Landa, Sam (1912-)

Sam Landa was born in Saskatoon on December 31, 1912, to the first Jewish family to settle in the city. He attended the University of Saskatchewan and earned his medical degree from the University of Manitoba in 1938. Following his Football career with the U of S Huskies, he was the original team doctor for the Saskatoon Hilltops, 1947-86, and continued doing surgery until the age of 80. He was the first president of the Canadian Association of Sport Sciences, inaugurated at the Pan American Games in Winnipeg in 1967, led the medical staff for the Canada Winter Games in Saskatoon in 1971, and was a member of the medical team at the Munich Olympics in 1972. That year he chaired ParticipACTION Saskatoon, the forerunning test community for the brilliant marketing agency behind the wildly successful ParticipACTION movement in Canada. For his 60-plus years of volunteer service to sports and medicine, he received the Kinsman Sportsman of the Year award and the CFQC-TV Citizen of the Year award, and was inducted into both the Saskatoon and Saskatchewan Sports Halls of Fame. He received the Order of Canada in 1977.

Donald A. Bailey