Manitoba Marathon’s founder

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/06/2015 (3793 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As the day of the first Manitoba Marathon loomed in June 1979, I could see my father, John Robertson, was in a mighty tight spot. “Robbie” founded the annual race and scheduled it to coincide with Father’s Day so “you kids will never forget it.”

Instead of receiving the standard loud tie, breakfast in bed or a new barbecue, Robbie had a different kind of gift in mind: ask Tim, my 14-year-old brother, to run the inaugural race for him.

 

“If you don’t run the whole 26.2 miles, I’ll lose all of the pledge money that I’ve collected for the Association for Community Living,” Robbie told Tim. How could Tim, who was only 14 and hadn’t trained for the race, say no?

The underlying issue was this: how could John Robertson, host of CBC-TV’s 24 Hours, avid runner, legendary sportswriter and volunteer be unable to meet his commitments?

Two months earlier, he’d blown his knee running the 1979 Boston Marathon. As a 45-year-old “penguin” runner, Robbie never would have qualified to run at the storied Boston race. He owed his race number to the insider connections of Winnipeg psychiatrist and fellow runner Fred Shane.

Tim was present for more than half of that epic debacle as Robbie loped along with water on the knee, complete with sound effects. “It sounds like a toilet flushing,” he joked to Tim as they ran side by side until Tim went nose down in a ditch at Mile 14.

Robbie slipped Tim a 20 for a steak back at their hotel and finished the race alone. Dad’s physician, Wayne Hildahl, had advised strongly against Robbie undertaking the Boston race. Dad ran it anyway, but paid the price come Manitoba Marathon Day on Sunday, June 17.

Anyone who knew my late father, who died in 2014, wouldn’t express surprise when they heard the running-with-an-injured-knee story. Robbie had two gears: stop and go. There was no middle way, no balance and certainly no listening to a physician’s advice.

As fathers go, my dad was more than a little challenging. Who else would ask his young son to run an entire marathon for him? It was a weird testament to their bond and an opportunity for Tim, the family athlete to my nerd, to prove his fealty to Clan Robertson.

Tim gathered together three good friends, Bob Sawchuk, Bob Rush and Jimmy Kirkinos, to accompany him on his untrained folly. “I remember puking (scrambled eggs) on my runners about halfway through the race,” recalls Tim. “I hadn’t trained, and it was painful.”

Since everyone in our family was “recruited” to work on Dad’s volunteer projects, my mother, Betty, and I toiled at the finish line to record the runners’ completion times — with one eye watching for Tim.

Even with puke on his running shoes, Tim finished the longest run of his life, then polished off a large Porteous pizza. Tim had single-handedly and heroically saved the day. Robbie’s ACL pledges were honoured, and the first-ever Manitoba Marathon was a resounding success.

In December 1979, I accompanied my father to the Honolulu Marathon. Tim, a goalie, had hockey commitments so Betty stayed home with him while I monitored Robbie’s outcome in Hawaii.

On race day, it poured rain. The local cameraman Robbie had hired to record his triumphant finish waited patiently with me. We stood there for hours, soaking wet, until the race organizers struck the set. Just when I feared my father had expired along the palm tree-lined route, I spied Robbie, arms wrapped around another racer, while he staggered across the finish line with his new friend.

Seventeen years elapsed before Robbie made a go at running the elusive Manitoba Marathon in 1996. He hosted a family dinner the night before the big race. Robbie playfully dubbed it “the Last Supper.” Betty was pragmatic. “Well, if he dies out there tomorrow, he’ll die happy.”

The race organizers had their own worries. No one wanted to wake up to the Monday morning headline: Manitoba Marathon Founder Dies Running His Own Race.

This time out, Robbie enlisted his nephew, Ken Robertson, and Robbie’s friend, Ivan Berkowitz, for company. To fend off our nervous jitters, Betty and I unpacked my kitchen at my new house on Fleet Avenue then headed over to see Robbie finish.

When he crossed the finish line, Dad was still standing, yet hanging off his nephew’s arm. Now we could all relax and enjoy Father’s Day.

For Robbie, the outcome of the race was always secondary to the pledges. How much money was raised? How many intellectually challenged adults could now move into a community-based home?

Ever since Tim crossed the finish line with puke-splashed Nike Daybreaks that first year, more than $5 million has been raised to support the Association for Community Living’s life-changing mandate.

 

This Father’s Day, Tim, who now lives in Dallas, asked me to remind Manitobans of our late father’s legacy. The mission of the Association for Community Living is to provide housing and support to those with intellectual disabilities.

“Not on my watch, not on our watch,” Robbie said when asked about our collective responsibility to properly house the intellectually challenged.

On a recent visit home to Winnipeg Beach, I was digging around Robbie’s sock drawer and unearthed a treasure: a signed Ted Williams baseball. There was also a Manitoba Marathon finisher medal. Another drawer was stuffed with Manitoba Marathon T-shirts. One for every year of his beloved race. I packed his T-shirts into a big suitcase and put them out in the shed. I couldn’t bring myself to discard them or give them away.

Underneath a coffee table in storage were old Runner’s World running diaries notating his distance, time and meals from Robbie’s training days. Before vascular dementia robbed him of his health and vitality, Robbie ran constantly to rehabilitate from a series of strokes. And it worked. He tacked years onto his life after a manic media career. After a good run, he’d hold his finger to his wrist and brag about his healthy low resting pulse rate: “Any slower and I’d be in the morgue!” he’d say to me with a grin.

I left the faded baseball in a box, along with some of the other memorabilia, so Tim could take these prized items back to Dallas after he visited Betty earlier this month. I never did like baseball and, luckily, Tim was the one who ran the inaugural race when we really needed him.

 

Patricia Dawn Robertson lives in Wakaw, Sask., where she works as a freelance writer and editor.