Blue Plaque program pays tribute to Stratford trailblazer

Homeowners Kim Foster and Kevin Gormley didn’t know much about Charley Lightfoot before they got a call out of the blue that their 94 Cobourg St. home was also the home of the very prominent Stratfordite.

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“We got called one day,” said Foster, who has owned the building with Gormley since 2018, “and we were going, ‘Oh this is fantastic!’ . . . It was a surprise, but a lovely surprise.”

Foster and Gormley discovered, like many other residents, that Lightfoot was an esteemed resident who carries the distinction of being one of the first Black professional hockey players in the nation.

Lightfoot is one of the past residents honoured by the City of Stratford’s Blue Plaque program, a recognition bestowed by the city’s heritage committee to link notable figures from the city’s past to the buildings where they lived and worked.

Although born in West Flamborough in 1880, it was here in Stratford, his father George’s native city, that Lightfoot would spend most of his life.

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While living with his parents, Lightfoot resided at the Cobourg Street home, where he also first began to play hockey.

In 1900, Lightfoot played on the Stratford team that won the OHA Junior Championship and, the following year, played on the intermediate team that won the OHA Championship, scoring the winning goal against the Toronto Simcoes in the semifinals.

In 1906, Lightfoot made it into professional hockey, playing for the Manitoba Professional Hockey League with the Portage la Prairie Cities team.

“There wasn’t really an NHL yet at that point,” said Brian Johnson, chair of the heritage committee. He later clarified that records seem to be a “little shaky” the further back one researches.

“They don’t have any records of any other Black players in the Professional Hockey Association around that time,” he said.

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In a 1906 edition of the Ottawa Journal, Lightfoot was quoted as enjoying “the distinction of being the only coloured player in Canadian senior hockey.”

Around the same time he played hockey professionally, his family lived in a residence at 126 Water St., a dwelling that has since been demolished.

After playing for a number of teams across Canada, from Thunder Bay to Halifax, Lightfoot went on to work as a welder at the Grand Trunk Railway and Canadian National Railway shops in Stratford while continuing to coach hockey teams and staff in the area.

Lightfoot continued athletics throughout his life, playing hockey, baseball, cricket, lacrosse and soccer-football, even when he was around 70 years old.

Lightfoot died in 1968 and was buried in Avondale Cemetery. In 1975, two hockey sticks used by Lightfoot were donated to the Stratford Perth Museum.

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In 2016, one of those sticks made it to the big leagues, being donated to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.

The city’s heritage committee has been running the Blue Plaque program for a number of years, though it was interrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, Johnson said the group is trying to get back to work.

This year, the committee is unveiling two plaques. Lightfoot was the first to be revealed while Jenny Trout, the first licensed female physician in Canada, will be honoured later this summer.

To learn more about Lightfoot, the heritage committee produced a video on the city’s YouTube page, narrated by CJCS host Jamie Cottle, which can be found at www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7yqpVZcQG0.

Connor Luczka is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter with the Stratford Times. The Local Journalism Initiative Reporter is funded by the Government of Canada.

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