PLAYER #62 - LES ASCOTT (1940-41, 45-53)

Les Ascott won five Grey Cups with the Argos, which would mean a ring for each finger on one hand, right? Wrong!

"We didn't get rings back then, we got Bulova watches," said Ascott, whose three watches from the 1945-47 Grey Cup years have gone missing since. In 1950, he did receive a ring, but it was from the province of Ontario, not the team, and for his final championship in 1952, Ascott received a windbreaker.

They may not have been the elaborate $3,500 prizes that Jim Speros gave to his Baltimore Stallions players last year, but that was a different time and era.

"There were no contracts back then; all we used to do was a handshake," said Ascott, who figures to have made $50 a season, or the equivalent of two suits from Tip Top Tailors, until the 1948 season. "The first good sized cheque was $500 (in 1948)."

Ascott figures to have gotten raises of about $200 a season after that until the end of his career in 1953, a solid 11-year stay with the Argonauts during the team's most successful period in their history on the field. A bruising 250-pound lineman who played either guard or tackle on both offence and defence, Ascott was the first Argo to play in over 100 games in the Double Blue uniform, performing in a total of 107 regular season contests and 21 playoff battles.

"It was just as (physical) then as it is now," said Ascott, an eastern all-star in 1945, who has no cartilege in one knee as a result of playing the game. "The players are bigger and faster now, though. We never won any races, but we always got there."

A native of Peterborough, Ascott played a year with his hometown in the Ontario Rugby Football Union (ORFU) in 1939, and then joined the Argos a year later. In 1942, Ascott joined the navy and was stationed in Toronto and then Halifax, where he worked as a first-class stoker, looking after the ship's engines. In fact, he is now considered hard-of-hearing because of exposure to these engines.

After cutting short his World War II service to help out on the family farm, Ascott returned to the Argos in 1945, and along with a lot of other war veterans, formed the core of the team that went on to win those five Grey Cups.

When his football career ended, Ascott worked as a toolmaker before joining Carling O'Keefe Breweries as a salesman, a position he held for 18 years. He spent another 15 years in a similar capacity with Hiram Walker before retiring in 1982, when he moved back to Peterborough, where he currently lives with his wife Irene. The two recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, and they have two children, Terry and Barbara, and three granddaughters.

Ascott was also honoured in his hometown in 1981 when he was inducted into the Peterborough Sports Hall of Fame.