When Joseph Hanaway, BA’56, MDCM’60, reminisced about his rugby playing days at McGill, he would occasionally talk about ‘knocking heads” with his opponents – not the sort of language you might expect from an eminent neurologist.
Hanaway, who died last July, recognized that the rough-and-tumble sport had a magical ability to turn fierce opponents into pals.
“After the game, we would meet and drink some beer with the other team and talk about the game – win or lose,” he told a gathering of McGill rugby alumni on a video link three months before his death.
Last November, a new award named in his honour, the Dr. Joseph Hanaway McGill Rugby Gentleman’s Award, was presented for the first time. The prize has now garnered close to $150,000 in donations and will annually provide a bursary to the McGill men’s rugby player who best exemplifies gentlemanly behaviour.
Elliot Descarreaux is the first recipient of the Dr. Joseph Hanaway McGill Rugby Gentleman’s Award
Elliot Descarreaux, the first to receive the $3,500 award, knows firsthand how tough a sport rugby can be, having dealt with a litany of injuries over the years. But the former McGill Redbirds team captain emphasizes the “sense of brotherhood that’s present in rugby.”
Like Hanaway, he brings up the game’s post-game outings and loves how each team will vote on who from the opposing team was a match’s best player.
“You celebrate the game together, which doesn't really happen in other sports,” says Descarreaux, adding that while there is trash-talking on the pitch, “after the game there’s always respect. It’s like you had gone into battle with each other.”
That sense of camaraderie was also what propelled the Hanaway award to meet its financial goal a year ahead of schedule. A hundred and eighty donors contributed, some of them non-rugby athletes who appeared to appreciate the game’s sportsmanship. Rugby has been affectionately called “a hooligan’s game played by gentlemen,” and McGill has a long history with the sport – the first McGill rugby game dates back to 1868.
The new Hanaway Award’s roots go back to 2016, when Neil Stephenson, BA’84, a former McGill rugby player, met Quentin Dubois by chance. Dubois, BCom’17, a member of the McGill team that year, spoke about his experiences on the club, while Stephenson shared his memories about the team that had welcomed him three decades earlier.
That conversation inspired Stephenson to get in touch with Ian Baillie, the coach of the McGill squad. Stephenson would eventually become a volunteer advisor, consultant and fundraiser for the team, as well as the driving force behind the creation of the Hanaway Award.
Stephenson helped put together a database of former McGill rugby players going back to the 1950s. The rugby alumni’s first big meeting took place in 2018 in Toronto – a scrum of sorts.
News of that gathering led Hanaway to reach out to Stephenson, asking if he could support the efforts of his fellow former athletes. Hanaway had helped the McGill team capture the 1955 league championship. He had also played for the McGill football team as a placekicker, earning the nickname, “Joe the Toe.”
As Stephenson learned more about Hanaway, he couldn’t help but be impressed. “That's what made me realize in 2020, two years later, that he was the perfect face and namesake for the award,” says Stephenson. “There was something about him that embodied this rugby camaraderie. It was his whole attitude to life, his community mindedness, his generosity, his kindness and his decency.”
Hanaway, who had completed his neurology residency at the Montreal General Hospital and the Montreal Neurological Institute, went on to publish the textbook Atlas of the Human Brain in Section, which became a standard in medical education worldwide. An associate professor at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, he eventually set up a private neurology practice and helped develop a concussion protocol for the Missouri State Athletic Association.
Hanaway maintained his McGill ties. He was responsible for the restoration of the Roddick Gates clock and bell tower at the entrance to the downtown campus. He tracked down the original clockmaker and funded the project which led to its repair in 2010 after decades of poor timekeeping.
“There aren't many alumni who have made as many tangible contributions to their alma mater as Joe Hanaway,” says Richard Cruess, a longtime medical professor at McGill and a former dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Cruess knew Hanaway as a friend and colleague for decades. The two had collaborated on a two-volume history of medicine at McGill and Hanaway also wrote a history of the Montreal General Hospital.
Hanaway let his fellow rugby alums know that he was deeply touched by the naming of the McGill prize.
Before he passed away, he shared this message: “This new award is one of the highlights of my life.”