Major Martin Leo Troy

Leo Troy had a hand in coaching just about every sport and most of the athletes in North Bay for almost 40 years and was responsible for a great leap forward in local sports. He arrived here in 1921 to teach at North Bay Collegiate Institute and Vocational School and promptly became Athletic Director and coach of everything. An athlete himself in his younger days, he was a motorcycle dispatch rider in the First World War and was almost thirty when he became a teacher. One of his first moves here was to launch high school football starting with games against Sudbury. He persuaded lumber magnate M. J. Poupore to donate a trophy for football and the Poupore Cup became one of the more important awards in Northern Ontario sport. Troy was dedicated to his teams and his athletes and he not only coached football, he also taught basketball, hockey, boxing and track and field skills. He coached hockey at the old North Bay Arena on Main St. West until it burned down in 1928. He proceeded to coach eight years of city league and scholastic open air hockey and continued when a new arena was built in 1936. Troy also was a baseball umpire and a hockey referee and served on a number of hockey, baseball and football executives including the Northern Ontario Rugby Football Union (now Northern Football Conference) where he was Secretary-Treasurer from 1956 through 1962. He re-enlisted when WW II broke out and became Commanding Officer of the Algonquin Regiment. He resumed his teaching and coaching careers after the war until elected MPP for Nipissing. Troy was a true founder of North Bay Sport.