By Bill Powers
Special to Stampeders.com
An indication of the talent possessed by one Paul Rowe would be that he was one of the first three names to go up on the Calgary Stampeders Wall of Fame and yet only two members of that original committee had ever seen him play.
His fame lasted far beyond his years on the field and in life.
Paul “Pappy” Rowe was a Canadian with superstar talents as a running back in the Canadian Football League. He twice played in Calgary, first with the Calgary Bronks from 1938 to 1940 and then with the Stampeders from 1945 until his retirement due to injuries in 1950.
It must be noted that the reason for the interruption of his football career was a thing called the Second World War and Rowe spent five years overseas with the Canadian Army. He was a captain in an artillery unit that saw duty at Dieppe and in the Normandy invasion while also spending time in France, Holland, Belgium and Germany.
Forced to return home after suffering shrapnel wounds in Germany, he resumed his career with the newly-named Stampeders and basically picked up where he had left off before the war.
Another indication of Rowe’s greatness came from a former teammate and another Wall of Fame member in Sugarfoot Anderson.
When asked how good Paul Rowe was he said: “He was so good that we didn’t have to use an import at that position. He was a star. To tell you the story, the running backs of today shoot to get five or six yards to set up a short pass for the first down. When we played, we receivers would sometimes get upset because Rowe would get eight, nine and even 10 yards taking the passing game out of the picture.”
The six-time Canadian football all-star was also a two-time winner of the Dave Dryburgh Memorial Trophy as the leading scorer in the West but what’s interesting is that he won it first in 1939 and again nine years later in 1948. One wonders how his numbers might have looked today had that wartime experience not caused the five-year interruption.
Going back a bit, Rowe won a rugby scholarship at the University of Oregon but was quickly moved to the football field and was good enough to receive an All-American honourable mention in only his second season in the game. Then, though, with money a problem, he was enticed to play for play with the Bronks.
His most memorable season as a Stampeder came in 1948 when the club went undefeated through 12 games in the Western Inter-provincial Football Union and then stopped Saskatchewan in a two-game total point Western final before winning the Grey Cup with a 12-7 win over Ottawa at Toronto’s Varsity Stadium.
In recognition of his play with the Stamps, Paul Rowe is also in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame, the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame and the Greater Victoria Sports Hall of Fame.
One didn’t have to see him play to know he was a great one.