It Happened in Cambridge

10/14/2024

Where were you on that snowy day in April 1977 when the Toronto Blue Jays took to the snowy field at Exhibition Stadium to play their first-ever MLB game? A group of high-schoolers in Cambridge, Ontario remember it well.

08/26/2024

Proudly presenting the latest story from ithappenedincambridge.com. This story tells readers what it was like to be a member of the Can-Amera torch relay run from Cambridge to Saginaw Township, Michigan, in the days before cell phones. Check it out and let me know what you think!

http://ithappenedincambridge.com

07/16/2024

Own a print of a beautiful new painting called Wagon West.

Wagon West print captures the beauty of two horses in a serene field under a dramatic cloudy sky. Perfect for adding a touch of nature to any space.

05/24/2024

Galt’s annual Around the Bridges road race was the stuff of legend. It’s where Ab Morton got his running start in a heralded career that would see him win Canada’s marathon championship. Other standouts like Olympians Scotty Rankine, Cliff Bricker and Billy Reynolds also ran the Around the Bridges race. Read about one memorable distance race that began and ended at Galt’s Dickson Park in the summer of 1947.

Learn about Cambridge, Ontario through its stories, history, writings and artwork.

03/12/2024

The day Canada’s 11th prime minister, R.B. Bennett, came calling on R.O. McCulloch at his Blair Road house in Galt, and was turned away by his unwitting staff!

12/26/2023

Two new prints are now available on the It Happened in Cambridge site: ithappenedincambridge.com. Check them out and let me know what you think!

http://ithappenedincambridge.com

02/22/2023

An iconic photo of baseball Hall of Famer Ferguson Jenkins and Bill “Spaceman” Lee at Cambridge’s Dickson Park in the 1990s.

I saw Jenkins last fall, and mentioned I once had an old photo of him that I had taken at Dickson Park, but noted that the photo had been lost to time. Some weeks later the photo turned up, after being missing for more than two decades. Jenkins, a Chatham, Ontario native, was the first Canadian to win the Cy Young Award (1971). He told me that although he played two seasons for London in the Intercounty following his retirement from the Majors, he had never played a game at Dickson Park.

He retired from the Majors in 1983, which was the last year the Terriers, one of the Intercounty’s founding members in 1919, played in the InterCounty. They won the league title that year and then folded, ending a remarkable 60-plus year tenure that included 13 league championships.

In the early years of the Intercounty, future Canadian prime minister Lester Pearson, and his brother Vaughan, played with the Guelph Maple Leafs at Dickson Park; though he was an all-round athlete, baseball was Pearson’s true passion. Later he won the Nobel Prize.

Many great players have played at Dickson Park, including homebrews like Rob Ducey, Scott Thorman, Jason Gooding, Tex Kaiser and Bob McCullough. Others include Jim Bagby, the pitcher who ended Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, and Manchester, New Hampshire’s Tom Padden, playing coach of the 1949 Galt Terriers. Padden had gone up to the Majors with the New York Yankees when Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Bill Dickey were his teammates. Other prominent players included Negro League pitching star Jeff Shelton from Buffalo, who also played for the Terriers, as did Toronto native Goody Rosen. Rosen led the Dodgers in batting in 1945–he led the NL for most of that season—and finished with a .325 average.

In 1950 a young player by the name of Bill Horne came to town to play with the Terriers. His real name was Bill Hornsby and he was the son of baseball immortal Rogers Hornsby.

There are many others of note, including Jesse Orosco, who pitched a no-hitter in 1977 for the Terriers in a 15-0 win over Guelph, and went on to a stellar Major League career in which he held the record for most games pitched.

Many of these players are chronicled in my book Terrier Town: Summer of ‘49 (WLU Press, 2003).

The photo of Jenkins and Lee, taken at Dickson Park, was captured during a Legends promotional tour, so even though Jenkins didn’t play a league game at the famed Canadian park, he was there for one day in the late 1990s. With the two Major League standouts was another by the name of Vida Blue.

02/07/2023

Starting in 1953, Bobby Hull spent more than a year in Cambridge pursuing his hockey dreams. Visit YouTube, and read more about those days here.

http://ithappenedincambridge.com

https://youtu.be/2LMoyUpJ64g

01/28/2023

https://youtu.be/uyhde1DFSWo

A black and white video clip of swirling clouds over the Grand River in Cambridge, Ontario.

It Happened in Cambridge www.ithappenedincambridge.com

Black and white video of a picturesque winter afternoon sky along the Grand River at Cambridge, Ontario, with a flock of Canada geese flying high overhead.

01/27/2023

01/24/2023

The full story about Edward VIII and Millicent Milroy, the Canadian schoolteacher. Stanley Baldwin, the British PM, confirmed to Canadian PM Mackenzie King in 1927 that the prince had a “Little Canadian Miss.” Was it Millicent?

https://ithappenedincambridge.com/millicent-milroy-1

01/24/2023

If you’ve seen the YouTube documentary and want to learn more about Edward VIII and Canadian schoolteacher Millicent Milroy, read this in-depth feature story about the pair:

https://ithappenedincambridge.com/millicent-milroy-1

Check it out and let us know what you think! .

Learn about Cambridge, Ontario through its stories, history, writings and artwork.