajoled Berry into practising starts all morning before a race in Lachine, Quebec, and then easily beat him in the afternoon. On another occasion John Scholes, who ran the Athlete Hotel on Yonge Street, outraced Berry over a three-mile course near the northern elevator on Toronto Bay. According to Hunter, “Mr. Scholes at the start of the race proceeded to induce Mr. Berry into an argument which reached such heights of passion that Berry was left mumbling to himself.” Berry practised with the great Ned Hanlan himself though their age difference made a challenge unlikely by the time Hanlan was world champion.

      In 1867 Berry was permitted to compete only in the fisherman’s race. He lost. His crew “that has distinguished itself in previous years, was poorly handled, and under proper management should have taken the race,” the Globe reported.

      A WATERFRONT HERO

      In 1872 Henry O’Brien, son of the Toronto Rowing Club’s first captain, established the Argonaut Rowing Club. It became the new elite organization dedicated to making rowing an amateur sport, one that excluded professional fishermen like Berry.

      The next generation of rowers like Ned Hanlan found supporters among Toronto’s gambling fraternity. There would be no new “Bob Berry” because the international rowing realm in which Hanlan now moved was virtually all white.

      There was at least one moment of honour left for Berry. On December 7, 1868, a heavy gale and snowstorm wrecked the schooner Jane Ann Marsh near the Toronto Island. Stripping to their underwear and setting out in a small skiff while the storm still raged, Berry and William Ward struggled to reach the floundering ship. Three times their own boat capsized and the careening skiff gashed Berry’s head.