Kingston’s jack of all trades Jack Lynch “could play,” as all who saw him said. Here is a photo of Lynch, the Smarts Braves lead-off hitter. Photo Bill: Baird, Kingston Whig-Standard

March 30, 2025

By Pat Kennedy

Kingston Whig-Standard

Over the years, this aging greybeard has covered, chronicled, and witnessed, first-hand, more than a few fine multi-sport athletes. Some are enshrined in the Kingston and District Sports Hall of Fame. Most are not.

Yet they showcased rare versatility and far-ranging skills in an array of sports and pastimes. In the early 1970s, two lads spring to mind, Jim Scullion and Fernando (Bananas) DeSousa. “Scully” was a junior ball teammate of mine who became a pal. “Fern” was a couple of years younger, but we’d heard about the pint-sized Portuguese teenager who was turning heads in several sports.

Scully stood 5-foot-6, weighed maybe a 140 pounds and had the hand-eye coordination of a circus juggler. He starred in all-star baseball and hockey, including a couple of seasons of top-flight Jr. B on the Bob Senior’s Kingston Frontenacs. The Scutter could tame you at virtually any racket sport. He even switched-hit in golf.

A generation earlier, there was Jack Lynch. In a hall of fame of local unsung natural athletes, Jack Lynch is a first-ballot shoo-in.

“Jack who?” some of you whippersnappers age 60 and under might mutter beneath raised eyebrows. That’s understandable, because Jack played before your time. But geezers who played with or against the tungsten-tough athlete attest to his ability. Lynch, who’s “still on this side of the grass,” spearheaded teams in hockey, football, baseball and the latter’s spin-off sport, fastball.

“Jack Lynch was a ‘terrific all-round athlete,” said Tom Carty, whose own sporting exploits paved his way into the local Hall of Fame. The pair were longtime teammates on title-winning Smart’s Braves teams in the old blue-chip Kingston Amateur Softball Association (KASA). “I honestly can’t name a sport that Jack wasn’t really, REALLY good at.”

Two-way football star Jack Lynch at Regiopolis College, circa 1955. Photo: Courtesy of Peter Radley.

Indeed the hardest part in sizing up Lynch is picking the pastime at which he excelled best. It may well have been the sport he played the least, football - which for him and virtually everyone else back then ended after high school.

Retired lawyer Peter Radley teamed with Lynch on crackerjack Regiopolis College football teams of the mid-1950s.

“Jack was an exciting, great runner ... very fast,” Radley says of his speedy two-way star teammate. “He wasn’t big, but he was tough as nails.”

Lynch, the eldest of four children, was born in 1938 in the village of Brittania, which was then the last streetcar stop on the old Ottawa Electric Railway Company.

He learned to skate on a rink built by his father near the family home. During the warm months, his dad, at young Jack’s request, spent hours trying to throw football passes past his son.

“It got to where I could outrun the passes and haul ‘em in,” recalls Jack. “I tired my dad’s arm out, but that’s how I built up my speed.”

“As a kid he ran everywhere he went,” recalls Jack’s widowed sister Maureen, at 85 the second eldest. “Each morning Jack would run down to nearby Britannia Beach, which was a popular place in summer. He’d collect pop bottles, then run back home.”

He was 15 when his family relocated to CFB Kingston after his military father’s transfer.

“Jack picked up any sport, and picked it up fast,” younger brother Raymond (Butch) Lynch, 83, says over the phone from Elphin, the tiny hamlet north of No. 7 highway where he and wife Sylvia retired following a 40-year stay in Ottawa.

“I remember one time playing baseball against Jack’s team at the Cricket Field,” Butch remembers. “I hit a ball to straightaway centre like I’d never hit a ball before ... got all of it. Jack was playing centre field. He kept racing back and racing back, then made a Willie Mays over-the-shoulder basket catch with his back completely to the plate.”

Jack scoffed at that version.

“You see, that’s where Butch is full of (manure)!” he cracked with a twinkle in his eye during a lively three-hour chat that covered most of his 86 years. “I was actually playing shortstop that day and I ran right past our centre fielder to snag that ball.

“After catching all those long passes from my dad, those over-the-shoulder baseball catches were pieces of cake.”

Jack’s 1965 championship fastball team featured a star-studded lineup for the ages. It included Charlie (Goose) Pester, Bubs Van Hooser, Neil Neasmith, the Litchfield brothers (Ed and Phil), Don Gilmour (father of Hall of Famer Dougie Gilmour), Doug (Slugger) Arniel and Haven Ferguson, among others.

“Best team I was ever on,” said Jack.

The 1968 Circle League fastball campaign was a Lynch family affair. Jack, Butch and 16-year-old baby brother Mike powered Steve Amey’s Lakeview Manor to the title.

Lynch worked as a surveyor technician on roads and highways. He lived in Calgary from 1979 to 2012 and worked primarily out of the Alberta foothills.

Jack picked up another pastime in his late 20s, an ill-advised habit that to his credit he eventually overcame – a penchant for barrooms and beer.

“I’m lucky to be here,” he says with the air of someone on whom the wisdom of time has dawned.

Which brings to mind an infamous incident in the late ‘60s that also became part of his legacy.

A shooting at the old 401 Inn on Division Street saw Lynch take a bullet in the leg fired from a handgun allegedly wielded by popular nightclub singer Ray Smith, who had a standing engagement in the Inn’s Birdcage Lounge.

Smith’s career had started with Sam Phillips’ Sun Records in the late ‘50s. The Kentucky-born singer had a million-selling single with “Rockin’ Little Angel,” although at the time of the shooting his career was beginning to wane. His act, however, still drew big crowds to the Birdcage.

Like Jack Lynch, Smith, too, liked to take a drink now and then, often while he entertained. In a 1967 Whig-Standard review, the late legendary reporter Dave Cleland described Smith as “spell binder who performs vertical or horizontal and doesn’t mind assuming that latter position at the last show.” Asked to explain his risque shows, Smith said, “I’m a nightclub performer – not a soloist in a choir. Spiritual guidance is offered at other centres.”

On the night in question, Lynch, his tank already topped up at a downtown watering hole, found himself in an after-hours card game in the singer’s room.

“I caught him cheating,” Jack recalls over coffee. “I reached across to nail him and all of a sudden a gun went off.”

He hikes a pant leg over his knee and fingers a tiny scar. “It hit me here and fortunately went clean through without hitting any bone ... kept me off the blades for three weeks.”

In 1979, Ray Smith was involved in another shooting - his own. He died by suicide in Burlington.

Terry Landon often refereed with Lynch.

“Jack could be quite a character,” says the retired fire chief. “I’ll never forget the time we worked a game in Tamworth and Jack was skating back with the puck after an icing call. He lost an edge, and as he was sliding past me on his back, he reached up and handed me the puck and slid right into the boards.”

Lynch, who never married, laments not becoming a father.

“I always wanted six kids,” he says wistfully. “Instead I ended up with six less.”

He’s made up for it by being, in his sister-in-law Sylvia’s words, “the kindest uncle and great-uncle you can imagine.”

His brother Mike, a senior vice-president with Homestead Holdings and like his older brothers a splendid multi-sport athlete in his own right, echoes Sylvia’s words.

“The kids call him Uncle Jackie, and he rarely misses their games,” he says. “If for some reason I can’t drive him, he’ll hop on a bus to go see them play. The kids love him.”

Patrick Kennedy is a retired Whig-Standard reporter. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com