Boxer.
Born at St. Boniface on 27 July 1939 to Anastasia “Eva” Ducharme (1910-1963) and Charles Arthur Joyal (1906-1973), he lived mostly in the Winnipeg area for the first 40 years of his life. He then moved to Vancouver, British Columbia. He travelled the world as George Jerome, a professional heavyweight boxer, and fought a long list of fighters between 1968 and 1980, including Canadian Hall-of-Famer George Chuvalo at St. Lawrence Market Hall in Toronto in 1978. In Chuvalo’s memoir, A Fighter’s Life, he referred to George Jerome as “a plodding, nondescript logging-camp cook from Vancouver with a record of 11–11–5.”
Jerome’s first fight was on 1 January 1968, against Russel Baer at Headingley. He fought 32 professional bouts, winning 13 of them. His last fight was on 21 May 1980 at the Kelowna Memorial Arena against Ron Roussel. He fought mostly in the Pacific Northwest in small towns for small payoffs, but ventured as far as Alaska, The Netherlands, and Auckland, New Zealand. During his boxing career, he was never knocked off his feet.
He spent his last 20 years as a boxing coach in Vancouver, where he nurtured many friendships. He had three children.
He died at New Westminster, BC on 21 January 2009.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 7 February 2009.
“George Robert Joyal,” Moch Family Tree, Ancestry.
“Flinging a few with a pug in a pub,” Michael William McCarthy, Medium, 16 July 2020.
This page was prepared by Lois Braun.
Page revised: 19 March 2025
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