Oshawa’s Fab Four

It is an unusual trio – an automotive pioneer, a hockey player and a horse – that makes up the Motor City’s Holy Trinity.

Col. Sam McLaughlin, Bobby Orr and Northern Dancer – icons all – have helped cement Oshawa’s place on the national landscape and created a benchmark of excellence for others to try and follow.

I suggest it’s time we add another member to the sacred list: a tiny, perfect academic administrator who, by sheer force of will, changed the course of Oshawa’s future by bringing a university to the city.

I’m not saying Gary Polonsky is going to rival the beloved Colonel Sam at the top of the pantheon, but his contributions to the city are finally allowing us to wean ourselves away from our dependence on Sam’s gift to Oshawa: General Motors. And with the automotive giant slowly but surely divesting itself of its commitment to Oshawa one job-for-life at a time, it’s not a moment too soon.

There’s no question Robert Samuel McLaughlin deserves his place at the top. If not for Col. Sam, we might all be living in Whitby today, so we should thank him for that, at least. Just kidding, Whitby.

It was Sam who moved the family carriage making business from rural Tyrone to Oshawa, and it was Sam who started making cars for the masses – McLaughlin Buicks, to be exact – that eventually led to the formation of General Motors.

Col. Sam became the founding chief of General Motors of Canada and one of the original investors of the Detroit-based parent company, which has been for most of its existence the biggest car maker in the world. Sam’s contributions to business in the 20^th century has been impressive, to say the least.

His contributions to Oshawa have been off the charts. McLaughlin lived to the ripe old age of 101 and his home – Parkwood Estate – is the city’s most popular tourist attraction and a prime location for movie shoots.

He also dabbled in horse racing and his silks graced a couple of King’s Plates. But his best gift to the Canadian horse racing industry came when he sold some land in north Oshawa to E.P. Taylor, leading to the establishment of Windfields Farms and the birth in 1961 of Northern Dancer, the greatest horse in Canadian history.

The Dancer captured the 1964 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, captivating North American racing fans as he tried to become the first horse since Citation in 1948 to win the U.S. Triple Crown.

His third place finish in the Belmont ended that dream, but he returned to Canada in style by winning the Queen’s Plate by seven and a half lengths before an injury ended his racing career. He was named North America's champion three-year-old colt of 1964, and, naturally, Canadian Horse of the Year.

But if racing fans thought Northern Dancer peaked on the track in 1964, they had no idea the legendary status the horse would achieve in the equine equivalent of the bedroom in the years to follow.

Northern Dancer may have been small in stature, but, well, you know what I mean.

As a stud, Northern Dancer had no peer. His progeny won 147 stakes races and earned more money than any other sire in thoroughbred history, and his influence spread to Europe, Japan and Australia as well as North America.

The demands on his services were so great that he had to be moved from Oshawa in 1969 to finish out his breeding career in Maryland – to be closer to his admirers – and he was the first sire to command a $1 million stud fee, a price that was unheard of at the time and still unmatched today.

Retired from the breeding stall in 1987 at the ripe old age of 26 – that’s Hugh Hefner age for horses – Northern Dancer died three years later and was returned to Oshawa for burial on the Windfields estate.

Just as Northern Dancer was making his name on the race track in 1964, Bobby Orr – the greatest defenceman in NHL history and, some would say, the best player EVER, was creating his own legend in Oshawa with the Generals.

The Boston Bruins, which owned the Generals at the time, had to buy the entire Parry Sound minor hockey organization just to ensure they could get their hands on Orr, and the teenage sensation lived up to his end of the bargain in Oshawa, leading the Gens to a Memorial Cup appearance – their first since the war years – in 1966.

As a pro, Orr re-wrote the record books, becoming the first d-man to win a scoring title (he won two) and revolutionizing the position.

Orr won three consecutive Hart Trophies as the league’s best player, won two Stanley Cups (earning playoff MVP honours both times) and reeled off eight consecutive Norris Trophies as the best defender in hockey.

The photo of Orr flying through the air after he scored the Cup-winning goal in overtime in 1970 is acknowledged as the most famous in hockey history.

Bad knees ended Orr’s career prematurely, but even with his joints held together with duct tape and crazy glue he managed to shine on the international stage. In his only Team Canada appearance in 1976 (he missed the ’72 series to injury) Orr was named the most valuable player of the tournament.

Forced to retire in 1979, Orr was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the age of 31, the youngest to be enshrined.

Gary Polonsky’s accomplishments in Oshawa since he arrived to take the President’s post at Durham College were considerably lower key than McLaughlin, Orr and Northern Dancer, but no less important, especially as the city prepares for an uncertain future.

When he got here in 1988 he was aware that Oshawa was the largest city in Ontario without a university. He also knew that the province hadn’t created a new degree-granting institution since Brock University set up class in St. Catharines in 1964.

No worries, says Gary.

It took a few years of schmoozing, cajoling and arm-twisting, but the dream became a reality when the University of Ontario Institute of Technology – yah, it’s a mouthful, but they were going for a MIT theme – accepted students for the first time in the fall of 2003.

The school has revitalized Oshawa and Durham Region and has helped change the Motor City from a blue collar town to a multi-cultural city of many collars. And when the school started spreading its footprint into Oshawa’s inner core, the downtown was given the boost it desperately needed.

Polonsky, who now chairs the Canada Science and Technology Museum Board of Trustees, was always quick to share credit for his accomplishments with others – notably his staff and the students of Durham College/UOIT – but we know better.

When he retired in 2006, having served as top man for both post-secondary institutions for four years, they had to find two people to replace him. ‘Nuff said.