CALGARY -- In his years playing junior football in Nanaimo, Andrew Harris was unaware that he had a secret admirer --

Gerry James, a former running back from nearly three generations ago who was twice the nation’s most outstanding Canadian player.

James, who played for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, and Normie Kwong, the fullback of Edmonton Eskimos, were the pair

of Canadian backs who breached the 1,000-yard plateau in the same season -- 1957. It didn’t happen again until 55 years later, when first Jon Cornish of the Calgary Stampeders, and Harris, last week against the Eskimos, joined the 1,000-yard club in the 2012 CFL season.

James and Kwong are names that had not entered Harris’ knowledge of Canadian football until this week, when CFL news

releases placed them in context with the accomplishments of Cornish and Harris. Both Kwong and James are in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, and went on to achieve greatness in fields other than football.

“I’d never heard any of their names before this year,” said Harris, after the Lions arrived in snowy Calgary for tonight’s game against the Stampeders at McMahon Stadium. “It’s a history lesson for me. When you think how long it’s been -- 55 years since in happened -- it’s crazy. If I’m sitting there in my 70s, watching someone break my record, it would be pretty amazing to see. Especially if it withstood the test of time for that long. It’s insane.”

Kwong, the retired lieutenant-governor of Alberta, and still addressed as “Your Honour”, in recognition of his vice-regal duties, turned 83 on Wednesday, two days before James celebrated his 78th birthday. The only athlete in Canadian history to play in a Grey Cup game and a Stanley Cup final, James is retired in Nanoose Bay, near Nanaimo, where Harris played his junior football with the Vancouver Island Raiders.

“I saw him play, and he was really dominant,” James said of the B.C. Lions current feature back. “He was head and shoulders above everybody else.”

Making the leap from junior football, straight to the CFL, as Harris did, takes some doing. But James did him one better. He vaulted straight from high school to the Blue Bombers, who signed him as 17-year-old prospect. “My mother negotiated my first contract -- for $2,000,” he said. “I had to return to high school when the regular season was over.”

James and Kwong played at a time when fullbacks truly lived up to their name. They were backs, not just blockers, unlike today, and teams made full use of their talents. The modern Canadian Football League, with its interlocking schedule,

didn’t exist in 1957, when James ran for 1,192 yards and Kwong rumbled for 1,050. They played under a 16-game schedule in the WIFU (Western Interprovincial Football Union). Their counterparts in the East (the IRFU, known as the Big Four) played only 14.

Kwong, known as the “China Clipper”, ran for 1,437 yards in his best season, 1956, the greatest campaign ever for a Canadian running back, and he did it in just 15 games. Cornish, the CFL’s leading rusher, needs 136 more yards to supplant Kwong as the king of Canadian running backs, and he has two more games left in which to do it.