The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 23

Tht GAZETTE, Montrtal, July 15, 1972 A pride in tolerance since Robinson, Trawick; but is the image really cut on the race bias? The black dhlefe in Montreal Tim Burke of The Gazette its I stardom with the Dodgers was a revelation. "It was a pleasant surprise," he says today, "to find out that white people could treat you well. Until then, I didn't think it was possible. "What impressed me the most," he added, "was that the people in Montreal treated you as a person, not just an athlete." If there was any subtle prejudice here at that time, it escaped him. "A white couple rented us their apartment 4444 Mentana Street, I still remember it in an all-white neighborhood.

We slept in their beds, used their pots and pans and ate with their knives and forks. Hard to find any subtle prejudice there." Overly sensitive? Herb Trawick played college football and served in the U.S. Army in the southern United States before integration and he feels that sometimes he might be overly sensitive to racial questions. "Segregation is awfully dehumanizing," he says now. "It made the black man feel he was zero.

Then when he enters white society, he's supposed to be a paragon of virtue. It's an awful lot to ask and that's why there are many who turn hostile and also why many black men haven't looked after their families." Trawick thought for a moment, and then added that there have been times when he preferred the South-e 's straight-forward attitude towards blacks to the uncertainty and hypocrisy often found in the Northern U.S. and Canada. "At least you know where you stand with a Southerner. He'll be honest enough to tell me, 'Herb, I don't like you and I don't want to have anything to do with and that's that." The water bottle When Trawick and John Moody, a fullback, joined the Alouettes in 1946, most of the other American imports were Southerners Wally Spencer, Virgil Wagner, Rafe Nabors and Eagle Keys.

"I got along with them all right, but funny things happened sometimes." Trawick remembers. "When the water bottle came around, some of the Southern boys would race to get to it before me." A pause and an ironic smile. "I tried to get there before them. It was just as painful for me to have a drink out of it after them." Virgil and Peahead Wagner, an all-star halfback for several seasons, became perhaps Trawick's closest friend on the Alouettes and the two families socialized regularly off the field. "Virgil was an extremely fine person," Trawick says.

"He was from southern Illinois, which is just about the same as Mississippi. But he thought of everyone as an individual. Color didn't make any difference to him. Our wives still correspond regularly." Trawick also is the last person to subscribe to the notion, once widespread in Montreal, that the late Peahead Walker the legendary Southerner who coached the Als in Jackie Robinson thinks back to the days in April, 1946, when he broko organized baseball's color bar as a member of the Montreal Royals of the International League. "All of us who were involved," he says now, "agree that the experiment never would have worked were it not for the people of Montreal.

Prejudice? Absolutely none." Herb Trawick thinks back to the day a couple of months later when he arrived at Windsor Station from his native Pittsburgh to Join the Alouettes as Canada's first black import football player. He was turned away by the room clerk In the old New Carlton Hotel across the street from the railway terminal. George Dixon thinks back to the time in the early 1960s, when he was Canada's best running back as an Alouutte and was invited to address the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association's annual father-and-son banquet. Dixon accepted initially, but had second thoughts when friends told him the club didn't accept blacks as members. When an MAAA director called to confirm the date, Dixon told him: "1 don't know if I should speak to your organization.

I'm told you wouldn't let me join it." "Well, George, that's not a very sportsmanlike attitude to take," the MAAA man admonished him, adding ominously: "I guess we'll have to talk to Mr. (Ted) Workman (then owner of the Alouettes)." "You talk to anyone you want," Dixon snapped. "There's no way now that I'll speak at that banquet." The MAAA, which represents a vigorous cross-section of the English-speaking and business community of the city, recently inducted the first black member in its 91-year history; the New Carlton Hotel is no more, razed to make way for the Place du Canada and the Chateau Champlain; and the people of Montreal, a quarter-century later, are still well the people of Montreal. Or are they? The encrusted attitude that George Dixon met at the MAAA as much as the flat refusal that greeted Herb Trawick at the New Carlton Hotel underscores the subtle but frustrating-ly real obstacles the black athlete has faced over the years in a city that prides itself on being a citadel of racial tolerance. Interviews with blacks involved in football, baseball, hockey and boxing here Americans and Canadians, professionals and amateurs have revealed near-unanimous agreement that their lives have been restricted by overt social and economic bias.

Says Ralph Goldston, who spent 14 years with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Montreal Alouettes as player, assistant coach and director of player personnel: "From a tolerance point of view, Montreal is to New York what New York is to Mississippi." Then he quickly adds: "But Canada isn't the lovely place that Canadians like to think it is." Says Herb Trawick, who has lived here since he first came to Montreal in 1946 and is one of the most popular athletic figures in the city's history: "There is no question, all things being equal, that I would have been a lot further ahead today if I'd been white." But, in balance, there are fond memories of Montreal, too most of them held by black super-stars who played here briefly on their way to the top. JACKIE'S PRAISE Jackie Robinson, who often has sounded off at what he sees as professional sports' injustices to the black athlete, has nothing but praise for the way he was treated during that season he spent in Montreal before joining the Dodgers. "Maybe it was the way we conducted ourselves," he says now, speaking of himself and his wife, Rachel, "but we never had any problems at all." Montreal, he added, provided a welcome haven where he could let out the enormous pressure suppressed in the face of abuse and humiliation at the hands of rival players and fans in U.S. cities in the International League. "The doctor who looked after me told me during the season that I had to take 10 days off and forget completely about baseball, because I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

But in that wonderful Montreal atmosphere and with the help of my wife Rachel is a psychiatric nurse I was able to return to the lineup in a couple of days. "There was a terrific couple who rented us a place on de Gaspe 23 Better eating Ray Leacock went a different route a black born and raised in the rough Dufferin Square district of Montreal, he played in the U.S. In the International and Eastern Hockey Leagues after a fine career as a defenceman with the Junior Cana-diens in the early 1950s. He had different problems, too. Leacock often had to stay in different hotels from his teammates, and often had to eat in the kitchen.

"My people took good care of me in the kitchen," he laughs. "I ate better than any of the other guys." But prejudice while growing up In Montreal? Leacock, who grew up to be 6'2" and 195 pounds, says: "None. There's no prejudice when you're the toughest guy in the gang." (As a heavyweight Golden Gloves champion, he won 51 fights and lost none.) Legislation needed Gene Gaines, now an assistant coach and defensive back with the Alouettes, grew up in the Watts ghetto of Los Angeles and earned a B.Sc. at UCLA before becoming a defensive back with Montreal and Ottawa. He's been in Canada a dozen years, and was away from Montreal for close to decade before coming back in 1970.

"There was a considerable difference in the atmosphere 10 years later," said Gaines, who had some trouble finding an apartment his first time around here. "I think the reason was Expo 67. There were incidences of (blacks) being denied accommodation and they complained about it. After pressure was put to bear, certain discriminatory practices were stopped." Moses will stay Moses Denson, the only other current black Alouette who has an off-the-field job and is living full-time in Montreal with his wife and infant daughter says he intends to stay "because it's not nearly as tense here as it is back in the States. "Back in D.C.

(Washington, where he used to live and may be again if the persistent trade rumors are correct) you had to bolt your door," he adds. "Up here, there are pressures, but it's still the nicest place to live that I know of." The only place Mack Jones, the Expos' outfielder who become an instant hero with a triple and home run on Montreal's first-ever major-league opening day in April, 1969, left town with a blast at the ball club after they released him last summer. He went back to his native Atlanta, but intends to return here to live. "It's the only place, the only one," says Mack. "I could talk to you for three days about how great I think the city and the people are.

I have a business deal going up there in the broadcasting field and I hope to be back soon." Those comments from the interviews with those eleven black athletes reflect favorably, in general, on Montreal and its people. But George Dixon adds a note of caution, when he reminds that Montreal's black population has increased almost tenfold to more than 40,000 since Jackie Robinson and Herb Trawick arrived here and attitudes have stiffened, to some extent. "Before," says Dixon, "there were so few blacks here the people weren't confronted with the situation. But just wait until they think blacks pose a threat to places like Westmount, Hampstead and the Town of Mount Royal. I don't think Canadians would react much differently than white Americans if the white and black populations were proportionately the same." And, even more disturbing are the criticisms and questions that came from those same interviews, and which will be dealt with in Parts II and III of "The Black Athlete in Montreal." Item: a 1 Goldston blames American-dominated management of Canadian professional football for ignoring the coaching and administrative qualifications of many blacks.

Item: Mack Jones blames the Expos' organization for a dearth of black ballplayers' in the organization which he says is hurting the team. Item: Jackie Robinson's only disappointment with Montreal is that the Expos didn't hire him in 1969. Item: Was Sandy Stephens' career as an Alouette quarterback doomed by the reported resolution of a member of management that "this team is not going to be led by a spear-carrier?" Item: Danny Webb, years later, still resents the fact that his purses, while he was Canadian lightweight champion, were only half those of his beaten opponents. Item: Montreal black Richard Lord, after a fine athletic and academic career at Michigan State, wonders why he had to fill out 122 separate applications before he found a job in his home town. Hem: Why has only one black ever played on a regular basis in the National Hockey League, and then only briefly? athlete and jobs Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color bar here in 1946, went on to star with the Dodgers.

Herb Trawick was Canada's first black import, came to Montreal just months after Robinson. their finest years, the mid-1950s cast a jaundiced eye on blacks. Trawick cherishes a letter Walker WTote to him after he had returned to the U.S. It said in part: "You were one of the few colored boys I ever coached. I was happy that you were the first one." A kiss for Dixon When George Dixon was an Alouette running back, he had a high regard for Warren Rabb, a quarterback from Louisiana who played here briefly and who was an avowed segregationist.

"He would discuss his views with me very intelligently, as intelligently as you can be on an irrational outlook," Dixon recalls, "and I'd mine with him. We had mutual respect for our ideals." Then Dixon laughed: "One day he threw me a pass and I went over for the whining touchdown. He was So delighted, he came running over and kissed me." Just like Georgia Carroll Williams, a black quarterback cut by the Alouettes in 1969 in favor of Sonny Wade, left for the B.C. Lions and eventually retired, to his home in Florida with a good deal of bitterness. "As far as I'm concerned," he told George Dixon, "Montreal is no different than a town in Georgia." Adds Dixon, in explanation: "Williams was better than he showed here.

But as for his feelings? Well, it can be difficult for an athlete to separate an appraisal of his talents from his judgment of the world around him." Donn's dilemma Donn Ctendenon, still booed every time he appears in Jarry Park by Montreal fans who thought he "hot-dogged" it when he was an Expo briefly in 1969, had another kind of trouble here. He says he got so fed up with hearing one of the white players muttering out of the side of his mouth in the clubhouse about "niggers." The strapping Clendenon, later to become the World Series' most valuable player that year with the Mets, threw his tormentor against a wall and demanded: "Why're you always calling us niggers, Mister?" "Because that's the way I was brought up," the other player sputtered. Clendenon let him down and threw up his arms: "How can you do anything to a guy when he tells you that?" he sighed. Monday: The biack i 'i St. George slays a dragon Street," Jackie recalls.

"I wish I could remember their names. They were lovely people." Fons best therapy Robinson says the fans provided the best therapy of all. "Remember in the Little World Series when they gave me such a rough time in Louisville? Well, I was really upset and I couldn't get a hit one for 11 down there, I think it was. "Then we came back to Montreal and every time a Louisville player stuck his head outside the dugout, the crowd booed him unmercifully. They wanted to show that they didn't appreciate the way I was treated in Louisville and you don't know how good that made me feel.

"I went on a tear with the bat after that." The Royals won that series here in Montreal and after the last game, the fans poured onto the field and lifted Robinson and Curt Davis, the winning pitcher, onto their shoulders. A Louisville writer was heard to remark: "That's the first time I ever saw a white crowd chasing a nigger out of love." The feeling for Robinson, incidentally, is still there. When Jackie was introduced to the crowd at Jarry Park 10 days ago he was here as expert commentator on an Expos-Dodgers telecast he received a roaring standing ovation. "Pleasant surprise' For Don Newcombe, from Elizabeth, N.J., coming to Montreal in 1948 to pitch for the Royals on the way to considered during the war and wasn't it wonderful that conditions had improved so much that I could be sitting there in the St. James's Club.

'You must be very he said to me. "I told him, 'I'm very glad to be invited to this dinner, but I couldn't care less about being allowed into the St. James's "That really ruffled his feathers." the road because 'we just get that there are "little things" that can sometimes bother him. "But I don't pay. any attention to them if I can avoid it.

Anyway, not too many people are going to bother me, because I'm pretty big (6'4" and Both Foli and Singleton said that while black players and white players on some teams tend to go their separate ways off the field, it's due less to factionalism than to a community of interests. "But not on this team," Singleton added. "I'm close to a lot of other guys in the gang, too." Any lingering bitterness, he feels, is harbored mostly by older players. "The young guys coming up guys in our age group (young 20s) don't think much about race at all" Foli and Singleton both are delighted to be in Montreal. "We're with a team that is growing in a city 'Young guys don't think much it Jft George Dixon, the former great black Alouette running back, was invited to attend a dinner at the exclusive St.

James's Club. He was seated across from a man who had been, as Dixon recalls, "a general in the army or air force during the war, and he became very pretentious. "He told me how low blacks were same interests. We just get along, that's all." Their personalities provide a striking contrast: Singleton, easygoing and supremely affable in an effortless way; Foli, high-strung and intense, reticent with outsiders, ebullient with people he knows well. Both like movies and music and are devoted hockey fans (of the Rangers).

MOUNT VERNON HOME The sunny Singleton personality had room to develop in Mount Vernon, N.Y., to which the family moved from Harlem while Ken was still a small boy and where, in an integrated and smog'ess atmosphere, he and his younger brother "got plenty of fresh air to develop physically and as human beings," as his father now says. Singleton admits, without rancor, about if (Gazette, Tedd Church) along, that's all' that is growing," Ken said. "Up here we have a chance to become stars, playing every day. That's the only way you'll develop." And the people? "Just wonderful," he adds. "There's not much more you can ask for." HOME FOR WINTER However, neither Foli nor Singleton figures he'll stay in the city in the winter.

"I like to play golf and fish in the winter time, and you can't do that here," says Foli, a Los Angeles native who'll be married when the Expos are in L.A. next week and return there with his bride for the off-season. Singleton, who'll be an usher at the wedding, plans to spend the winter back on his job with the New York City athletic program, living with his parents in Mount Vernon. Tim Foii, left, and Ken Singleton: They're roomies on Ken Singleton, black, and Tim Foli and Mike Jorgensen, white, have been close friends since they met while playing in the Instructional League in Florida a few years ago. While they were New York Mets' farmhands at Tidewater, and later with the big club, Singleton roomed alternately on the road with the other two.

Since, the three came to the Expos in the Rusty Staub trade just before the 1972 season started, Singleton and Foli have roomed together on out-of-town trips, as well as being neighbors in the same apartment building on Guy Street. Despite the fact that a black-white roomie combination still is rare in baseball, neither Singleton- nor Foli gives it much thought. Says Foli: "We've known each other well for a long time, and we have a lot of the i i.