The Fastest Doc In Canada

In the early years of the Twentieth Century the townsfolk of Antigonish, Nova Scotia would often see pre-medical student Ronald J. MacDonald nonchalantly running past horse drawn wagons and carriages on the highways surrounding their town. “What a grand doctor he’ll make”, the old folk said. “He’ll just grab up his bag and set off on the run, and be half way there before a horse could be hitched up. He can beat any horse.” (Antigonish Casket, April 24, 1947)

Ronnie J., as he was known to his friends, was perhaps the fastest physician to grace the roads and tracks of our country…and the United States. Born in 1877 at Frasers Grant, Nova Scotia, near the university town of Antigonish, Ronnie got his early running experience chasing cattle in the fields of the family farm. His father, Lauchlin “the Drover” MacDonald, made his living driving cattle and would often travel on schooners to supervise as cattle were transported around the Maritimes. Tragically, young Ronnie’s father died in 1888, when the schooner “Mary Ellen” was lost with all hands on a return trip from Newfoundland. When he was sixteen, Ronnie’s mother, Elizabeth, decided to move the family to Massachusetts. Older brother Alex became a linesman with New England Telephone and Telegraph. Ronald soon joined his brother in the linesman’s trade, but the two diverted themselves in their off hours by running with Father Scully’s gym club.

Ronnie J. showed early promise as a runner, with especial talent for the newly re-discovered “marathon”. The re-establishment of the Olympic Games by Baron deCoubertin in 1896 sparked a revival of the long distance race, inspired by the feat of a Greek runner who brought news of his nation’s stunning victory over the Persians at the town of Marathon in 490 B.C. In 1897 the Nova Scotian won the 7-mile United States Cross Country Championship. In 1898 he set a new world record for the 11-mile cross country race.

Later in 1898 MacDonald entered the newly established 25-mile Boston Marathon and became the first Canadian, and only the second person to win this event with a time of 2:42:00. The race was a bit of an upset for by the fifteen mile mark Macdonald was two and a half miles behind the 8 leading runners. With a burst of energy Ronnie surged ahead and completed the last ten miles in only 56 minutes, leaving the erstwhile leader, New Yorker Hamilton Gray, in his dust. The Boston Globe described the race as “the fastest ever run by a human being”.

Ronnie enrolled in pre-medical studies at Boston College in 1899, but continued to run, and in 1900 once again entered The Boston Marathon. Betting was legal at that time and thousands of dollars changed hands based on the outcome of the race. MacDonald put in quite a credible performance until he was handed a sponge in the latter part of the race, which turned out to be laced with chloroform. Canadian J. Caffery, from Hamilton, Ontario went on to win the race.

Despite being a Canadian citizen, Ronnie J. was chosen to represent the American Olympic Team in 1900. The 25-mile Olympic Marathon was held in Paris on a blistering hot day. MacDonald was comfortably in the lead near the end of the race, having passed the other contenders in the seventeen-man field. To his surprise he found many of the French contestants at the finish line on his arrival, looking surprisingly fresh. It was alleged that nationalistic Frenchmen had ensured their compatriots would take the top four spots in the race by providing free taxi rides.

In 1901 Ronnie competed in the Boston Marathon once again, running neck and neck with Sam Mellor, the winner, until he was forced to stop due to stomach cramps. Later that year, Ronnie moved back to Antigonish, Nova Scotia to continue his pre-medical studies at St. Francis Xavier University.

In addition to embarrassing the carriage owners of the town over the next two years he broke the Canadian three and five mile records, and went on to set a new world record for the indoor mile. Graduating from St. F.X. University in 1907, MacDonald enrolled in Tuft’s Medical School, and upon graduation completed postgraduate work at Harvard.

Dr. MacDonald went on to set up practice in the town of St. George’s and later in Aguathuna, Newfoundland. He ran his last marathon in St. John’s, Newfoundland, beating John Lorden of Ireland. In 1913 Ronnie J. married Ad Pieroway of St. George’s, subsequently raising a brood of 3 sons and two daughters. After 27 years of rural practice on the island, he chose to relocate his practice to Antigonish to provide his children with expanded educational opportunities. His last appearance at a public race was as a starter for the 1942 Highland Games (which he had won in 1901).

Tragically, Ronnie J. suffered a stroke in 1942, after which he was confined to a bed or wheelchair. He died on September 3, 1947, apparently after a seizure, and is now buried in Heatherton, Nova Scotia.

Photo Credit

Ronald John MacDonald – Public Domain

Doc Jocks: Dr. Ronald J. MacDonald is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Woke up this morning, more like came to, long night in the jungles of my memories…How did Dylan know what he knew when he was 21 or 22? “I ain’t sayin you treated me unkind…you sorta wasted my precious time, don’t ya think twice, it’s all right” My precious time…wow and I ain’t no 22 year old neither…gonna run after a meeting, gonna write the day away, gonna remember that some things never change and some things do and with Mr. Dylan once again, it ain’t dark yet, but it’s gettin there. I told her that the string was near to broken. She asked me what that meant. Before my heart broke in too many pieces for me to speak i said goodbye and good luck. Sometimes—Oh hell, sometimes it just be that way and there isn’t a damn thing left to do but gather up the broken strings, tie ‘em in a bundle, roll your collar up, slam your hands deep into your jeans and face into the wind for as long as it takes to remember that what was…was and that if it was a true thing – and I know this one to be just that – it will last forever ‘Cause these things abide as will I when it is time to light out again and look all around. Peace is where you find it, I’m gonna starting lookin’ in to my heart and let the rest take care of itself.

Photo Credits

All Images By Michael Lebowitz – All Rights Reserved

Tarmac Meditations #69: Broke the String is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

‎”I hear America singing…” Walt Whitman. Equally, ” I hear you singin’ in the wires…” Jimmy Webb.
I love the color of the fog this morning, the temperature of the light transforms morning in the valley into a sacred moment, a pause at the end of something. Up here in the land of ancient trees and dreams to last a lifetime we celebrate winter where we find it, in bare branches and surprising blue skies, in pearling fog and quiet, sunlit, wet, electric, mornings after the heavy rains and howling winds.Inside it all, a belief in the good times to come. Got some miles this morning, came home to a sharp right in the wire haiku outside the house. All the best of everything to all of you for 2012-it is time, past time, to let the good times roll.

Tarmac Meditations-New Years Part 2 is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

New Years 2012: shot a race by the midnight riverside, went home to sleep for a few hours, dreamt some dreams, more nightmarish than serene.  Went back to the riverside, shot another race and caught some dreams, came home to rest, and found, sadly, that when some things begin, some things end…t’was ever thus.  Let the days rollout from here, with friendship, hope, dreams, hard work, serenity, accomplishment, failure, love, birth and death all in their proper place, though, as ever, not always on my timetable, and not ever really in my control. Keep the faith, the rest will take of itself. We are fairly begun.

Photo Credit:

©Michael Lebowitz

Tarmac Meditations: Comin’ 2012 is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Where do you find your inspiration?

I often find mine on my runs. On many of those runs I have the advantage of passing what must be one of the most inspiring points one could imagine.

The Terry Fox memorial statue at Mile 0 on the Trans Canada Highway, Victoria BC. It’s a humbling but also encouraging reminder.

Terry Fox, of course, never got to this Mile 0. At age 21, after having one leg amputated due to cancer, he began training and completed a marathon in Prince George, BC.

Then came the run that would define him, define persistence, define cancer fundraising for decades to come. He started at the other Mile 0 of the Trans Canada, some 8,000 km (5,000 miles) east in St. John’s Newfoundland. The Marathon of Hope covered a marathon distance every day from April through September 1.

As inspiring, in a different way, is the story of Betty Fox, Terry’s mother. If he represented bull-headed youthful energy, she was the equally determined force who nurtured his legacy and turned his one-time heroism into a decades long accomplishment.

She might not have wanted it but I often think there should be some Betty Fox statues alongside the many Terry Fox statues across our great northern nation. She ended every speech with, “Never, ever, give up on your dreams.”

She was a mother whose son was taken by cancer but she saw something bigger and more important than her own loss. She saw the opportunity, the hope.

I stopped the other day to breathe in a little of that Fox family courage. I wasn’t attempting anything heroic. It was just another run.

From the statue, I ran up to the lookout on the south edge of Beacon Hill Park, gazed across the Strait of Juan de Fuca toward the Olympic Mountains in Washington State, then headed back down to the waterfront trail.

It was an easy run, running past dog walkers, elderly couples out for a stroll, visitors admiring the vistas.

A run fueled by gratitude.

Photo Credits

Photos By Lorne Daniel – All Rights Reserved

Finding Inspiration Along The Way is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Michael Lebowitz shares the journey that brought him home and the promises he made to himself at the beginning of 2011.

12/31

Under the heading of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” what are your New Year’s resolutions for 2011 for the runners in the crowd, the writers, and the peeps with dreams and schemes and other such that might bring them closer to the light in which they believe?

Post them or keep them to yourself BUT all the best of everything and may this year be a year in which you get closer to to the light of that in which you believe for you and those you love.
Here are mine:

1. turn 65 years old
2.  lose 65 lbs
3.  run a 65 mile run in my 65th year
4.  make a plan, follow the plan consistently, listen to the coaches
5.  get to the start line of every event
6.  keep a consistent journal of the journey: pretraining, training, and running.
7.  write the book, take the pictures
8.  Remember, everyday, to be grateful for the gift of being alive and to express it…
9.  in an act of kindness for which no thank you is needed.
10.  take a step, take another step, breathe, repeat.12/31-part 2

comin’ 2011
eyes open, not sleepin’, listening to the wind, to the beating of my heart:

Came home to America nearly 10 years ago. When it got hard to stay clean where I was, I hunkered down and weathered the storms. I had a lot of help from my friends. My journey was only half begun, despite whatever the chronological clock may say. Fixin’ to begin again, I put in my time, paid the price of my waiting, finally moved back to this place of big weather and ancient trees. If you don’t start the race, you don’t run it; let your reach, your dreams you might say, exceed your grasp “…else what is a heaven for?” said the poet. Take as it comes, do the best with what you’ve got, breath in and out, repeat. Believe in love and kindness, stay steady and keep on keepin’ on …and so it went until I opened my eyes on a new morning in a new year. Time to light out and look all around.

Photo Credit

“Genesis…A New Day.”  Flickr Creative Commons.  ©All rights reserved by ~ SaxMan ~

Tarmac Meditations #68 is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

A Joni Mitchell classic reminds Michael Lebowitz that running doesn’t need to be about running away.

“I get the urge for goin’/but I never seem to go” I heard it first from Tom Rush, but Joni Mitchell wrote it. Came from a prairie town where icy winds brought deep snow until late spring. The geese rose up and went south in “chevron flight” because they had the “wings to go.”  Trapped inside, the town hunkered down. Rode it out. Some days, here on the winter flight path in the Northwest where I live, the chevron flights pass overhead, honkin’ and “a racin’ on before the snow”… and I get an urge for going, but at very long last, I have no need to go.  

 Photo Credit

©  Michael Lebowitz, Long Run Photography

Those of you with attention to detail may have noticed that Tarmac Meditations #66 and #67 were printed out of order.  Life as A Human wishes to apologize to both Michael Lebowitz and his fans for this error.  Michael’s editor promises to get a bit more sleep and add one more run to her week to keep her brain sharp in order to avoid future errors. 

Tarmac Meditations #66: Urge for Goin’ is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

At 1:30 a.m., leaving the hospital ER on crutches after having x-rays, it is pretty clear that I won’t be on the start line for the half marathon at 7:30 a.m., as planned.

Months of great, problem-free training runs. Great weather. Friends and relatives and about 11,000 fellow runners in town to enjoy the event. I will be at home, foot up, on ice.

This is not the sort of injury you see written up in running magazines. It has none of the glory of war stories that we runners tell one another while sweating through those 30 km training runs with a buddy.

Most runners would keep quiet about this one. You see, I sprained my ankle. At a pre-race dinner. And, no, not on a bad curb or after slipping on a wet floor. No, I sprained my ankle while sitting at the dinner table, visiting with friends and family.

When I sit, I often tuck the toes of my left foot behind the right heel. Never try this at home, folks. Near the end of the dinner, I just shifted in my chair. Perhaps I twisted my torso this way or that to speak to someone, I honestly don’t know – and felt a crunch in that twisted left ankle. By meal’s end, I could barely hobble to the exit.

It’s a foolish story, one that feels even more foolish when sitting in the ER, my rapidly swelling ankle with its sharp protrusion still no match for the afflictions of others.

Hours before I had been visualizing success, if not triumph. I could see the impressive rising graph of my training distances, had thoroughly scouted the course, could imagine crossing the finish and looking down at my wrist to see a good minute cut off my personal best.

My faster brother was even, generously, saying that this might be my year to catch him. Not likely, I thought, but I was gung-ho to give the 21.1 km my best shot.

Running is an important part of my life – it’s my exercise and my escape. And this autumn race had been a goal all summer.

So important. Yet not. Sitting at the hospital, I felt small and insignificant – in a good way.

Thousands of people would run the next morning, each of them fleshing out their own important story line. Hundreds of volunteers would feel the satisfaction of an efficient set-up and take-down.

Here at Emergency, a kind man in the waiting room brought an extra chair so I could raise my foot, then talked about the anguish of taking verbal abuse from his wife of many years who he was trying to get admitted because she could no longer care for herself. Gut-wrenching, life changing stuff.

Across the room, two nurses were struggling with a man so weak that he couldn’t be assisted onto the stretcher they had brought for him. People were being sent for angiograms.

My running plans were on ice but in no one’s grand scheme of things did that matter. Mine was, as they say, a first world problem – and a small first world problem. The experience was a rather clear lesson in not living for expected outcomes but living with what is.

In the morning, I pulled up streaming video of the marathon finish line courtesy of a local news channel. Records were set. My brother finished top 10 in his age category and, no, I wouldn’t have touched that time. My sister-in-law carved a large chunk off her last half marathon time.

As in most races, Kenyans rocked the podium. I watched it all with delight.

This is life, I thought. Life goes on. This is good.

Photo Credits

Photos By Michael Lebowitz – All Rights Reserved

Life Beyond The Race is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Michael Lebowitz ponders the early morning rain, hearing what matters and listening to the sound of thunder.

12/27
“Woke last night to the sound of thunder…” was on the iPod this morning. The rain and fog lay heavy in the valley and my running came slow. Despite the wrong turns and the mis-steps on the way to here, I get to run before daylight in the early morning rain. And yeah, I am still – believe it or not – workin’ on my night moves, only now they have something more to do with love and a sense of kindness. Go figure.

12/30
Went to get a hearing test this morning…apparently I have suffered no appreciable loss of hearing since the days when my mother and then my ex wife used to tell me that they were speaking clearly enough for anyone who was actually listening to hear what was being said. And that my friends was the good news and the bad news. When the tech told me I was very visual, I told her, Yeah, I hear ya.

Photo Credit

“Drive under Rain and Fog.”  All rights reserved by Yann Charles

Tarmac Meditiations #67: The Sound of Thunder is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN

Pull on the shorts, the t-shirt and the runners. Head out the door. Put one foot in front of the other. Again and again.

At its core, running has an attractive simplicity to it. If only writing were so simple.

There is a school of thought that writing is – or can be – that simple. The idea is that writing is a process, a practice, a method for getting at clear thought. Not a way of communicating thoughts that are already clear.

I like to call myself a runner and I like to call myself a writer. Judging from the blogs and social media profiles out there, I’m far from alone. Many writers run, it seems. But these days I’m finding it easier to keep up a consistent running practice than to sit myself down at the writing desk.

The parallels between writing and running are remarkable. A runner may have some basic ability but the growth, the improvement, comes about almost entirely as a result of getting out there and training. Start with short runs, gradually extend them, throw in some hills and speedwork and results will start to accumulate.

Writing skills grow in a similar way. There’s no getting around the need to simply write. Get words down on paper, then some more words, then some more. Over time, you start to feel those words flowing in more interesting combinations, you begin to weave more intricate patterns with them.

Writing a book is not unlike running a marathon. It would be foolhardy to think one could just set out one day and do it without any practice, without putting in the hours, days, weeks, months or years of training. When you’re starting out, it doesn’t help a lot to obsess over the long struggles ahead. Just get the pen (or the fingers on the keyboard) moving. Settle in. The practice makes you better.

The problem with writers (okay, ONE of the problems with writers) is that we also have built in critics – our internal editors. “That paragraph is flat and lifeless,” we tell ourselves even as the words are tumbling out.

Rarely do I fall into the same trap on a run – psyching myself into the belief that I’m not worthy – not fast enough, too old, too tired today. The reality is, I’m a recreational runner, not an Olympic competitor, and that’s okay. Running is good, healthy, fun.

Can I find the same perspective in writing?

Well, I’m practicing. By writing this.

One Step At A Time: Running And Writing is a post from: LIFE AS A HUMAN