http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/features/top10/index.html
Here’s another of the Gazette’s outsized-personality columnists – Jack Todd. Courtesy of the Vietnam draft, he’s a “transplanted American” who spent years dragging himself up by his combat-bootstraps to attain the status of Crusty Sportswriter. His pieces are generally simple, but terrifically involving reads. I kept a copy of his “athlete of the century” list-topper piece because his description of meeting Muhammad Ali was as mesmerising to read as Ali was to hear. A now-rare visit to the Gazette site, which went to a pissy subscriber-only format a few years ago, reveals he’s almost finished another Top-10 list, this time of influential Montreal athletes. I haven’t read any of them yet, but knowing Jack as I do, they’re worth a gander.