The careers of many great athletes have been directly or indirectly affected by wars.

Such was the case of Alex MacMurchy, undoubtedly Collingwood’s most successful long distance runner who twice represented Canadain International meets and crowned his brilliant career by winning the Canadian and Allied Army Cross Country championship in Holland in 1945.

At the tender age of sixteen he had the brashness to enter a race against such top Canadian runners as Percy Wyer, Jim Bartlett and Jim Wilding over the full marathon distance of 26 miles, 385 yards.

He was matching stride for stride with the big guns until he tore off a running shoe between Washago and Orillia and dropped back to 25th place. He changed over to a pair of ordinary street shoes, passed sixteen runners and finished in tenth place.

A few months later he gave Scotty Rankine a good run in the C.N.E marathon.

The following year he won eight major races and finished fourth behind Dick Wilding, Bill Reynolds and Jim Cummings in the Hamilton marathon. It was his third marathon in two months. He rolled up another string of victories with the Forest Hill Recreation Club and then won the three-mile C.N.E. race over a field of the best runners of  Canada and the U.S.A. In the British Empire trails at Hamilton, he lost a shoe at the end of the first half-mile lap and finished in his bare feet, only five yards behind Rankine and Longman. He was considered a cinch to make the Canadian Olympic team in 1939 but the war cancelled out the 1940 Olympiad and Alex had already joined the armed forces.