“It was really special.”
Cam Innes humbly summed up his experience of being inducted into the Queen’s University Football Hall of Fame with former teammates from his rookie year in attendance, 55 years after last taking off his jersey, #40.
“For a centre offensive lineman, you get no recognition, it’s all about the quarterback. It’s about the guys that score the touchdowns, it’s not about a guy that snaps the ball,” he laughed. “So I joke that 55 years later after playing, I get inducted into the hall of fame. It was really special.”
The ceremony took place at the university in Kingston, Ont. on Sept. 26, when they inducted eight players, eight contributors called “builders,” a longtime super fan and season ticket holder for 69 years, and the original team from 1882, though “none of them showed up,” Innes joked.
In his time with the Queen’s Golden Gaels from 1968 to 1970, the team won the Yates Cup, Churchill Bowl and Vanier Cup. It was also where he realized his ultimate goal of going into coaching.
“When I was playing at Queen’s, my coach Frank Tindall… when I played for him I was watching him and thought, ‘he’s having a great time, what a great job,’” Innes recalled. “So that’s when I kind of decided that I wanted to be a college football coach.”
Playing for Queen’s also opened the door to the Canadian Football League twice, though he closed it both times.
He had been a first-round draft pick by with the Edmonton Eskimos (now the Elks) but was offered a $6,500 flat fee to play, whereas he also had a $3,000 scholarship to Windsor “tax free.”
“So I did the math and decided to go back to university… because, again, I wanted to coach, so if the playing helped me leverage that into getting into the coaching world, so be it,” he said. “They didn’t, and they still don’t, pay the Canadian football players, not like they do down south.”
The Eskimos ended up trading his rights to the Montreal Alouettes in ‘71 after he was elected All-Canadian Centre with Windsor University. Innes did the tryout, but again had another option of an assistant coaching job with St. Francis Xavier University (StFX), in Antigonish, NS. Knowing he also had a bad knee, he made “an educated decision” to go into coaching and keep his health.
“I wanted to coach, it was always the goal, just from my time playing for Frank Tindall. And being a coach was extremely rewarding,” he said. “I did well at it and we had some good teams, championship teams.”
Following his first year coaching at StFX, he was promoted at 25-years-old to become the youngest head coach in college football at that time, but had a little trepidation when accepting the position.
“When the former coach said ‘I’m going to recommend you for the job,’ I walked back from his office and I go to the middle of the football field and looked skyward, I said ‘Dear Lord, help me because I have no idea what I’m doing,’” he recalled. “But you put your head down, and work hard and then things work out.”
In a bit of serendipity, Innes said in 1980 while he was with the University of Ottawa, he won the Coach of the Year award which was actually named after his former coach (and Canadian Football Hall of Famer), the Frank Tindall Trophy, “so that was really special.”
From there, Innes’ coaching career took him to the University of Calgary Dinos, Football Canada, then into marketing with the Calgary Stampeders where he helped them through financial struggles with the Save Our Stamps (SOS) campaign. In that promotional position, Innes recalled being in Edmonton negotiating a million-dollar loan on the day a tornado hit, followed soon after by a shake-up in his career.
Innes finally left football, but not coaching, in the late ’80s, when he became a consultant, or “performance coach,” in the oil and gas industry.
“So I’m a coach, either in business or football. So, kind of a checkered background, but a lot of variety, and it hasn’t been dull,” he said. “Lot’s of really memorable times when you’re working with young people as a coach… something that I was inherently built to do, and wanted to do.”
After retiring and moving to Sicamous in 2017 with his wife Lynda, Innes discovered he was unable to just live a life of leisure and joined the team at Brothers Liquor Store where he now coaches customers on beverage choices.
“I’m having fun. I enjoy working here because it’s a great staff and the customers are great. So they keep me young,” he said, noting he’ll be 80 this year. “We have some fun.”
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