Arnold MacDonald Tedford
Tedford Toss a Javelin Record
Arnold Tedford was an all-round athlete who excelled at rugby, basketball and track both as a student at Wolfville High School and later at Acadia University. Tedford was a forward on the High School rugby team and during the fall 1929 season, scored key touchdowns on Wolfville High School’s championship team. When he entered Acadia, the Halifax Herald commented: “Probably the best new prospect is Arnold Tedford, who has starred for the last three years for Wolfville High School in track, hockey, basketball, and football.” At Acadia, Tedford played fullback for the rugby team, even as a freshman. In a 5 October 1935 game against Dalhousie University (NS) he was referred to as “a stout bulwark against marauding Tigers” and in a game a week later, “Tedford at fullback was poison to all Wanderers’ punts, besides tackling hard and often.” His work on the Acadia team was consistently excellent; Fred Kelly named Tedford fullback of his 1927-1937 all-star team.
It was on the track that Tedford grabbed the most headlines, however. As a student at Wolfville School, he competed in the Acadia relays, an interscholastic track and field meet established by Terry Osborne. In 1931, Tedford won the shot put, and together with teammate Reg Lightfoot, scored enough points to place the High School third in the event. In the Maritime Olympiad, a track meet for high school students, Tedford won the javelin with a record toss; he also won the shot put. He and Lightfoot between them scored 22 points, enough to place Kings County in second place. He continued to compete in track while a student at Acadia University. In the 1932 intercollegiate meet, for instance, Tedford set a record toss in the javelin of 144 feet and helped his team to “retain the silver cup which has been an object of competition since 1911.”
After graduating from Acadia with a BSc, he did post-graduate work at the University of Toronto and worked in Ottawa as a non-ferrous metals specialist with the Department of Trade and Commerce.
(Acadia Athenaeum, November 1935, 65-66; Halifax Herald 13 May 1932)
