by Brent Eades
A link shared by Mayor McLaughlin led me to this fascinating 1939 radio interview with Almonte’s own Dr. James Naismith, the inventor of basketball.
Provided by the University of Kansas — where Naismith was a coach and faculty member for almost forty years — the clip from the “We the People” radio show is the only known audio recording of Naismith.
In it he “discusses setting up the first basketball game with two peach baskets in a gymnasium at the International YMCA Training School… in Springfield, Massachusetts in December 1891.”
James Naismith died a few months after the interview, at the age of 78.
