I was aware of former Sudbury mayor Bill Beaton and some of his ties to local sports – which is to say that I was aware in the same sense that I have knowledge that both Max Silverman and Sam Rothschild formed integral parts of nickel city hockey lore.

I don’t know that I could have been immersed in the summer quadrathlon tradition that is the Beaton Classic for well over a decade without garnering some awareness of the man for whom it is named.

Yet as discussions flow to the first families of Sudbury sports, those whose scope of involvement is so widespread as to extend well beyond just a singular sportsman or two, I don’t know that I would have automatically included the Beaton clan in with my more contemporary memories of the Savages or the Folignos or the Johnstons.

Truth is navigating the genealogical pathway is not an easy trip – but thanks to a recent afternoon discussion with the grandson and namesake of the former head of city council (1940 – 1951) that surely just grazed just the surface of the family involvement in sport, a far greater knowledge was grasped.

I had not connected the dots from Bill Beaton to the McKinty lineage, nor the Whissell arm, though perhaps I should have. Things made much more sense once I did.

But I digress.

Let’s take a step back.

Bill Beaton, the original, was born in 1896 in East Gwillimbury, moving to Huntsville then North Bay before his fifteenth birthday. It was in the Gateway City that he could come across the love of his life (and frequent paddling partner), Isla Robertson.

Having already started to influence the northern sports landscape as manager of the North Bay Athletic Union and organizer, in part, of the Northern Ontario Hockey Association, Beaton and his new bride would make their way to Sudbury in or around 1921 or so, wasting little time in lending a helping hand in his new hometown.

From leading the re-launch of the Sudbury Canoe Club (paddling being the favourite of the many, many sports in which he partook) to playing a critical role in the work that would lead to the construction of the Sudbury Arena in 1952, Beaton was a man of action.

And as is the case with any man of action, rest assured that not one and all necessarily agreed with every single cause that the always colourful future city comptroller would champion.

“An editorial on Bill isn’t easy,” noted Sudbury Star sports editor Don MacIntosh on April 2nd (1956) – the day after Beaton passed at the young age of sixty. “Correct procedure calls for a review of only the finer points of his turbulent career – yet one almost can hear Bill’s spirit crying out for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

Not yet born on the day his grandfather would leave this earth, Bill S. Beaton (II – technically) is not the least bit surprised with the words of this column. “He was a very good boxer – and he led with his fists a lot,” said the middle of three children born to Lyall and Lily Beaton with a smile.

“Back then, if you swore at somebody, that’s what was going to happen.”

While there is now a very handy book dedicated to the memory of the first Bill Beaton, the latter would have to rely upon second-hand stories that were passed along initially – stories that were apparently not all that hard to come by.

“We just got told about things; all of this is hearsay from other people,” said Beaton. “For example, he was instrumental in helping to get the arena built. The dedication on the cornerstone is something he wrote. He helped the yacht club get their property and restarted the canoe club.”

In some circles, he was criticized for prioritizing his love of sport and fitness above all else.

All of which brings us to the family tree.

Bill and Isla would be blessed with five children: Doreen (who marries Dennis McKinty and adds another seven sports fanatics to the mix); Roberta (Bobby); Lyall; Evelyn; Gwendolyn (member of the Sudbury Sports Hall of Fame for her work with synchronized swimming).

Coach of the Laurentian basketball OIAA championship team in 1962-1963 and involved in that sport and others for much of his life, Lyall also joined the Hall in 2008, his father enshrined in 1981.

A column penned by Alex Szilva devoted to “The Beaton Dynasty” reads: “When you have a famous athlete in the family, the whole family is proud. When the whole family is famous in athletics, all they can do is try and outdo each other for fun.”

It kind of reads like a Beaton family motto.

Active in baseball, hockey, basketball, running and boxing, Beaton would find his true calling on the water. An undefeated northern Ontario boxing champion at 122 pounds, the 5’6” dynamo would enjoy his greatest victory in canoeing, teaming with Gib McCubbin to defeat a field of international and Olympic paddlers in a half mile race in Toronto (1926), their time of 4:03 a record that remained unbroken at the time of his death thirty years later.

While serving as mayor, Beaton received an official congratulatory note upon winning the Bellrock Trophy in 1944, emblematic of the Senior Singles Canoe Championship in Northern Ontario. He would have been 48 years old at the time.

“Age cannot wither nor custom stale the infinite variety of his good parts” closed off the official correspondence. The words of the time do justice to the romanticism that existed with life and sport in that era.

“This remarkable performance by one, who while no longer in the heyday of his youth, still possesses such physical perfection, stamina and virility as to show the way home to all contenders” noted the document.

Sounds like pretty good genetics if you want to start the various offspring that create one of the most storied families in all of Sudbury sports history.