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From athlete to academic

Broadcast Date: Nov. 3, 1971

Long before he considered running for office, Lester Bowles Pearson tried out a number of career options including civil servant, academic, lawyer and even semi-pro athlete. As this CBC Television documentary shows, the mild-mannered, bow-tied Pearson enjoyed a wide-ranging, if anonymous, career for years before "chance and good fortune" came calling.

From athlete to academic

• Lester B. Pearson was born in Newtonbrook, Ont. on April 23, 1897, to Edwin A. Pearson, a Methodist minister, and Anne Bowles Pearson, from whom he acquired his unique middle name. He would later cite his father's natural athleticism as the source of his own lifelong interest in sports.

• The middle child in a family of three boys, Pearson's childhood was spent living in various parishes across southern Ontario including Peterborough, Hamilton and Guelph. He first gained attention at age 11, when he won a prize for an essay about the evils of alcohol.

• Pearson entered the University of Toronto's Victoria College in the fall of 1913, where he immediately took a liking to academic life. The dean of his residence at the time was Vincent Massey, with whom he forged a lifelong friendship. Pearson later recalled Massey's history lectures as being a major inspiration for his academic aspirations.
• Vincent Massey served as Canada's first native-born governor general from 1952 to 1959.

• Fuelled by the call to war, Pearson enlisted in the Canadian Army Medical Corps in April 1915. Though only 17 and therefore underage, the medical corps offered up a non-combative role for the newly enlisted Private Pearson #1059.

• After serving in Greece and Macedonia, Pearson entered the British Royal Flying Corps. His commander instantly gave the young lieutenant his lifelong nickname "Mike" saying Lester was not a fitting name for a pilot.
• Pearson would later say he was grateful for the new moniker. While Lester was a "respectable family name," it was also the name of a comic strip character ("Lester the Pester") and therefore the source of much teasing.

• Pearson would later earn another nickname as a result of a 27-0 hockey rout between his Oxford University hockey team over Cambridge in Switzerland. Thanks to his swift moves on the ice the Swiss fans dubbed him "Herr Zigzag."

• Pearson's military service came to an end in April 1918 after he was deemed "medically unfit" for service.
• In his 1972 memoirs, Pearson blamed this on an injury incurred after a bus hit him during a blackout in London.
• But John English, his biographer, would beg to differ. In his 1989 biography Shadow of Heaven, English points to a medical board report that cited "neurasthenia" — a generalized anxiety disorder that amounted to "shattered nerves."

• After his return Pearson completed his bachelor degree in history with honours at Victoria College.
• Post-graduation he tried out various careers, including a one-week stint articling for a law firm (he found the textbooks "boring"), a summer playing for the semi-professional baseball team the Guelph Maple Leafs and a six-month stretch making sausages at his uncle's meat plant in Hamilton.

• Pearson finally settled down in 1921 when Oxford University accepted him for post-graduate work. His friend Vincent Massey helped secure a scholarship for him through the burgeoning Massey Fellowship foundation. Pearson would later call the two years at St. John's College "all that I had hoped and dreamed."

• Pearson accepted a teaching position at the history department of the University of Toronto in 1923. He continued his athletic ways playing with the school's football and lacrosse teams.
• In his first month of teaching he met Maryon Moody, a student and aspiring feminist academic, with whom he began a romance.
• Moody had written several papers in high school advocating a women's place in the workforce and had eyes on eventually becoming a professor.

• The new couple would marry two years later.
• Summer 1926 saw Pearson move to Ottawa to research a book on the history of United Empire Loyalists. He was soon being encouraged to enter into the then-young Department of External Affairs.
• When he finally applied in 1928 he scored at the top of his class and landed the job of first secretary.

From athlete to academic

Medium: Television

Program: The Tenth Decade

Broadcast Date: Nov. 3, 1971

Guest(s): Lester B. Pearson

Narrator: Jon Granik

Duration: 3:36

Last updated:
May 14, 2004