Another Game of Zeaton Ball

One morning in 1967 I found myself in the company of eleven other

Mounted Policemen making our way through the backstreets of downtown

Toronto on our way to the American Embassy on University Avenue. We

were mounted on the quietest, most experienced horses that the force had to

offer. I had been assigned Buccaneer, the best of them all. Before we set

out that morning we were informed that we were going on a crowd control

mission at an anti-war demonstration in front of the Embassy. “We have to

be prepared for anything,“ the Sergeant said, reminding us of some the

problems our American counterparts were having at similar demonstrations

in New York and other major centres. We had seen the training films and

read the reports of police horses being attacked by radical demonstrators.

Some of them had used straight razors taped to the ends of hockey sticks to

slash the horses and their riders and there were instances where thousands of

ball bearings were hurled onto the pavement causing the horses to lose their

footing and crash to the ground. The injuries to animals and the men were

horrendous.

The thought of something similar happening here haunted me as we

rode along but I comforted myself with the thought that this was Canada;

people didn’t behave that way. At least I hoped they didn’t.

When we arrived at a little side street close to the Embassy we

dismounted and checked our equipment. We had a minimal amount of tack

on the horses, no fancy breastplates or lanyards, nothing for troublemakers

to get hold of should things get out of hand. We had just tightened the

horses’ girths and shortened their curb chains when the order came to mount

up.

Something was developing. Hordes of chanting, placard carrying

protesters were pouring down University Ave. filling the sidewalk and

spilling over onto the street in front of the Embassy. We rode up closer to

the scene and sat two abreast watching. The fifty or so policemen on foot

seemed to have things under control and were not meeting with much

resistance as they gently ushered people out of the roadway.

Buccaneer and I were situated closest to curb and he stood quietly as

protesters brushed by us on their way to join the protest. Over the chanting

and the shouts, I heard someone close by call my name. I looked down and

pressed in close to me, almost touching my riding boot was an old classmate

of mine, Richard Ilomacky. “Hey,” I said, “What’s happening, what are you

doing here?” Silly question since he was carrying a sign with some pretty

strong anti-war sentiments. It was too noisy for conversation so I gave him

the old ‘catch you later’ sign and he walked on, disappearing into the crowd.

I knew him fairly well. We both had attended a tough inner city high

school, Central Tech., and had taken P.T. classes together.

Our gym teacher was a tough ex policeman who had been selected by

the Board of Education more for his brawn than his brains. He thought that

most conventional sports were too tame so he invented his own game and

named it after himself.

The rules for Zeaton Ball were very simple: the class, after dividing

itself into two teams, faced each other from opposite ends of the gym. Mr.

Zeaton would then roll a basketball into centre court and at the sound of his

whistle, the teams would charge at each other. The object of the game was

to get the ball, by any means possible, down to your opponent’s end of the

gym and score a basket. No dribbling, penalty shots or off sides were

required and the more tripping, kicking, and punching that went on the better

he liked it. Quite often he would simply drift off and leave the class to its

own devices. His one and only rule was that when the game was over, it was

over and heaven help anyone who continued to fight or even appeared to be

holding a grudge afterwards. Ilomacky and I had locked horns in these

contests many times before the Principal caught wind of what was going on

and stopped them.

I was standing in my stirrups trying to see where my old friend had

gone when the whole gathering seemed to turn as one from facing the

Embassy and focus their attention on several buses with American license

plates that were pulling up on the opposite side of the street.

The American Legion was making an unexpected visit. Hundreds of

Legionnaires poured out of the buses and took up a position opposite the

anti-war group. There was a great deal of shouting and placard rattling back

and forth but things for a time looked like they might remain calm, cool and

Canadian. Then somebody threw something and shortly the air above the

street was full of missiles: hundreds of rocks, fruit and pop cans landing and

being returned. Then the two factions began to converge and we knew that

all hell was about to break out.

The newspapers the next day claimed that somebody had yelled

charge. I didn’t hear it but charge we did, attempting to put our horses

between the two groups. As we forced our way up the centre line of

University Ave., I encountered Ilomacky again. He had just smashed his

placard over the head of a Legionnaire and as I approached him, he thrust

the sharp broken end of the stick at me hitting me in the chest. I reached out

to grab him, almost losing my seat in the saddle but he slipped from my

grasp and got away. I wanted to chase him but I knew that the Sergeant had

other plans for me. By this time we had formed a solid line of nose to tail

horses between the worst combatants of the two groups. The Sergeant

shouted the command for a Side Passage and moving perfectly sideways,

crossing their legs as they went, the horses swept the angry crowd from

roadway and back to their own sides of the street.

Pockets of hand to hand fighting were still breaking out on both sides

of the street but about one hundred foot patrol policemen were now on the

scene and the paddy wagons had begun to arrive. Maloney’s wagon was

parked close to me and I was watching him as he loaded some of the more

violent protesters that had been arrested.

That’s when I saw a struggling Ilomacky being hustled by three

constables over to the back of the wagon. They passed him off to Maloney

who held him easily with one of his big hands. He was about to fling him

into the vehicle when I caught his eye. Not sure of why I was doing it, I

shook my head and indicated that I wanted him to let him go. With a ‘who

cares?’ look on his face, Maloney spun my friend around and planted a size

fourteen boot in his arse that sent him reeling into the crowd. Before he

totally disappeared Ilomacky looked back at me with a quizzical look on his

face. It was as if he was saying, ‘whose side are you on?’ To tell the truth I

wasn’t sure myself. If he could have heard me I would have said, “Just think

of it as another game of Zeaton Ball.”