Daughter of ex-CFL QB Chuck Ealey shares his rise to fame in ‘The Stone Thrower’

TORONTO – The daughter of retired CFL quarterback Chuck Ealey knew his remarkable life story was too big to condense into a children’s tale.

So Jael Ealey Richardson decided to focus on a smaller yet significant segment of her father’s journey: overcoming a segregated upbringing in Portsmouth, Ohio, to rise through the ranks in school and sports.

The biographical children’s story “The Stone Thrower” (Groundwood Books) shares the same title as Richardson’s father-daughter memoir of the same name published in 2012.

In her new book featuring illustrations by Matt James, Richardson begins with her dad’s birth in 1950 at a time and in a community with strong racial divisions.

There was little money in his household — even for food. Still, Ealey was encouraged by his mother that education provided a way out. And as a child, a fateful walk along the train tracks led Ealey to hone his throwing skills, and charted his eventual course to a winning career on the gridiron.

Ealey was undefeated as a high school and college quarterback in the U.S. but never played professional football in his home country. He was passed over in the 1972 NFL draft at a time where black quarterbacks were not prevalent.

Ealey led the Hamilton Tiger-Cats to the Grey Cup title in his first year, and was named the game’s MVP and the league’s rookie of the year. He went on to play with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and the Toronto Argonauts before suffering a career-ending collapsed lung injury in 1978.

“I think the part that we picked to talk about and to talk about with little kids is what it’s like to live in hard times and still do big important things in simple ways,” Richardson said in a recent interview at a Toronto cafe.

“My dad grew up in a really poor neighbourhood during a really loaded time in history, so you have to tell that a little bit. But it’s really about focusing in school, focusing in sports, and getting done what he needed to get done.

“It doesn’t go all the way into his CFL career in terms of the actual story of the book. But it does talk about what it’s like to face bullies and come out on top.”

As the founder of the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD), which runs Friday through Sunday in Brampton, Ont., Richardson is hoping to help bolster the opportunities for other homegrown authors from a variety of backgrounds to develop and celebrate their craft.

“Little Mosque on the Prairie” creator Zarqa Nawaz and award-winning author Lawrence Hill are among the scheduled speakers.

“The publishing industry is not as diverse as it should be (and) could be, so we wanted to do a festival that starts with diversity as opposed to doing it as an add-on,” said Richardson.

“When we talk about diversity, we want to cover all of the parts of that word. I think there is cultural (diversity), people of colour, LGBTQ and disability, but there’s also genre.”

The mother of two said she believes strongly in having more diverse Canadian stories shared in classrooms and exercising a greater effort to promote those tales.

“The important thing about books is that they allow us to meet people we wouldn’t normally meet and get to know them so that when we meet them in person we understand them better and we are more empathetic.

“Books are such a powerful tool, and I think they’re almost more important in communities that aren’t diverse because if you’re not meeting these people in your everyday life, you’re not prepared for the kinds of things you should know and understand.”

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