Cape Breton runners racing to commemorate 100th anniversary of Johnny Miles’ Boston Marathon win

This spring will mark 100 years since Cape Breton’s Johnny Miles made history and won the Boston Marathon.

The third Monday in April will mark 100 years since Johnny Miles of Sydney Mines, N.S., came out of nowhere to win the 1926 Boston Marathon.

This year more than a dozen Cape Breton runners will celebrate the centennial of Miles’ historic win by heading to Boston and running the race.

“It’s been a goal of mine to get to this marathon because Johnny Miles is such a big deal around here,” said Andre Arseneau of Sydney River, N.S., one of the Cape Bretoners running the 2026 Boston Marathon. “I wanted to be able to go to Boston and wear a shirt that says I’m following in the footsteps of Johnny Miles.”

From the looks of things, he will.

Commemorative shirts featuring Miles’ image and the years of his two Boston Marathon wins – 1926 and 1929 - are being ordered for the Cape Breton runners to wear on the Boston course.

“It is an amazing feat,” said Paul MacDougall, a Cape Breton sports history writer who has penned a number of columns about Miles’ legacy. “Johnny Miles is one of Nova Scotia’s greatest athletes. It’s nearly on par with the Olympics, the Boston Marathon, it’s so well-known. So for us to have someone that’s been there 100 years ago, won it, and then (he) went to the Olympics in 1928.”

Miles’ hometown has preserved his memory with a highway sign and a larger-than-life statue. There are annual races named after him in Sydney Mines and New Glasgow, N.S., where he lived later in life.

Miles worked in his father’s coal mine. Part of his legend has always been his blue-collar background.

“He would run after the milk cart and that was his training,” Arseneau said.

The first time Miles ran the Boston Marathon, he wore a pair of 98-cent sneakers.

“(He wore) a t-shirt that his mom sewed a maple leaf on the front of,” MacDougall said.

Bostonians familiar with Nova Scotia’s annual Christmas tree donation, a thank you for the help the city gave Halifax following the 1917 Halifax Explosion, will be reminded of another piece of Nova Scotia history on April 20. A cohort of Cape Bretoners are running in reminder of the province’s marathoner who came to their city and became a champion.

“Most people that run Boston, it’s because of the history of Boston,” Arseneau said. “It’s an important race and so when they see that someone is running in the footsteps of someone who’s done it in the past, I think they catch on.”

For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page