Sam Jacks

Samuel Perry Jacks (April 23, 1915 – May 14, 1975) more commonly known as, "Sam Jacks", was a Canadian soldier in World War II, Canadian inventor, military and civic recreation director, sports coach, creator of the Canadian sport of ringette for girls and the Canadian credited with codifying the first set of rules for floor hockey in 1936, a game which he created. He was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1915 and became a Canadian citizen after his parents immigrated to Canada in 1920. Jacks passed away from cancer on May 14, 1975, roughly only twelve years after he created the sport of ringette. He was 59.

Among his many achievements and honours was his posthumous induction into the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame in 2007. He was also posthumously inducted into the North Bay Sports Hall of Fame on February 27, 1982. In ringette, the sport's highest international trophy for the World Ringette Championships is named in his honour, the Sam Jacks Trophy, which is awarded to the winning team in the senior division of a three-game series between Team Canada and Team Finland called the "Sam Jacks Series". In a similar fashion, Ringette Canada honoured Jacks by naming their "Belle" division championship trophy for the Canadian Ringette Championships in his honour. Today the "Belle" division is known as the Under-19 (U19) division. The Sam Jacks Trophy for the Under-14 AA (U14AA) winners of the Eastern Canadian Ringette Championships is named after him as well, a trophy which was donated by his wife, Agnes Jacks CM.

Jacks was a part of the Greatest Generation, also known as the G.I. Generation and the World War II generation. People born in Jacks's generation are generally defined as people born from 1901 to 1927. They were shaped by the Great Depression and became the primary participants in World War II. Jacks's generation was the one which followed the Lost Generation but preceded the Silent Generation.

Biography

Early life

Toronto, Canada, where Jacks lived in 1920 after his parents immigrated from Glasgow, Scotland

Samuel Perry Jacks was born April 23, 1915 in Glasgow, Scotland less than a year after the outbreak of World War I in July 1914. The war would end in November of 1918. Two years later in 1920 when Jacks was roughly five years old, he and his family moved from Scotland, immigrated to Canada, and settled in the city of Toronto.

Professional career

Food line at the Yonge Street Mission in Toronto, Canada, in the 1930s during the Great Depression

The early 1930s in Canada was marked by the Great Depression. Jacks began his professional career in 1935.

Toronto West End YMCA

Calvin Bricker at the 1912 Olympics

In 1935 at twenty years of age Jacks began his professional career in recreation becoming the Assistant Physical Director at the Toronto West End YMCA (Young Men's Christian Association). The West End YMCA moved to its present West End branch at College Street and Dovercourt Road in 1912, present day Greater Toronto. Jacks would hold this position until 1940, a year after the outbreak of World War II in 1939.

The Toronto West End YMCA produced several successful athletes including George Burleigh (swimmer), Gordon Smallacombe, John Tait (runner), Arthur M. Jackes (high jumper), James O'Brien (athlete), Larry O'Connor (athlete), and Calvin David "Cal" Bricker (athlete).

Floor hockey

In 1936, while in his early twenties and a year after beginning his professional career at the YMCA, he invented and codified the first set of rules for the first organized version of floor hockey. The game was designed for youths to play in a gym and was a variant of hockey which used a straight stick and a felt disk with a hole in the middle. This achievement was later recognized by the Youth Branch of the United Nations. The United Nations itself was established in 1945.

World War II

Brigadier James Hill (right), Commander of the 3rd Parachute Brigade, briefs officers of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, in England, December 6, 1943.

After the outbreak of World War II Jacks enlisted and became a member of the Canadian Armed Forces serving from 1940-1945. During his time with the Canadian military he served with the #1 Motor Transport Volunteer Reserve Depot, 1st Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Chemical Warfare School, and served with the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion in charge of sports for South West England. On September 30, 1945, the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion was officially disbanded after it had returned to Canada and hostilities in Europe had ceased.

Post War life

Agnes Jacks (1924 – 2005)

While stationed in England during the Second World War Jacks met Agnes MacKrell at a dance while he was a recreation director in the army. The two eventually married. Agnes Jacks CM had been working at a munitions factory in England when she and Sam had met. After the war the couple arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, then moved to Toronto, Canada with their first son, Barry. They later had two more sons in Canada, Bruce and Brian. Agnes was a war bride. "War bride" refers to women who married Canadian servicemen who were stationed overseas then immigrated to Canada to join their husbands after the world wars. The term was popularized during the Second World War. After Sam passed away in 1975, Agnes became an important lifelong and committed ambassador for the sport of ringette which Sam had created in 1963. She passed away of heart failure on April 1, 2005, at the North Bay General Hospital. She was 81.

In 1996 she was inducted into the Ringette Canada Hall of Fame as a "Builder" for her commitment and ambassadorship for the sport of ringette. On Saturday, October 26, 2002, she was inducted as a member of the Order of Canada.

Return to West End YMCA

In 1946, Jacks returned to the West End YMCA in Toronto to continue his professional career. Among his numerous duties part of his time was spent working with post-war juvenile "gangs". He also created the Toronto Boy's Club and became its first President.

AAU Junior Olympic Games

In 1947, Jacks became the head coach of the Canadian Floor Hockey Team which competed in the AAU Junior Olympic Games (Amateur Athletic Union) in the USA. The Canadian team finished in third place. Jacks also coached a AAU Junior Olympic Games track and field team in 1947 who won the trophy for third place.

Move to Northern Ontario

A contemporary view of a street in North Bay, Ontario, Canada, where Sam Jacks moved in 1948

In 1948, Jacks was asked to become director of parks and recreation for the city of North Bay, Ontario in Northern Ontario. After moving to the city and accepting the position he then became a member of the Northern Ontario Recreation Directors Association (NORDA). Soon after he became instrumental in developing the first Northern Ontario Playground Hockey Association (NOPHA) which encouraged youth to play ice hockey on outdoor rinks.

In 1961, the Fitness and Amateur Sport Act came into force in Canada whereby the Government of Canada made an official commitment to "encourage, promote and develop fitness and amateur sport in Canada." A few years later, the Canadian government created two new directorates: Recreation Canada, which was tasked with improving the lifestyle of Canadians, and Sport Canada, which was responsible for developing competitive sport.

In 1963 he created the Society of Directors of Municipal Recreation of Ontario (SDMRO) and served as its President for two consecutive terms.

Ringette

By 1963, Jacks had become a member of the Northern Ontario Recreation Directors of Ontario (NORDA), and the President of the Society of Directors of Municipal Recreation of Ontario (SDMRO). That same year, Jacks created a winter team sport for girls which involved ice skating called ringette. Critical to the development of the new sport, Red McCarthy, a member of NORDA, was asked by Sam to experiment with a basic set of rules he had developed and was asked to make adjustments. Most of the initial rules set out by McCarthy are still a part of ringette today.

Today, with the exception of sporting variants, ringette is one among only four ice skating team sports in existence worldwide, with bandy, ice hockey, and rinkball being the other three. However, ringette is the only one of the four winter sports where the best athletes are female rather than male.

Ontario award

In Ontario, Jacks was awarded "The Citation for Outstanding Contribution and Dedication to Recreation", which was one of the highest honours of the Society of Directors of Municipal Recreation of Ontario. This honour was presented to him personally by the Premier of Ontario, John Robarts who served as the 17th premier of Ontario from 1961 to 1971.

Ringette

File:First ringette team in Espanola.jpg

The Espanola High School girls ice hockey team in 1963-64 who played the first ringette game

In 1963, as a member of the Northern Ontario Recreation Directors Association (NORDA), and that same year, having created the Society of Directors of Municipal Recreation of Ontario (SDMRO) and now serving as its first President, Jacks became responsible for his most well known achievement, his invention of the sport of ringette. Jacks had reportedly worked for two years to develop a presentation for the sport. He developed the first rough rules for ringette in the early part of the 1960s. While President of the SDMRO in 1963 he asked for help from Mirl Arthur "Red" McCarthy to further develop them.

The sport of ringette was created to both address and remedy two ongoing problems. The first was the observation and criticism regarding the tendency by those organizing, developing and administering recreation programs to place most of their time, resources, and focus on running sports programs aimed at the male population to the exclusion of the female population. The second was to address additional criticism which almost immediately affected the newly created Society of Directors of Municipal Recreation of Ontario (SDMRO), of which Sam Jacks was President, pointing out the tendency for sports programs to be largely male-oriented. At the same time, it was pointed out by the SDMRO that while programming for girls had been implemented and opportunities for girls existed, there had been a continual lack of success in Ontario in regards to gaining and maintaining participation by girls in winter sports. In Ontario as well as in the rest of North America, only two winter-based team sports programs were available to girls at that time: girls broomball and girls ice hockey. Both organized sports programs for girls already existed and were being administered in Ontario, but neither sport had proven successful and both failed to generate and maintain interest among the female population.

Jacks's idea to remedy the situation was to try and create or discover a new winter team sport just for the girls themselves. The new team sport had to help attract girls who had little to do in winter months, had to be accessible to as many girls as possible (including girls whose families couldn't afford figure skating), and attractive to girls who simply weren't otherwise inclined. It was then that Jacks's introduced his idea for ringette to NORDA and the SDMRO. Initially the team sport was conceptualized as a type of sport that could be played on either a court or in a gymnasium, but Jacks soon decided to make it a team sport which involved ice skating, since girls had never had their own sport of this type.

While Sam and Agnes Jacks didn't have any daughters, and their sons were talented ice hockey players, with two of them eventually winning scholarships at renowned schools, this didn't prevent Sam and Agnes from recognizing the needs and concerns of girls and never deterred Sam from creating a sport just for the girls themselves:

"Our sons were tremendous hockey players, but Sam could see a drastic need for a game for girls on ice on skates; a team sport. That was the basis for his whole vision. He visualized the whole thing for ringette right up to part of the Olympics some day."

— "Ringette marks fruition of a dream", Winnipeg Free Press, Sunday, April 17, 1988

To date, ringette remains the only winter team sport to have been exclusively developed for and around the female physique rather than male as well as being driven by a female player demographic.

Among other events that year:

• America was still embroiled in the Vietnam War
• Beatlemania began
• the satirical Rhino Party was created in Canada and included promises such as turning Saskatchewan into the world's largest parking lot
• Civil rights leader Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and the "March on Washington," took place on August 28, 1963, where King gave his famous "I Have A Dream" speech
• President John F. Kennedy visited West Berlin and delivered his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech
• push-button telephones were introduced
• the population of the world was still only 3.2 billion
• the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, took place in the final months of 1963

Netball

At the time of his death in 1975, Jacks had reportedly been working on another game for girls during his spare time, which he called "Net Ball". It is possible the game was related to or in actual fact the organized sport of netball which had been introduced to Canada in the early 1960s, only 15 years before Jacks passed away. The first time organized Netball games are known to have taken place in Canada dates back to Montréal, Quebec in 1962. Today, Netball in Canada is mainly played in Québec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.

Like ringette, the sport of netball was created exclusively for female players rather than male. However, after Dr. James Naismith created the game of basketball in the late 1800's, netball emerged as a result of a misinterpretation of the new game's rules, then was adapted in 1892 for female students with the aim of maintaining female etiquette. Ringette was created roughly 70 years later and though it too was made for females, it was created under a different set of circumstances.

By the 1960's, the organization of civic, municipal, and community recreational sports programs was a newly emerging field. While Jacks was serving as the new President of the Society of Directors of Municipal Recreation of Ontario (SDMRO) in 1963, it was acknowledged there had been complaints that sports programming tended to be "too male-oriented". However, girls's broomball and girls's ice hockey programs had already been in place but were failing to attract female participants. At the time, regardless of sex, both broomball and ice hockey were the only organized winter team sports available for North Americans to play apart from curling and icestock. Neither of the latter two sports involved competing against an opponent at the same time. Jacks's initial objective was to hopefully discover a new court sport for girls to play during the winter, but his ambition resulted in the creation of an entirely new sport made exclusively for girls instead, which was eventually named, "ringette".

The World Netball Championships (now called the "Netball World Cup") held its first competition 1963, the same year Jacks invented ringette. The Ontario Amateur Netball Association, now known as "Netball Ontario" (NBO), was incorporated as a not-for-profit organization on August 9, 1974. The first national Canadian netball championship was held in 1975, the same year as Jacks's death.

Death

Samuel Perry Jacks passed away from cancer on May 14, 1975, roughly only twelve years after he created ringette. He was 59.

His wife, Agnes (MacKrell) Jacks, passed away of heart failure on April 1, 2005, at the North Bay General Hospital. She was 81.

Honors

• Head coach, (1947) AAU Junior Olympic Floor Hockey Team which competed in the USA and finished third.
• Coach, AAU Junior Olympic Games track and field team (1947) who won the third place trophy.
• Founder of the Society of Directors of Municipal Recreation of Ontario (SDMRO).
• President of the Society of Directors of Municipal Recreation of Ontario (1963 and 1964).
• "The Citation for Outstanding Contribution and Dedication to Recreation", was one of the highest honours of the Society of Directors of Municipal Recreation of Ontario.
• Ontario Achievement Award (1973) for his years of contribution to the field of Fitness and Amateur Sport.
• Induction into the Ontario Ringette Association Hall of Fame (1974) in recognition for creating and developing the sport of Ringette. The organization is now called "Ringette Ontario".
• Induction into the North Bay Hall of Fame, February 27, 1982.
• Ringette Canada Hall of Fame, (1988). He was the organizations first person to be honoured and inducted.
• Inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame (2007).

Gallery

• 
  Sam Jacks Trophy: Eastern Canadian Ringette Championships, U14AA

See also

• Ringette
• National Ringette League
• World Ringette Championships

External links

• Canada Sport's Hall of Fame - Sam Jacks