Articles, tips, miscellany
Frontrunners Toronto 20th Anniversary Celebration
by Donald Walker, Frontrunners Toronto
As one of the "original" Frontrunners and first president, permit me to thank the current executive and all the volunteer organizers who made Saturday's 20th anniversary party such a success. That so many previous members, who have moved away or on to other Saturday morning pursuits, returned to celebrate the club is a testament to its importance in our shared lives.
Tom and Alistair had asked me to prepare to speak about the founding of Frontrunners Toronto, but the party turned out to be way too much fun to have it spoiled with speeches. In this case, the better way is having the option of reading, or not, the founding story.
In August 1986, a small group of swimmers, runners and other athletes travelled from Toronto to San Francisco for the second Gay Games. Founded by American Olympian, Dr. Tom Waddell, the Gay Games were revolutionizing how gay men and women viewed competitive sports and how the sporting world would view gays and lesbians.
I had been part of the Out & Out Club's gay running group in Toronto for a couple of years at the time and was in San Francisco as the guest of of a cyclist and fellow runner I had met during a Toronto-New York running exchange visit. I still can feel the thrill experienced upon arriving at Kezar Stadium and seeing thousands of gay men and lesbians entering in a Olympian parade of city-nations. The sense of empowerment, of gay athletes stepping forward and taking control in an athletic environment, was overwhelming.
Back in Toronto, runners and swimmers from the incipient Team Toronto resolved to keep the spirit of the Gay Games alive in our city. Over the coming months they prepared and, in January 1987, placed a small ad in XTRA announcing a meeting at the 519 to discuss starting gay/lesbian swimming and running clubs here at home. The enthusiasm of the approximately 100 athletes who attended the February 6 event surpassed even the optimism of the organizers.
From the 519 meeting, the swimming group rushed to the Jimmie Simpson pool and the Downtown Swim Club first dived-in on February 10, 1987.
At the same time, Toronto's Out & Out Club had had a running group for a couple of years. About a dozen of us met twice a week for 5-10K runs. The location of the run - from the home of the designated host - changed each week, with the host providing changing and shower facilities and, for the weekend runs, brunch. Sometimes we were described as a social-running and competitive-brunching club, as each host strained to outdo the previous host's brunch menu.
While the opportunity to run in different neighbourhoods was an attractive feature, the limitations of the model were obvious; how many men can you process through a single shower (a question not to be answered here) within a reasonable time frame and how many men is any one host willing to feed? More significantly our growth potential was limited in that it was a bit intimidating for potential new members who lacked cooking and shower space for a dozen or more. And we were experiencing gentle conflict between those who wanted the runs to be strictly social and those who wanted to enter races and get more competitive.
When Gerry Oxford and Brian Pronger, gay activists at U of T, who had led the running contingent at the 519 meeting. approached us after the 519 meeting, we were ready for something new. A few days later, over Sunday brunch at a College St West bistro, Gerry and Brian approached the Out & Out running group to provide a critical mass for a new running group and to talk about a name for the nascent group.
While we were familiar with the Frontrunners clubs in New York and San Francisco (already more than a decade old, having sprung from a Lavender University project in 1973), not to mention Patricia Neal Warren's novel of the same name, and agreed we would be following a similar model, our Canadian nationalism led us to choose a distinctive name, Running Wilde, and propose a green carnation, as often worn by Oscar Wilde, as our symbol.
The date of the first run is not recorded, but certainly by the end of February 1987, we had commenced Sunday afternoon runs from the University of Toronto Athletic Centre at Harbord and Spadina. Soon thereafter, Tuesday evening runs from the University Settlement House, behind the Art Gallery of Ontario, were added. Locations were predicated on the notion that we needed a starting/finishing point with public access lockers and showers, a notion that we abandoned over the following months.
By the spring of 1988 we had settled on Cawthra Park and the 519 as our departure point and our route through Rosedale to Milkman's Run and the Moore Park ravine had been established. The Sunday afternoon run was shifted to Saturday AM and Tuesday and Thursday evening runs were added although they were initially sparsely attended.
Internationally, the Frontrunners movement was growing rapidly. New York Front Runners invited Running Wilde, attended by clubs from a dozen or more cities in the USA, to participate in the first Frontrunners' invitational in October 1988 where we experienced the gruelling test of running a 10K on the track in Downing Stadium. It's difficult to say which is the most vivid memory of this event: was it Bob Lapossie's workshop on how to dress for cold-weather running, including a reverse strip-tease demonstration of layering, or his spectacular finish to the 5K in which he tripped over a curb, falling face-down on the track about 50 metres from the line, AND recovered to complete the race and retain his finishing place?
Something else that came out of that event, no doubt partly as a result of the extremely enthusiastic welcome the American clubs gave their Canadian guests, was a decision to rename our club "Toronto Frontrunners" (all one word) to strengthen the brand and make us more accessible to visitors from other cities. The new name was announced in the Jan 1989 club newsletter, along with a plan to maximize our profile and membership in advance of Gay Games III scheduled for Vancouver in 1990. Pride Day 1989, we marched under a new banner and wearing the first of many Frontrunners Toronto T-shirts.
Running Wilde's most ambitious project was Runners for Life in 1988. Fashioned after Boston's AIDS walk, From All Walks of Life, we partnered with the AIDS Committee of Toronto to stage an OTFA sanctioned 10K race, beginning and finishing on Church Street. We learned a lot about getting OTFA sanctioning and insurance, dealing with police and sponsors and more and we managed to attract several hundred gay and straight runners. For many of the straight runners, it was a first-ever event in the gay Village. For all of us, it was a first ever public gay athletic event in our Village. No doubt some of the str8 boyz who saw the race as a good to chance to pick-up some medals were surprised by what they saw and by how fast those fairies ran.
ACT determined that Runners for Life consumed too many of its volunteer resources, relative to the number of participants, and so changed the event to an AIDS Walk the following year to increase the fund-raising potential. It was about a decade before a Pride Weekend fund-raising run returned in the form of the Pride and Remembrance Run. Next Saturday, whether running or assisting at the water station, every Frontrunner can remember our club has a proud history.