Lake Ontario: ‘Then…now…and always!’

Changing the name of Lake Ontario is a hairbrained idea.

One supposes the American side of the lake could technically be called something other than Lake Ontario…but why? What’s the point of stirring up controversy?

When you look at the boundary between Canada and the United States, the line runs pretty much east to west across the middle of Lake Ontario, but a tad more of the lake lies on the Canadian side.

 

The National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo, Ohio, reports that Lake Ontario, as the easternmost of the five Great Lakes, is the smallest in surface area, with 7,340 square miles. About 53% of Lake Ontario is in Canada while the United States lays claim to about 47%.

And by far, the lakeside population in the Province of Ontario, Canada, is much greater than the population on the U.S. side in New York state.

 

Toronto, Ontario, with an estimated population of 3,358,275 is the fourth largest metropolis in North America, trailing only Mexico City, New York City and Los Angeles. Chicago is fifth in size.

 

The largest U.S. municipality on Lake Ontario is Rochester in Monroe County, N.Y., with a population of about 204,935.

“The New York side, by comparison, is sparsely populated and largely rural,” reported Dr. Daniel Macfarlane, a professor at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. 

“The lake is Canadian in every way that matters. No U.S. executive order can change that,” he said.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told Kevin Brannigan of the Northeast Times, a weekly newspaper published in Bensalem Township within Bucks County, Pa., that generations of American students have learned the names of the Great Lakes by the mnemonic HOMES – Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior. (That’s a common clue familiar to crossword puzzle solvers as well.)

 

The Milwaukee (Wis.) Journal Sentinel reported that if Lake Ontario falls by the wayside and is replaced by Lake America, students may need to be reeducated about SHAME – Superior, Huron, America, Michigan and Erie. For now.

Brannigan also reported that Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers has shared a video of himself, jokingly (we think) changing the name of Lake Michigan to Lake Wisconsin, signed on a restaurant napkin.

 

It’s gotten ridiculous…but it’s also being hurtful. Canada’s government leaders have responded to defend their national honor…and rightfully so.

Edward Helmore of The Guardian, published in London England, said the rallying cry has become: “Lake Ontario. Now and Always.”

 

“Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney has flat-out rejected the renaming, explaining that Lake Ontario derives from an Indigenous Wendat word meaning ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is great’ that dates back more than 400 years.”

 

Wendat Nation Grand Chief Pierre Picard criticized U.S. President Donald Trump for his “attempt to erase Indigenous history. I want to tell him that it is unacceptable for us, as a nation.” He cannot “eradicate our history, our culture and our identity.”

 

Ryan Mancini, a staff writer with The Hill, a political website based in Washington, D.C., said that Ontario Premier Doug Ford called the entire hydronyms scenario “so, so disappointing, because I love the United States. I love the American people. Canadians love the American people.”

 

J. Conrad Seneca, president of the Seneca Nation – one of the six Native American nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) in upstate New York – has called on Trump to rescind the order.

 

Seneca said it clearly violates the terms of the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, signed by leaders of the confederacy and President George Washington, which laid out the Seneca Nation’s boundaries as “beginning on Lake Ontario.”

The Associated Press reported that Seneca accused Trump of showing “blatant disrespect” for the Indigenous people who gave Lake Ontario its name in the first place and lived in territory around and along the lake long before the creation of either Canada or the United States.

“The president cannot assert ownership over our culture or erase it through irresponsible political action,” Seneca said.

The Iroquois Confederacy or the Haudenosaunee (People of the Longhouse) was made up of five tribes: Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga and Seneca originating from New York. In 1722, the Tuscarora tribe, who came from North Carolina, joined the Confederacy as the sixth nation.

 

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul offered her assurance that her office is not budging and will continue to refer to Lake Ontario as Lake Ontario.

 

U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan said she intends to introduce a bill in Congress, if necessary, to keep Lake Ontario as Lake Ontario. “The Great Lakes are a shared treasure that generations of Americans and Canadians have worked together to protect,” she said.

 

In a recent column in The Washington Post, Dr. Macfarlane, author of the book “The Lives of Lake Ontario: An Environmental History,” called out the White House for yet another aggressive verbal assault…one meant “to disparage and pressure Canada over tariffs and trade agreements. I highly doubt that lobbing this grenade had much serious forethought.”

“Moving too hard against Canada is likely to boomerang, inciting global outrage as well as domestic pushback from Canada’s many American friends,” Dr. Macfarlane said.

If there’s an upside, “it might bring more attention to the plight of Lake Ontario. This lake is arguably the most polluted and degraded of the Great Lakes – and the most degraded it has ever been,” he said.

 

“A litany of environmental insults has been poured into it: microplastics, sewage, forever chemicals and toxics. Humanity has radically altered what lives and swims in its waters,” Dr. Macfarlane asserted.

 

“In the 1970s, Canada and the United States signed the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Though initially successful, neither country has continued to adequately fund the efforts made through this accord. Lake Ontario needs more cooperation, not conflict.”

The document was signed in 1972 by U.S. President Richard Nixon (center) and Canada’s Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (right). Also shown is U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers.

Was Everett Case N.C.’s ‘Father of Basketball?’

Sports columnist Ron Green Sr. of The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer said that after World War II, North Carolina had “lots of minor league baseball, good stock car racing, some so-so pro golf tournaments…but nothing exciting, nothing glamorous.”

 

That all changed in 1946, wrote Brady Dennis of The Washington Post, when Everett Case arrived in Raleigh, bringing with him to North Carolina State University “a wealth of college basketball talent and igniting an explosion of interest.”

 

Some folks thought Case was North Carolina’s “Father of Basketball.”

Case won six consecutive Southern Conference basketball tournament titles from 1947-52. 

Then, after the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) was formed in 1953, Case won the first three ACC tournament titles from 1953-55.

Coach Case recruited nationally, bringing top players to Raleigh, including college superstars like Ronnie Shavlik of Denver, Colo. (shown above), and John Maglio of Philadelphia, Pa. (shown below).

 

In 18 years at the helm with NC State, Case compiled a 377-134 (.737) record – still the best in school history.

“Tired of getting their brains beat out by Case, the other schools started looking for hotshot coaches of their own,” Dennis said.

UNC found Frank McGuire, who was the head coach at his alma mater, St. John’s University in New York City. He arrived on campus in Chapel Hill in 1952.

 

At Carolina, McGuire built a championship team in 1956-57 around a core of players who came from New York and New Jersey, including Lennie Rosenbluth, Joe Quigg, Tommy Kearns, Pete Brennan and Bob Cunningham.

Lennie Rosenbluth

Joe Quigg

 

Bob Cunningham

This squad went undefeated during the regular season, posting a 24-0 record, and swept through the ACC tournament.

The Tar Heels breezed into the NCAA Final Four. Carolina downed Michigan State, 74-70, in a semifinal thriller that went three overtime periods. Rosenbluth blistered the nets to lead all scorers with 31 points.

Next up in the championship game was Kansas, featuring Wilt Chamberlain, a towering 7-foot-1 giant. This game also took three overtimes to settle, with Carolina claiming a 54-53 victory. Chamberlain managed 23 points, while Rosenbluth paced the Tar Heels with 20.

Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford wrote that before that storybook 1957 championship, “ACC basketball was popular” in the state. 

Afterward, he wrote, “It was woven into the fabric of North Carolina society.”

In an effort to become “more competitive,” Wake Forest elevated assistant coach Horace Albert “Bones” McKinney (shown above) to the head coaching role in 1957, and Duke hired Vic Bubas (shown below) to take over as head coach of the Blue Devils in 1959. 

Bubas had played for Case at NC State and spent eight years as a key assistant with the Wolfpack.

Bubas proved to be a master at recruiting top prospects from across the country, building Duke’s reputation as a perennial powerhouse.

For the record, while coaching at their respective universities in North Carolina, Case and Bubas each won ACC Coach of the Year honors three times, while McKinney won the award twice and McGuire was selected once.

Head-to-head, UNC’s McGuire held a 13-9 advantage over NC State’s Case. Clearly, the “upper echelon” of ACC was entering into a period of parity.

McGuire left Chapel Hill to take the head coaching job with the National Basketball Association’s Philadelphia Warriors for the 1961-62 season. 

(Wilt Chamberlain was on that team; he recorded his record-setting 100-point game while playing for McGuire.)

 

As he departed Carolina, McGuire recommended that his assistant coach Dean Smith be named as his successor. Chancellor William Aycock hesitated not one iota. Smart man.

 

Case and Smith went head-to-head for only a brief period, playing just a handful of games against each other. Case may be the only college coach to have a career winning record against Smith…but barely.

 From left, Dean Smith, Vic Bubas, Everett Case and Bones McKinney.

Clearly, a new era in ACC basketball was about to unfold. 

‘Old Gray Fox’ changed college basketball for good

Before he even stepped on the basketball court for his first season (1946-47) as head coach at North Carolina State University, Everett Case knew we had a mountain to climb.

He was inheriting just one holdover player from a team that had posted a 6-12 overall record the previous season and tied for ninth place in the Southern Conference (a 16-team league at the time).

Case promptly retooled, forming a team packed with Navy veterans, fellows he had coached aboard Naval air stations during World War II, as well as new recruits from Indiana, where he had built an impeccable reputation as a highly decorated high school coach.

In that 1946-47 season, NC State rebounded to post a 26-5 overall record and win both the regular season and tournament titles in the Southern Conference. 

Best of all, for Wolfpack fans, Case’s team began a streak of 15 straight victories over North Carolina that would extend for six years.

His teams played an up-tempo, fast-paced, run-and-gun offense, coupled with a full-court press on defense. 

That style of play ignited fans on Tobacco Road who began to see basketball in a new light. They didn’t call Case the “Old Gray Fox” for nothin,’ said Greensboro sportswriter Irwin Smallwood (shown below).

 

Case was an innovator and one of the game’s finest showmen. 

He championed the backcourt 10-second rule and was among the first coaches to review film to prepare for a game. 

He started the traditions of putting numbers on the back of players’ jerseys, pregame introductions of players and shining a spotlight on them.

He hired an organ player to provide music during timeouts, and Case was the first coach to cut down the nets after a big win.

 

His ambition extended beyond the university setting. Case wanted to change the culture within North Carolina. His goal was to see a basketball hoop nailed on every tree, barn and tobacco warehouse in the state, “and he damn near did it,” Smallwood said.

 

Case always carried a basketball rim and backboard around in the trunk of his “booster-bought Cadillac” to donate to the cause. 

Case also initiated summer basketball camps for youth players to keep interest going year-round.

The record books show that in his 18 years at the helm of NC State, Case compiled a 377-134 (.737) record, the best in school history.

 

He won nine straight conference titles from 1946-55 – six as a member of the Southern Conference and the first three in the newly established Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).  

He added a fourth ACC title in 1959. Case himself was aptly rewarded, earning three ACC Coach of the Year awards during that span.

 

Lou Pucillo, a former NC State standout player, said Everett Case was very competitive and loved basketball; he was not married, so his philosophy was to “eat, sleep and dream basketball.”

Case stepped down as coach in 1964, due to illness. He suffered from cancer and died in 1966 at age 65. 

He was buried in Raleigh Memorial Park and left instructions that he wanted to be laid to rest facing U.S. Route 70, so he could “wave” to later NC State teams as they traveled by bus to Chapel Hill.

One of his Case’s former NC State players, Norm Sloan, was hired as the Wolfpack head coach in 1966.

 

After winning the NCAA Championship game in Greensboro in 1974, having toppled UCLA and then Marquette in the Final Four, Sloan asked the bus driver to stop by Coach Case’s resting place so that the team could pay its respects…and show him the nets they had cut down.

 

This bronze sculpture of Coach Everette Case outside NC State's Reynolds Audiitorium was dedicated in 2016. He is clutching net cords in his left hand. 

The sculptor is Benjamin Matthew Victor of Boise, Idaho (shown below).

College basketball takes N.C. by storm after World War II

North Carolina State University’s Thompson Gymnasium in Raleigh was just a small place where farmers would come in to see the horse shows and the newest farm equipment on display. 

When it wasn’t being used for agricultural purposes, the gym was where the men’s basketball team got some court time.

Games were played mostly at the Raleigh Memorial Auditorium, which could hold up to about 4,300 people.

Construction of a new college basketball arena for NC State was in the works when World War II broke out in late 1941. The project went dormant until after the war.

The original plan was to build almost a carbon copy of Duke Indoor Stadium in Durham, which opened in 1940 with a seating capacity of 8,800.

 

The first order of business after the war ended, however, was to bring in a winning coach. NC State had lost a bunch of basketball games in a row to its archrival North Carolina.

The best man for the job was Everett Case, who was in his mid-40s and nicknamed the “Old Gray Fox,” because he had silvery hair and was sly and clever as a fox.

He came to Raleigh in the spring of 1946 and told university officials that the basketball building needed to be bigger than Duke’s. 

But since the steel frames were already in place, the only way to expand was to extend the “end zones.” Hence, the architects redesigned the project, with its distinctive, elongated shape, creating a seating capacity of 12,400.

To get the job done, though, more funding was needed. The ball was passed into the court of William Donald Carmichael Jr., the controller for the UNC system, which included the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC State and the Woman’s College in Greensboro (now the co-educational UNC Greensboro).

 

Carmichael made a visit to Greenwich, Conn., to meet with Mary Reynolds Babcock (shown above), the daughter of R. J. (Richard Joshua) Reynolds (show below), who founded the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in Winston-Salem in 1875.

 

Carrying a table-size model of the proposed basketball facility, Carmichael asked for some financial support for the project. Three weeks later, Mary Reynolds Babcock sent a telegram saying she and her husband Charles would donate $100,000, the same amount contributed by the state.

She suggested, in turn, that the building be named for her uncle, William Neal Reynolds, a younger brother of R. J. Reynolds, and the second president of the company.

 

A native of Durham, Carmichael attended UNC-CH and was a member of the varsity basketball team. 

He graduated in 1921 and had a successful advertising business on Wall Street in New York City. Within the UNC system, he served as its acting president on two occasions.

Major achievements included his work in the establishment of the teaching hospital at Chapel Hill and in bringing educational television to the campuses at Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Greensboro. Carmichael died in 1961 at age 60.

When UNC-CH built a new basketball arena with 8,170 seats in 1965 to replace the old Woollen Gymnasim, the university’s board of trustees chose to name the facility Carmichael Auditorium, as a tribute to William Donald Carmichael Jr.

 

The names Reynolds and Carmichael are permanently etched into the basketball histories of NC State and Carolina. 

A sportswriter and editor responsible for several chapters was Irwin Smallwood, a graduate of UNC-CH, who covered college basketball for the Greensboro Daily News from 1947-89.

 

When he died in 2024 at age 98, Smallwood was still telling stories about NC State Coach Everett Case’s influence on the game of basketball in North Carolina.