Skip to main content
obituary
Open this photo in gallery:

Multi-sport athlete Bill Graham, a Grey Cup-winning football player and world champion hockey player.Courtesy of the Family

On Nov. 30, 1957, football player Billy Graham celebrated a Grey Cup victory by drinking champagne from a derby hat. Sixteen months later, Mr. Graham received a gold medal as a world hockey champion with the Belleville (Ont.) McFarland’s.

His rare double championships highlighted a sporting career that saw him enjoy success on the ice as an amateur and on the gridiron as a professional. After retiring from contact sports, Mr. Graham became a noted carriage racer and horse breeder.

Mr. Graham, who has died at 84, was a squat, stocky athlete at 5-foot-7 and 170-pounds. He was not a flashy performer at either sport, instead remembered for a do-or-die attitude and a determination to win.

“Tenacious,” said Lionel Botly, 85, of Belleville, a defenceman on the world championship team who also played junior hockey with Mr. Graham. “Not exceedingly fast. He made good plays. And he sure wanted to win every game.”

A right winger, Mr. Graham was added to the Belleville roster as reinforcement before the world championship tournament held in Czechoslovakia in March, 1959. He did not play in the tournament, but saw action in a gruelling series of exhibition games played before and after the international showdown.

One of his more memorable goals was scored against the Norwegian national team in a 5-2 victory during an exhibition played in Oslo. The game was seen by 6,000 spectators, among them King Olav and Crown Prince Harald, now Harald V, today’s reigning monarch.

William Douglas Lionel Graham was born on Nov. 15, 1935, in Hamilton to the former Alma Oblender and Douglas Graham, a travelling salesman and commercial representative who spent a season as a spare outside linebacker for football’s Hamilton Tigers in 1926. His mother later opened the successful Alma-Lou Flower Shop in downtown Hamilton.

Billy Graham attended St. Andrew’s College in Aurora, Ont., a private boys’ preparatory boarding school on a 45-hectare campus with Georgian-style buildings. He excelled at sports, including cricket, and had a long association with the school, including the establishment of a bursary in his name. He later attended Hillfield School (now Hillfield Strathallan College), in Hamilton.

At 17, he attended a tryout camp for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, seeking to learn more about football, only to surprise himself by being invited to play for the professional team. He dressed for four games for the Big Four (Interprovincial Rugby Football Union) team in 1953. The Ticats went on to win the Grey Cup, although Mr. Graham did not play in the final game.

Open this photo in gallery:

Hamilton Tiger-Cat Football Club team photo from 1957. Bill Graham is in front row, third from left.Courtesy of the Family

He spent two seasons as a halfback for the Kitchener-Waterloo Dutchmen, a senior team that won the Ontario Rugby Football Union title in both those seasons, with Mr. Graham twice leading the league in scoring. In 1955, Mr. Graham scored 71 points in 12 games with seven touchdowns (worth five points), 35 converts and a rouge. The following year, with touchdowns worth six points, he established an all-time senior scoring record, with 157 points in 11 games – 19 touchdowns, three field goals, 32 converts and two rouges. He won the league’s inaugural Dow Award and $200 as the top Canadian player.

He rejoined the Tiger-Cats for the 1957 season as a halfback, punter and placekicker. In the 1957 Grey Cup game, the last to be played at Toronto’s Varsity Stadium and remembered for a fan tripping Hamilton’s Ray (Bibbles) Bawel to prevent a touchdown, Mr. Graham took part in two key plays: a short kickoff after Hamilton’s first touchdown which his team recovered, and a diving, last-chance, ankle-clutching tackle to prevent Winnipeg’s Leo Lewis from scoring.

After the game, which Hamilton won by 32-7, a giddy Mr. Graham grabbed team manager Len Back’s derby and ordered a teammate holding a bottle of champagne to “pour it in his hat.” Mr. Graham joined quarterback Bernie Faloney and tackle P.W. Underwood in parading coach Jim Trimble on their shoulders.

Mr. Graham also played for Hamilton in losing efforts against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the Grey Cup games of 1958 and 1959. He retired from football after the 1960 season.

Open this photo in gallery:

Mr. Graham retired from football after the 1960 season.Courtesy of the Family

His amateur hockey career began at the age of 16 in the International Amateur Hockey League with the Chatham (Ont.) Maroons. He was dropped after two games and immediately picked up by league rivals the Detroit Hettche. A defenceman at first, he moved to forward with the junior Guelph Biltmore Mad Hatters. He played four seasons of senior hockey with a Kitchener-Waterloo hockey team also named the Dutchmen. The McFarland’s picked him up for the world championship tour because of his superb play against them in the 1958 Allan Cup playoffs.

“He was strong on his skates,” remembered Pete Conacher, 87, another late addition to the McFarland’s. “Stayed on his wing. Did his job. A better checker than a goal scorer.”

Mr. Graham was a competitive carriage driver and a past president of the Canadian Driving Society. From a farm on the Bruce Peninsula, he was a noted breeder of the hardy, muscular Canadian, which traces its lineage to a shipment from the Royal Stables of Louis XIV to New France in 1665.

“I’m a die-hard Canadian,” he once told the Owen Sound Sun Times newspaper.

Mr. Graham, who died of cancer on Jan. 2, leaves five adult daughters and four grandchildren. He was predeceased by a daughter and by the former Patricia Decker, his wife of 59 years, who died on April 27, 2019.

A popular guy among his teammates, Mr. Graham won their gratitude for his audacious behaviour aboard the liner Queen Elizabeth on the journey home from the hockey tournament in Europe. The players had barely settled into spartan, tourist-class bunks before a cocky Mr. Graham slipped into one of the forbidden first-class dining rooms, where he let it be known the world champion players were aboard.

Soon, the entire team was invited up to enjoy the plush theatre, lavish dining rooms and luxurious swimming pool.

Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe