If ever a man lived up to the definition of a veteran, that man is Brian Morans. He is quite literally a
veteran, having served in the Queen’s Own Rifles, both in Canada and as part of our NATO forces in
Germany from 1952 to 1956; he will be 59 years in March; he is going to retire later this year from his
job as a bus mechanic with the Etobicoke Board of Education; he is an original member of our club,
having joined in 1981 ; he has run countless races, including a dozen or so marathons.
But what kind of man is Brian Morans, anyway? I daresay that only a handful of our members know
him at all well, and most don’t know him very well at all. He is a shy and unassuming man, not vol-
unteering his opinion on things until he is sure of his reception. This is a shame, for one or two sen-
tences from Brian is worth a bushel of empty blather from many others. Brian was born in 1935 in
Dublin, Ireland. His mother was single, and given Irish attitudes in those days to her situation, it’s not
surprising that she went with her son to London, England. During the war she met a Canadian ser-
viceman whom she married and accompanied back to Canada. They settled near Brampton where
young Brian attended and dropped out of school as soon as he could. What followed for the next two
decades was an absolutely astonishing career.
From the time he left school in 1950 to the day he began his job with the Etobicoke Board of Educa-
tion in 1970, he wandered all over Canada and the United States, working at literally dozens of jobs:
he was a lumberjack in Northern Ontario; he was a soldier in Germany; he was a construction worker
on the crew that built the original A.V. Roe plant; he was an oil-rig roughneck in Oklahoma and Wy- oming; he was a ranch worker in Alberta; he sold pots and pans as a travelling salesman to brides-to-
be (he says he wasn’t good at this, and soon gave it up); he worked on an oil project in the Northwest
Territories where the temperature stayed at -60 for days on end. And in between there were dozens
of general labour jobs on construction sites all over North America. In 1962, during a slump in the
construction business, he signed up for retraining with Canada Manpower and apprenticed as a me-
chanic, gaining his licence in 1968, and his current job a couple of years later.
This kind of upbringing and working life can either brutalize and desensitize you, or it can turn you into a philosopher. When he was about 30, he started to form the reading habit which he has main-
tained till today, and as soon as he could afford it, he bought the stereo equipment needed to pursue his other passion - classical music and especially opera. One Sunday after a long run, Byron and I
were getting ready to go and see a matinee at the O’Keefe Centre. Brian was surprised that we were
dressed very casually, having for years assumed that the exclusive opera crowd had a strict dress
code. We told him that his money was as good as anybody else’s, and that live performances had it
all over the Texaco Opera Afternoon on the radio; and so for the last five years he has been a faithful
subscriber to the Canadian Opera Company. One of the things I like best about running with Brian
(aside from the steady pace that he maintains), is the chance to talk about some of our mutual inter-
ests: opera, and ancient history.
Brian had always been physically active, playing both basketball and tennis. Indeed, he was once the
president of the Mimico Tennis Club. At the old YMCA he was a regular basketball player, and it was
there in 1979 that some of his fellow players urged him to do some running to maintain condition. He
was immediately hooked, and started running impressive times right away. That same year he ran his
first serious distance race, Around the Bay, in 233. His best marathon time came in ‘81 when he ran
Toronto in 2:59:50. Soon afterwards he ran his PB for 10 kilometres at 35:56. He feels that the highest-quality race of his career was the Ryerson 5-miler which he ran in 30:15. He has run the Pe-
terborough Half Marathon more times than he can count, and remembers most vividly the January
races of the early eighties when the temperatures were so bitterly cold (much like this January). Brian
has run a number of marathons, averaging around 3:04, but his performances after the PB were nev-
er commensurate with his talent because of recurring back problems.
When you run with Brian you soon forget that you are running with a man who will soon be sixty and
enjoying his retirement (How about a couple of months every winter in Hawaii, where he’s spent his
vacation for the last few years?). When his back is not hurting him he is absolutely relentless, running
a steady and unwavering pace that makes you realize at the end of the run that you have perhaps
worked harder than you intended to that day. When you’ve talked with him and learned about all that
he has done and seen, you are reminded of Tennyson’s Ulysses, the insatiable devourer of ex-
perience:
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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