Success in sports can mean fame and wealth for individuals with talent, perseverance and sometimes a certain degree of good fortune.
Talent is something a person is born with. Perseverance comes from within. However, fortune is the one thing over which the athlete has no control. Wellington County has produced many athletes who have had great success in a variety of sports.
Two from Fergus, reached pinnacles, only to be overcome by bad fortune
James J. Forrester was born in Hamilton in 1881, but grew up in Fergus, attended school there, and as a youth apprenticed with a local tin-smith.
Forrester’s love of sports began while he was a young boy. He was a terrific hockey player and a star on the Fergus Thistles lacrosse team. However, he shone most on the ice rink as a speed skater. His idols were two other local speed skating champions, Jack Black and John Graham.
Because of the quick, choppy strides he used when skating, Forrester was called “Hopper.” His brother Joseph was also a hockey and lacrosse player, and speed skater, nicknamed Grindy. They were mentioned in a poem about great athletes from Fergus.
“Then there was the Forrester boys,
Grindy and Hopper, the names they chose;
For speed and stamina few could excel,
And when they moved, they moved like – well.”
Forrester began competing in five-mile speed-skating races for prizes of $25 (about $900 today).
The really big money lay in betting, and gamblers as far away as New York City would place wagers on the rink races. Forrester entered competitions all over Ontario and his reputation grew as he defeated top-ranked skaters from across Canada and the United States, and even Europe.
In 1901, an American named Harley Davidson who held the speed-skating half-mile championship came to Canada to race against Hopper. Forrester beat him in a series of races held in Fergus, Elora, Guelph and Toronto. The two went on a barnstorming tour of Ontario, with Forrester winning most of their races.
Forrester then won championships playing hockey for Niagara Falls and lacrosse for St. Catharines.
On the lacrosse field he was known as the Little Iron Man.
Forrester was in his prime when he was suddenly struck down. While visiting his parents in Fergus, Forrester collapsed from a perforated bowel caused by an abscess on his appendix. He died in the Fergus hospital on April 17, 1906, and was buried in Belsyde Cemetery.
Many Canadians remember Marilyn Bell, the courageous Toronto teenager who in 1954 became the first long-distance swimmer to conquer the cold waters of Lake Ontario. Almost forgotten today is another long-distance swimmer, Shirley Campbell, known in her day as the Fergus Flash.
Campbell was born in Fergus in 1935 to Thomas and Florence (nee Church) Campbell. She was only six when her father died. Because Thomas had worked at the Beatty factory, the Campbell family was given a lifetime membership at the swimming pool W.G. Beatty had built for Fergus.
Little Shirley began swimming there regularly and caught the attention of swimming coach Bert Crockett. Under Crockett’s guidance, Campbell became a powerful swimmer with a strong determination to succeed.
By age 10 she had won provincial competitions in Toronto.
In 1952, a team that included Marilyn and her sister Joan easily won the 400-yard relay event at the Dominion Championship. Then Campbell set a record in winning the 400-yard individual event.
That year Campbell hoped to join the Canadian swimming team bound for the Olympics in Helsinki. Unfortunately, she caught the flu just before the qualification competition. She swam despite a high fever, and lost to another swimmer by one-fifth of a second.
Campbell would have been considered too old to compete in the 1956 Olympics, so she turned professional, hoping to help her family financially. She won the Canadian National Exhibition Marathon twice, and then the 1953 three-mile World Championship. She collected cash prizes and earned money
from sponsorships.
The press called Campbell Canada’s “It Girl,” and ran feature stories about her. It seemed that Shirley was on a clear road to fame and fortune.
But Campbell was still a minor. Concerned for her safety, her mother wouldn’t allow her to compete in the 1954 Atlantic City Centennial Swim, a 26-mile (41.8 km) race in the ocean. Marilyn Bell won the women’s competition in that event. Without intending to upstage a fellow Canadian athlete,
Bell would win glory that might otherwise have gone to Campbell.
Marilyn had trained with Shirley and admired her. But it was Bell, two years younger than Campbell, who captured the world’s attention and became Canada’s sweetheart when she successfully swam across Lake Ontario. She followed that up by becoming the youngest person to swim the English
Channel.
Bell was named Canada’s athlete of the year and covered with awards.
In 1955, Campbell tried to swim Lake Ontario. After a promising start, bad luck dogged her every stroke. A reporter in her guide boat accidentally knocked the compass overboard and in the darkness of night the navigator got lost, throwing Campbell off course. Then the weather deteriorated and Campbell
was fighting 10-foot tall waves. Weeping and exhausted, she was pulled out of the water.
Campbell took on Lake Ontario again the next year. This time she was pulled from the water less than a kilometre from the Toronto shore, numb from cold and limp with fatigue. It was a heroic effort, but there were no accolades for almost succeeding.
Campbell retired from professional competition after that. She married her childhood sweetheart and the couple adopted two children. But the marriage was stormy and ended in divorce.
Campbell’s life became a nightmare of financial troubles, bipolar disorder, alcoholism and drug addiction. She lost everything and became estranged from her children.
Campbell would periodically emerge to work successfully in business and compete in swimming as a master’s age athlete, even winning a gold medal in Australia, but then slip back into the darkness.
In her later years she finally did regain control of her life. Shirley Campbell died on Feb. 6, 2019, and is buried in Belsyde Cemetery. A champion in spite of all misfortunes.
