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Tom switched to English mainly for his education at the small school on the reserve. There wasn’t much education though for Tom, who had to stay home many days to help his mother and to look after his little brother. In the fall when Tom was 12, life threw him another curve, one that he might have seen coming. In 1879, the Canadian federal government had arrived at a scheme for turning heathen Native children into a semblance of Christian boys and girls; they removed them from the reserves and, in the expectation of creating thousands of little Joseph and Josephine Brants, they drilled them in white man’s ways at church-run boarding schools designed specifically for Native children.

Both men seemed accessible and friendly; nothing stuck-up about Tom or Wayne. And, in a satisfying coincidence, both came from the same part of the world — Gretzky from the town of Brantford in Southern Ontario, and Longboat from the gently rolling countryside immediately to the town’s southeast. But it isn’t helpful to pursue the Longboat-Gretzky comparison to its limits because one unbridgeable divide separates the two men: Gretzky is white while Longboat was Native. The gently rolling land where Longboat grew up was an Indian reserve, the Six Nations.

The third runner was Lou Marsh. Coley finished the second leg against Longboat neck and neck, which meant Marsh set off on the final leg even with Longboat. Marsh, a speedy sprinter, opened up a quick and substantial lead. Longboat, now running his fifth mile of the race, began to whittle away at the gap between the two men. ” Marsh may well have been experiencing flashes of triumph, nothing less than a victory over the mighty Longboat. ” Longboat won (and broke the Canadian record for five miles previously held by one of his opponents in the relay, Tom Coley).