Paul Peterson, seen in this 1943 file photo at age 22, is the surviving member of the 1943 Hamilton Flying Wildcats.

By Steve Milton

They aren't being ignored any longer.

The Hamilton Flying Wildcats will finally get their (over)due Saturday afternoon when they are recognized for their contribution to a city and country held deep in wartime's cold, spare fist.

Seventy years ago this November, the Wildcats won the Grey Cup.

It was the only time in 20 years - from the 1932 Tigers to the 1952 Tiger-Cats - that a Hamilton team would capture the Dominion of Canada football championship.

"I felt that we had been overlooked, that we had been left out, " says Paul Peterson, the only surviving member of the 1943 Flying Wildcats. "It feels good that the Ticats are honouring us."

The Tiger-Cats will pay tribute to their football ancestors by wearing replicas of the team's red-based 1943 jerseys during Saturday afternoon's game against the B.C. Lions at the University of Guelph. The uniforms aren't exact reproductions, however, as the original blue stripes down the arm - likely included to recognize the basic Canadian armed forces colour of the era - have been replaced by black ones because of hardcore Ticats fans' aversion to Argo-reminiscent blue.

In 1943, Peterson was a 22-year-old rookie halfback who hadn't even been with the Wildcats for their first game of the season, driving from his hometown of Kitchener only to watch. But when Peterson hurdled the wall onto the Civic Stadium field after the game, Hamilton coach Brian Timmis, who knew him from the Kitchener intermediate team, said "I want you out here at practice tomorrow."

Peterson stayed with the Wildcats, then the Tigers, until 1949 and retired when the Wildcats and the crosstown Hamilton Tigers united in 1950, because new head coach Carl Voyles insisted he relocate from Kitchener.

The Flying Wildcats were a three-year blip on Hamilton's historical radar, temporarily replacing the long-established Tigers after the Tigers' league, the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union, shut down operations from 1942 to 1944 because of the personnel demands of the Second World War. Too many players had left for the armed services.

The Wildcats joined the Ontario Rugby Football Union and were permitted to sign any former Tigers players - but were denied the use of the Tigers' colours. Hence the radical departure to red uniforms. As former players began returning to the resurrected Tigers after the war, the team played as the Wildcats, minus the flying part, from 1945 to 1949 before merging with the Tigers.

The early 1940s was a unique era in elite Canadian sport.

All the National Hockey League franchises continued business during the war, albeit with depleted lineups. But in Canadian football, both the top eastern and western leagues which had provided the bulk of the Grey Cup finalists, suspended play. Traditional teams were replaced by clubs either representing the armed forces or stocked with servicemen.

The 1942 Grey Cup winner, for instance, was an RCAF team from Toronto which included the likes of Hamilton star Jake Gaudaur. The surprise 1944 Cup champion was a navy team from Montreal's south shore, which upset the defending champion Flying Wildcats.

And in 1943, nine of the 14 teams across Canada which were eligible to compete for the Grey Cup were armed forces clubs. Ten, if you include the Wildcats, who had eight players from the RCAF flight training base in Hagersville, and two from the navy, stationed in Hamilton. It was because of the RCAF presence that the Wildcats added "Flying" to their original nickname for the 1943 and '44 seasons.

"I think the service teams were good for the morale of the people and the players, " Peterson says. "It gave them something to think about besides shooting somebody."

Peterson himself was in the army reserve, which required two nights of training per week. Along with that commitment he would work from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. as a machinist at Kitchener's Ontario Die Company, which supplied the war effort, then drive an hour to Hamilton for "three or four hours of practice at night, " then drive back to Kitchener. The next day, he'd do it all again.

As his rookie season progressed, it became obvious that the Flying Wildcats had something good in the making. They finished first in the ORFU with eight wins and a tie, their only loss an early-season setback to the reigning champion Toronto RCAF Hurricanes.

Joe Krol, who had returned to his native Hamilton the year before, following a brilliant career at the University of Western Ontario, was already unleashing the dizzying skill set which would make him one of the top half-dozen players in Canadian football history.

"King" Krol played quarterback and halfback, threw the football, ran the football and kicked the football very high and very far.

Mel Lawson, who went on to become a hall-of-fame horseman, was a 20-year-old quarterback and backfielder out of Central High School playing his first senior season. The Spectator of the day described him as Hamilton's "hidden weapon" in the 1943 Grey Cup game. Lawson, who died 14 months ago, was the second-longest surviving Flying Wildcat and is the youngest man ever to play quarterback for a Cup winner. He was also the grandfather of current Ticat TV reporter Brodie Lawson.

And Peterson played in the backfield beside Krol, whether the King was at halfback or quarterback, sometimes taking handoffs from Krol, sometimes blocking for him.

"Joe was very smooth and fluid when he ran, " Peterson recalls. "When I carried the ball, I went straight ahead."

That plowing sense of direction proved to be an important asset during the Grey Cup semifinals at Toronto's Varsity Stadium, the week before the national championship game, also played at Varsity.

The Wildcats were heavy favourites against the Quebec champion Lachine RCAF, but with the game entering its dying minutes Hamilton had fumbled eight times, was trailing 6-1 and was pinned deep in its own end. Krol then engineered an 85-yard drive, which included a couple of crucial running plays and a pivotal catch by Peterson, whom The Spectator repeatedly called "the hero of the game."

"I had done a lot of fumbling in that game and in the last minute I said to Krol, ‘Give it to me. I won't fumble again, '" Peterson recalls.

The drive culminated with Peterson's powerful three-yard plunge for a touchdown which tied the game (touchdowns were worth only five points at the time, compared to six today), and Krol kicked the convert to propel the Wildcats into the Grey Cup.

Wildcats officials petitioned to have the Grey Cup game played at Civic Stadium because the semifinal had not been well attended in Toronto. But they were refused and what was then the third-largest Cup crowd of all time -16,423, including more than 2,000 who bought their tickets at Sam Manson's sports store in downtown Hamilton - showed up for the national final on November 27 between the Flying Wildcats and the RCAF Blue Bombers from Winnipeg.

Both teams had worn red uniforms all season and, despite Winnipeg's nickname and Hamilton's distaste for blue-dominated football livery, Hamilton was designated as the team to change its colours to blue. So Saturday's Ticat replica jerseys don't reflect the actual 1943 Grey Cup toggery.

Although Winnipeg dominated the final statistics, Krol dominated the scoreboard as the Wildcats scored three touchdowns in the first quarter, then withstood furious Bomber forays on the way to a 23-14 victory. While the Bombers made mistake after mistake, Krol completed a 30-yard touchdown pass to Doug Smith early in the game, kicked converts after touchdowns by Smith, Lawson and Jimmy Fumio and also kicked a field goal and a single.

Peterson played every minute of the game on offence and defence, as he had done all season. It was sweet revenge for coach Brian Timmis and captain Jimmy Simpson, who had come out of retirement at the age of 37 to play for the '43 Wildcats. Both had been with the Tigers for their 1935 loss to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, the first Grey Cup ever won by a western team.

The Wildcats' post-game celebrations at the Royal York Hotel included a party for a teammate who had been married just 48 hours before playing in the game.

The Flying Wildcats had one more big season, reaching the Grey Cup in 1944 with Peterson named a league all-star, but by the end of the decade, they were gone and Peterson stayed in Kitchener to build his business. Paul D. Peterson Enterprises, which supplied parts to the shoe, shirt and auto industries, is still run by his son, Don.

"The only thing I have any disappointment with is that I haven't been honoured by going into the hall of fame, " he told The Spec. "But I guess I wasn't good enough. I think of those guys like Joe Krol and I'd like to be in there with them."

After the death of his wife two years ago, Peterson moved into a seniors residence in Waterloo. He doesn't pay much attention to the NFL, but religiously follows the CFL "especially the Ticats and Argos" on TV and Saturday, he and his son will take in the live action at Guelph's Alumni Stadium.

With the end of the war and the amalgamation of Hamilton's two senior teams into the iconic Tiger-Cats, the Flying Wildcats soon receded into historical obscurity. But not for Peterson.

"I was really close to a lot of those fellows, " he says. "I think of them every time I'm involved with a Tiger-Cat alumni event.

"And I imagine I'll be thinking about them a lot on Saturday."