Gerry Snyder

Gerry Maurice Snyder

• High School Luke Callaghan Memorial High School

• Born February 14, 1920 in Montreal, QC CAN
• Died November 26, 2007 in Montreal, QC CAN

Biographical Information

Gerry Snyder is perhaps the person most responsible for bringing Major League Baseball to Canada.

He was born in Montreal, QC in 1920 and grew up a passionate fan of the Montreal Royals, then the best team in the International League as the Brooklyn Dodgers' top farm team. He played junior hockey, then enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941, serving during World War II before opening a successful sporting goods store. He both played amateur softball and supported various amateur sports leagues around the city.

He was elected to Montreal's municipal council as the councillor for the Snowdon district in 1957, staying in the position for 25 years, and serving as vice-president of the city's Executive Council and of the city's public transit commission at various times. After the Royals folded in 1960, it was in his role on city council that he began to lobby for a major league team to come to Montreal, first meeting with Commissioner Ford Frick in 1962, although lack of a proper baseball stadium in the city was a major issue. Still, when the National League announced plans for expansion in 1967, he revived his campaign, making an ally of the now Los Angeles Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley and convincing a skeptical mayor, Jean Drapeau, with whom he was very close, to take up the cause. The lack of a ballpark was still a problem, as was the lack of a proper ownership group, but he managed to overcome all of these issues to convince NL owners in May 1968 that Montreal was the place to go (settling on San Diego, CA as the second expansion city was apparently more of a struggle).

When the new franchise appeared likely to be stillborn because no one would put up the initial financial bond required by the league, he convinced one of Montreal's leading business persons, Charles Bronfman, to come on board as the principal owner, and then identified Jarry Park as the site of a temporary ballpark that could be made ready for the start of the 1969 season (Drapeau had promised that a baseball-only stadium would be ready by 1973 at the latest, but when he managed to land the 1976 Olympic Games in 1970, those plans were pushed back by a few years). He is also the one who convinced John McHale to accept the position of team president. As a result of his good work, the Montreal Expos were a very successful franchise, both on and off the field, for two decades, until Bronfman decided to sell the team. The rest of the team's history was not so glorious, even if there were a few good moments.

He was also active in the campaign to bring the Olympic Games to Montreal, as well as landing the Canadian Formula 1 Grand Prix starting in 1978. He also worked with Peter Bavasi in getting the Toronto Blue Jays their first spring training home in Florida when they followed the Expos into MLB in 1977, recommending that they settle into the city of Dunedin, FL. That year he received the Queen's Silver Jubilee Medal for his contributions to his community and to Canada. He was nicknamed Montreal's Ambassador for Sports due to his success on all of these files.

In a completely unrelated matter, he made Canadian judicial history in 1987 when he successfully sued the Montreal Gazette for malicious libel for "identifying him as a representative of the Jewish Mafia suspected of having contacts with organized crime". A police report had confused his name with that of a suspect in a criminal investigation, leading to the deeply inappropriate story. The case went all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court and confirmed one of the largest damage awards made by a Canadian tribunal at the time.

He passed away in Montreal in 2007, having outlived the Expos by a couple of years. He was elected posthumously to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2025.

Related Sites

• Snyder v. Montreal Gazette Ltd.