Joseph "Joe" Marcoux
In the home of Osias Marcoux, beside the ancient MacPhee farm on Glen Robertson Road, Joseph André Marcoux was born May 24th, 1892. As the boy arrived at school, his peers did as was custom by shortening his name as much as possible, and so for the next three-score years he was known as Joe Marcoux.
While still young, Joe’s father sold their MacPhee bridge home and took over operation of the Coteau hotel not far from Glen Robertson. This move did not last long, however, for missing his bosom French and Scottish friends Osias Marcoux quickly relocated to Alexandria. Joe then helped his brother Leo in the operation of his flourishing livery stable, where the youth became an instrumental help in establishing the Marcoux stable as a top-quality roadster provider.
In those early boom years Alexandria played lacrosse in the top-bracket intermediate league in Canada, alongside Ottawa and Montreal. In 1909, the hefty 17-year-old Joe Marcoux broke into the team alongside such greats as Charlie Gauthier (inducted 1979) and Neil McCormick, and the team became Ottawa Valley champions. Marcoux soon became a chief reason for Alexandria’s continuous success on the field and the ice. In 1913, the now-mature 21-year-old Joe had his best season. The summer came to a close with Alexandria lacrosse being crowned Ottawa Valley champion. This excluding the City of Ottawa, the team played the Ottawa Crescents in a home-and-home total goals series for the Eastern Ontario championship. Though losing the first playoff game in Ottawa 3-2, the team rallied on home soil winning 2-0, thanks to a superb shutout by goaler Jim McCaffrey (inducted 1985). Alexandria thus won the series 4-3. Coach Charlie Gauthier later recalled the way Joe Marcoux scored the round-winning goal, thanks to some swift manoeuvres from the team which propelled the ball to the head. The team was slated to play Brampton in the All-Ontario finals, but a lack of financial guarantees prevented this from happening.
A few months later Marcoux was a star with the Alexandria hockey team, the Lower Ottawa Champions. Meeting Hull in the Allan Cup playoffs, the team suffered a 6-2 loss. As World War I broke out, the careers of many young greats such as Joe Marcoux were brought to early ends. Joe nonetheless played a few games with the pro lacrosse Montreal Nationals before enlisting with the Eastern Ontario Second Battalion.
As the field game came to an end in the Roaring Twenties and was replaced by Box lacrosse in the Hungry Thirties, Joe Marcoux still managed to give the younger players a run for their skill in spite of his age. He sought no favours nor did he yield any, and he was always quick to defend himself and his colleagues, and on one occasion at Chisholm Park Father Ewen (inducted 1984) needed to restrain him on the bench to prevent him from joining the fray.
Meanwhile, by the 1920s the livery stables were being replaced by the auto-taxi, and the no-longer-young Leo made a deal with his brother Joe. Foreseeing the end of livery horses and heavy-draft freight hauling, Joe partnered with his brother-in-law Jerry Gagnier (inducted 1987) to form Marcoux & Gagnier Taxi & Trucking, which became the basis for Glengarry Transport Ltd. As illness shortened Gagnier’s life and the partnership, the Shepherd brothers brought the trucking rights and in-turn sold out to Gerard Lefebvre, which led to the creation of one of the largest and most progressive private enterprise companies in the trucking industry of North America.
Glengarry’s all-time-great hockey and lacrosse player, sportsman and successful businessman ended with Joe’s death on March 24th, 1963.
