A local journalist is telling the story of Chatham-Kent athletes from the perspective of race, identity, and societal change.
Ian Kennedy, founder of the Chatham-Kent Sports Network, recently signed a book deal inspired by stories he’d written for the online site. With no live sports to cover after the pandemic broke out, Kennedy had more time to dig into the region’s sports history.
“Immediately started uncovering some incredible stories from the Black and Indigenous communities, as well as people from Japanese descent in the area, and they were stories I’d never heard,” Kennedy says. “I just started putting together an article series for CKSN, but it quickly ballooned into about 50,000 words.”
Some local athletes from different cultural backgrounds are fairly well known in the community, but there are so many more stories to tell.
“There’s so much history here, not just people like Fergie Jenkins or Bob Izumi, who will definitely both be in the book, but of course we know now about the Chatham All Stars baseball team that was all Black in 1934, and so many other stories.”
Kennedy takes a hard look at issues like so-called Sundown Towns, which prohibited minorities from being out in public after dark.
He tells the story of Elmer Roland “Rollie” Miles, who played in the CFL for 11 years, and spoke out against Sundown rules while attending an event in Wallaceburg.
“It’s a fascinating story of one black man, standing in front of all the service club members and councillors and the mayor of Wallaceburg and questioning them, and seeing how that’s changed the path of Wallaceburg forever.”
Kennedy says by recognizing oppression and racism in the past and identifying issues that still exist, perhaps the community as a whole can find a way forward.
“There’s always been forms of oppression, there’s always been cultural issues that have kept BIPOC people out of sports or on the sidelines of sports, and that’s no different in Chatham-Kent. That’s a big theme in this book, our Canadian identity and who we say we are versus who we actually are.”
The as-yet untitled book is set to be published by BC-based Tidewater Press in the fall of 2022.
