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Al Wilson (offensive lineman)

Canadian football player

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ4704972 ↗
Source-derived summary

Al "Dirt" Wilson (born April 6, 1950) is a Canadian former professional football player for the BC Lions of the Canadian Football League (CFL). Wilson spent his entire 15-year career with the Lions as an offensive lineman. Wilson played American college football at Montana State University. He is a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame, the B.C. Lions Wall of Fame, and has a street named in his honor, "Al Wilson Grove," in his hometown of Duncan. Wilson's #52 jersey is one of eight numbers retired by the B.C. Lions. In 2003, Wilson was voted a member of the B.C. Lions All-Time Dream Team as part of the club's 50th anniversary celebration. In 2006, Wilson was voted to the Honour Roll of the CFL's top 50 players of the league's modern era by Canadian sports network TSN.

Early life and college

Wilson attended Cowichan Secondary School in Duncan, British Columbia, where he played defensive end, offensive guard, and tight end for the football team. He went on to play college football at Montana State from 1968 to 1972, where he was the Bobcats' captain during his senior year.

Professional career

Following his graduation from Montana State, Wilson joined the B.C. Lions in 1972. Playing offensive guard, and later, centre, Wilson rarely missed a Lions' game in his 15-year career with the team, finishing with 233 games (he is the second longest-playing Lion in team history behind teammate Lui Passaglia's 408 game record).

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Al Wilson (offensive lineman)” as canadian football player. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Wilson, offensive and lineman.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1950, 2003, 2006, 1968—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Wilson, offensive and lineman providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Al Wilson (offensive lineman)”, the useful work is to connect “canadian football player” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4704972. The first chronological checks are 1950, 2003, 2006 and 1968.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Al Wilson (offensive lineman)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Al Wilson (offensive lineman) primary sources, Al Wilson (offensive lineman) archive and Wilson research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Al Wilson (offensive lineman)”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Al Wilson (offensive lineman)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.