They called him 'Coach', but Lloyd Percival was much more. He introduced modern track and field to Canada, produced a blueprint for radically changing the way hockey was played, built the world's first modern fitness club, inspired and contributed to government policy on sport, and was instrumental in the success of Canada's best amateur and professional athletes. However, he was a radical, an iconoclast, and a thorn in the side of the authorities in amateur and professional sports for almost four decades. Percival has been compared to Marshall McLuhan for his willingness "to look at things people took for granted". Respected around the world, Percival's controversial prescriptions for change made "the stepfather of Russian hockey" a "prophet without honour" in his homeland. The story of Lloyd Percival is the story of sport and fitness in Canada during an era of profound change, a story of the man most responsible for those changes and of his enduring legacy.

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Gary Mossman is a freelance writer living in Toronto. A member of the Society for International Hockey Research (SIHR) who has appeared in The Hockey News, his book, Fifty Years at the Royal Ashburn Golf Club, was published in 2012. A biography of Father David Bauer is awaiting publication.