Watson, Alexander Gardner, 1918-2003 : Alexander Gardner Watson was born on March 28, 1918, in Cellardyke, Scotland. He emigrated to Port Dover in Ontario with his parents when he was three. He spent a year studying at Queen's University in Kingston before completing a medical degree at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He then won a scholarship to Cambridge University in England, where he earned a bachelor of surgery. He later did post-graduate studies at Harvard University, Cambridge University and Columbia Presbyterian in New York. Watson was a Royal Canadian Air Force (R.C.A.F.) Squadron Leader during the Second World War. After the cessation of hostilities in 1945, while posted in London, he managed a touring hockey team of Canadian air force personnel which travelled European countries for a series of exhibition games. After returning to Canada as a Senior Medical Officer at the R.C.A.F. headquarters in Ottawa, Watson became manager of the R.C.A.F. team in the four-team Ottawa senior hockey League. In 1947, he assembled a team mostly made of R.C.A.F. players to represent Canada at the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Under his management, the team would go on to win the Olympic gold medal.
After his retirement from the R.C.A.F., Watson became one of Canada's eminent ophthalmologists. He was chairman of the Ophthalmology department at the University of Ottawa medical school from 1968 to 1985 and was the driving force behind the Ottawa General's Eye Institute, which opened in 1992. He was appointed member of the Order of Canada in 1988. He died on December 28, 2003.
1948 Royal Canadian Air Force Flyers Olympic hockey team : In 1947, the International Olympic Committee adopted new rules tightening the definition of an amateur athlete. The Canadian Amateur Hockey Association felt the new standard eliminated most senior players from the competition and was considering not sending a Canadian team at the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Watson persuaded his air force superiors and the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association that he could assemble a hockey team from the Royal Canadian Air Force (R.C.A.F.) which could represent Canada at the Olympic tournament. Watson took on the role of manager for the team while Frank Boucher, the coach of the team, and his father George Boucher, a former NHL player, were given the task of selecting and training the team. Early exhibition games against Canadian senior teams showed that the team needed reinforcements, which they obtained from the Ottawa Senior League and other senior teams in Toronto and Montreal. To prepare themselves for the Olympic tournament, the R.C.A.F. Flyers played a number of games against European teams before arriving in Switzerland for the Olympics. Canadian and European hockey experts did not believe that the team would fare well against top European hockey national teams. The team did however go undefeated in the tournament and won the gold medal and the World Championship (the gold medal winner being declared automatically World Champion during a Winter Olympic year). Following their gold medal win, they barnstormed Czechoslovakia, France, Sweden, Belgium, Sweden, Holland, England and Scotland. They completed the European tour, including the Olympic matches, with a record of 31 wins, 5 losses and 6 ties. When the team returned to Canada in early April 1948, they were welcomed as heroes by large crowds in Ottawa. The Flyers' gold medal win was selected as the greatest moment in Canadian Forces sports history' of the 20th century in 2000 and the team was inducted in the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame in 2008.
