Armand Bernard

Armand Bernard did not take up freestyle wrestling until the age of 19 but, after only a year, he was the Quebec provincial champion in the featherweight category. He would win eight additional provincial championships from 1951 through 1959 (missing only 1955) and four Canadian National Championships in 1951, 1952, 1954, and 1956. These successes qualified him to represent his country at two major international tournaments. At the 1952 Summer Olympics, he exited his first match with zero bad points after defeating Venezuela’s Ignacio Lugo by fall and, after dispatching Guatemala’s Marco Antonio Girón quickly, was one of only two remaining competitors without any bad points (the other being India’s Keshav Mangave. Subsequent losses to Risaburo Tominaga of Japan and Mangave, however, saw him eliminated from the tournament and out of medal contention. At the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, meanwhile, he finished fourth.

Although he retired from active competition in 1959, he took up coaching two years earlier in 1957 and continued to train wrestlers until 1973. By career he started working with Northern Electric in Montreal, but in his 40s he returned to school and took up a new profession as a mechanic and engineer. This led him to Western Canada, where he was able to continue his coaching career, and eventually to New Brunswick, where he lived out the rest of his life. Even after his official retirement, he served as an engineering instructor at local community colleges. He was made a member of the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame in 2007.