Tom Longboat, Jimmy Duffy and Percy Molson represented Canada in Olympic competition before serving on the front lines of the First World War. Their wartime experiences are the focus of a Remembrance Day retrospective by CBC’s Jesse Campigotto, drawing in part on material from Veterans Affairs Canada.

The three athletes were among more than 650,000 Canadians and Newfoundlanders who served during the war, according to CBC. Some 66,000 Canadians died and more than 172,000 were wounded.

Longboat, the Indigenous distance runner who won the 1907 Boston Marathon in record time, competed at the 1908 Olympics in London. He volunteered for military service in 1916 and was assigned to the Canadian Expeditionary Force’s 107th Pioneer Battalion, which served at Vimy Ridge.

As a dispatch carrier in France, Private Longboat used his running ability to carry handwritten messages between front-line units. He was wounded twice and was mistakenly reported killed in action. Longboat survived the war, returned to Canada and lived on the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario before his death in 1949.

Duffy was born in Ireland and raised in Scotland before moving to Toronto in 1911, at about age 21. He finished fifth in the marathon for Canada at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics and won the Boston Marathon two years later.

On April 23, 1915, just over a year after that victory, Private Duffy was killed by shrapnel during a nighttime counterattack with the 16th Canadian Infantry Battalion at Kitcheners’ Wood near Ypres, Belgium.

Molson’s sporting career included a Stanley Cup championship with the Montreal Victorias in 1897, track competition at McGill University and the 400 metres at the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis.

He was badly wounded at the Battle of Mount Sorrel near Ypres and received the Military Cross for bravery. After recovering, Captain Molson returned to the front with Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. He was killed by German howitzer fire near Vimy Ridge on July 5, 1917.

Remembrance Day originated as Armistice Day, marking the end of fighting on the Western Front on Nov. 11, 1918. It honours those who died in military service, including more than 120,000 Canadians.

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