2011 – Dink Carroll

Dink Carroll

Austin (Dink) Carroll was born in Guelph in 1899.  He received his LL.B. from McGill University in 1923 but never practiced law. A star football player at McGill, he made this student interest in sport his life’s avocation. He became the traveling road secretary for the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International Baseball League, worked in advertising, publishing, and pursued a career as a writer and sports journalist, publishing as a freelancer in The Montrealer, Esquire, Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, The Reader’s Digest, Liberty, and the Toronto Star Weekly.
His columns on hockey and other sports ranging from boxing to salmon fishing appeared in the Montreal Gazette from 1941 until 1987. He died in Montreal in 1991. He also wrote fiction with sports settings. Carroll was thought to be  the most literate Canadian sportswriter of his generation.
Dink was named as a winner of the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award which gave automatic entry into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1984 along with a large group of distinguished sports journalism colleagues, most of whom have already been honoured by inclusion in the Sports Media Canada Honour Roll.

Austin (Dink) Carroll was born in Guelph in 1899.  He received his LL.B. from McGill University in 1923 but never practiced law. A star football player at McGill, he made this student interest in sport his life’s avocation. He became the traveling road secretary for the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International Baseball League, worked in advertising, publishing, and pursued a career as a writer and sports journalist, publishing as a freelancer in The Montrealer, Esquire, Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, The Reader’s Digest, Liberty, and the Toronto Star Weekly.   His columns on hockey and other sports ranging from boxing to salmon fishing appeared in the Montreal Gazette from 1941 until 1987. He died in Montreal in 1991. He also wrote fiction with sports settings. Carroll was thought to be  the most literate Canadian sportswriter of his generation. Dink was named as a winner of the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award which gave automatic entry into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1984 along with a large group of distinguished sports journalism colleagues, most of whom have already been honoured by inclusion in the Sports Media Canada Honour Roll.