The stainless steel statue “Touchdown” has stood in front of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and Museum in Hamilton, Ont. for almost 44 years. It’ll soon be on a journey to the new Tim Hortons Field when the entire museum makes the trip, prior to kick-off of the 2016 Hamilton Tiger-Cats football season.
The statue features two football players, a receiver catching a football as a defender attempts to tackle him.
The statue was the work of Austrian Tony Gsellmann, a Hamilton steelworker and artist who emigrated from Switzerland to Canada in 1954.
"His primary trade was as a millwright, metalworker and blacksmith," says his son Edmund Gsellmann. "He learned the trade cutting steel by hand, working it in a forge and hammering it out, combined with the more practical side of working steel with machinery."
Tony found work as a welder/boilermaker at Hamilton’s Stelco operations in 1957, where he worked until retirement in 1981. He passed away in 2010.
"My father would work at Stelco until four in the afternoon, come home and then go into his metal shop in the garage until 10 o’ clock at night," says Edmund. "He was artistically driven and was always taking on private commissions from clients."
Tony’s work included a massive steel mural on the history of Canada, which was displayed at the Steel Pavilion at Expo ’67 in Montreal. His football commissions included 125 steel busts among the 283 existing busts of inductees at the Canadian Football Hall of Fame (they’re now produced in acrylic). A 1974 Toronto Star article notes that the Canadian Football League paid $500 apiece for the first 73. They each required 70 hours of work to complete.
The Touchdown was a commission from Stelco rival Dofasco. Edmund recalls modelling for the statue — both figures in fact.
"I played football for Cathedral High School so I posed for my father," he says. "The statue was too big for the garage so he created it in the driveway over seven or eight months. Dofasco would send him four- by eight-foot sheets of steel 1/8th of an inch thick. He would cut the steel by hand and work it with a ball peen hammer on an anvil. He did most of the other work with a grinder, a welding machine and an oxy acetylene torch. The structure was very complicated and I remember my father using 3,500 rivets to hold it together internally."
A June 1973 issue of corporate magazine the INCO Triangle boasts that the statue was made from Type 304 stainless steel, produced using Sudbury nickel.
The statue was officially unveiled on November 28, 1972 and has continued to be a popular draw, says Mark DeNobile, executive director of the hall of fame. It’s the frequent centrepiece of photos taken by dating couples, graduating students and even people heading for court appearances at the John Sopinka Courthouse located nearby.
"Stelco and Dofasco were always big supporters of the hall, including Dofasco’s commissioning of The Touchdown," he says. "In fact, some of our hall-of-famers were steelworkers, back in the day when football players had another job. Tiger-Cat Vince Scott was a Stelco worker."
DeNobile says he’s eager to see the hall heading for Tim Hortons Field where its collection will become more easily accessible to football fans. Currently, specialists are looking at how the statue can be safely unbolted and transported to the field.
"I’m not sure we’ll build another base as high as the one we currently have," he says. "It may be mounted closer to the ground so that the little folks can have their photos taken without climbing up. From my office I’ve watched plenty of people do that over the years — but I never wanted to be the angry guy who comes out of the front door and waves his fist at the clouds as he tells people to get off his statue."
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