RMC was extremely fortunate to have Patty Clayton as their head trainer/sports therapist in the 1970s. In addition to treating the numerous sports-related injuries of the cadets on the campus, he also served with the football and hockey teams, including travelling with both teams when they had away games. He was so well respected at the College that he was able to convince the authorities to provide the cadets with first class treatment facilities and equipment. Not only that but when he became alarmed by the number of cases of shin splints, he concluded the culprit was the infamous and aptly named CF Cripplers and persuaded the College to allow the cadets to purchase much better quality civilian sneakers with superior soles and arch support. That was no small feat given that at RMC even the PT gear was considered a uniform, #7 Order of Dress in fact, so all cadets needed to wear the matching white singlets and white shorts, grey wool socks and those white canvas sneakers. Authorizing the cadets to purchase their own “athletic shoes” obviously meant the new footwear could vary by cadet in both style and colour, and, literally, not be uniform as a result.

Patty was amazing at what he did, especially when it came to dealing with serious injuries that occurred during those football or hockey games. Every one of the players had complete confidence in his abilities, which was helped in no small part by his wonderfully calm, cool and collected “bedside” manner. In fact, he would often assist other teams if their players were injured during a game. In one case, a Trent University hockey player cut too sharply to avoid a check and had his skates come out from underneath him, causing him to collide head-first in to the hard plastic shin pads of the RMC forward (Farley). He was knocked completely unconscious, so Patty rushed on to the ice and managed to revive him and get him talking again, after he jokingly chided him saying there were a bunch of pretty girls in the stands watching him!

Patty was very supportive of the Rep teams and was a wonderful mentor to the different players. He was even prepared to issue hockey-only or rugby-only chits to some of the players. In one case, Al MacLeod had had a nagging injury and received one of those hockey-only chits. While some were skeptical of the reasons, in fact there was logic behind those chits because they were meant to protect the players from aggravating an existing condition by being required to participate in non-Rep team activities. In the case of Jimmy Wishloff, we were all disappointed when he decided he was going to leave RMC after his first year. He was the best hockey player from our Class, and already one of the best on the team, so Patty and several guys from our year decided to take him out for a drink one night. Patty was very persuasive, so much so that Jimmy appeared to be having second thoughts and almost changed his mind, which considering how adamant he had been was no small feat.

The thing that impressed me the most about Patty was he wanted to read every and anything about sport injuries and treatments that he could get his hands on. It was funny because we all took our course materials to read on away trips, but more often than not they stayed in the overhead bins, whereas Patty was always reading books or magazines, whether on the shorter trips to Toronto or the really long ones like to Laurentian University in Sudbury and then to McMaster in Hamilton. In fact, he was so well read that ironically it may have worked against him during his final year with RMC in 1979. While we are not 100% how it happened, we were led to believe the physiotherapist on the Base complained he was taking on more responsibilities than covered by his job description, which kind of surprised us because no one had any doubt he was fully capable of doing all those things. We assumed the RMC authorities had little recourse at the time but to change his job description given that she presumably had complained officially. While we were naturally quite upset to lose Patty, in fact most of us realized this was almost certainly going to be better for his career, moving on to bigger and better things we all knew he was clearly able to do. In fact, we had already gotten a sneak peak of his growing reputation, even internationally. One year when we took the Herc to USAFA he was met by senior officials from the Academy who were very interested in offering him a job. My memory is not great but I seem to recall that in addition to a generous pay package, they were offering to provide him and his family with accommodation and also to pay for his move.

We actually saw him often on TV later with the Calgary Stampeders, running on to the field whenever one of their players were injured, or even to assist the other team as he had done with us. Obviously we were not the only ones who truly respected Patty, since he was eventually elected not only in to the Canadian Athletic Therapists Association Hall of Fame in 2009, but also the Calgary Stampeders Hall of Fame in 2014 and RMC’s Wall of Distinction in 2022.