With persistence and unruffled staying power, Hilary Caldwell came out of Saanich Commonwealth Place to swim into the Victoria Sports Hall of Fame with the Class of 2024.
Caldwell won a late-career Olympic bronze medal in the women’s 200-metre backstroke at Rio 2016. That followed her bronze medals in the event at the 2013 FINA world championships in Barcelona and 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games and gold in the 2015 Toronto Pan Am Games.
The inductees for the Victoria Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2024 were unveiled this morning. Joining Caldwell will be the dynamically swift and resourceful former rugby star Ed Fairhurst, who came out of St. Michaels University School to play in the 2003, 2007 and 2011 World Cups for Canada. His 57 caps were the most for a Canadian scrum-half at the time. Fairhurst was also a standout in sevens and represented Canada in the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games and the 2005 Rugby Sevens World Cup in Hong Kong.
The late Dennis Eckert, known for his icy consistency both in the field and at the plate, will be inducted for helping lead Canada to the gold medals in men’s softball at the 1979 Puerto Rico and 1983 Caracas Pan Am Games and Victoria teams to 11 B.C. and six Canadian Senior A championships.
The fourth athlete going in the Class is former Reynolds Secondary and James Bay rugby player Brian Ramsay, who went on to play 152 games as an offensive lineman over a nine-season CFL career with the Edmonton Eskimos (now Elks), Toronto Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger-Cats and is now executive director of the CPL Players Association.
Going into the builders category will be Kelly Mann, longtime former president and CEO of the B.C. Games; Dick Midgley, who rose out of Western Speedway to race cars in all the top NASCAR tracks from Daytona to Watkins Glen; and Liz Ashton, the two-time equestrian Olympian and former Camosun College president, whose vision helped create the Pacific Institute for Sport Excellence, known now across the Island simply as PISE.
Cliff LeQuesne, who has provided the now-familiar background voice for Victoria sports for more than five decades, will be inducted into the media category in the Class of 2024.
LeQuesne has covered and commented on the Island sports scene on radio, beginning at CFAX in 1972, and then on The Q since 1987. He has also served, since 1985, as the long-term public-address announcer for the Victoria Cougars of the WHL, Salsa-Grizzlies of the BCHL, Salmon Kings of the ECHL and Royals of the WHL in hockey, Victoria Shamrocks of the Western Lacrosse Association and Pacific FC of the Canadian Premier League in soccer.
“This induction honour means so much to me,” said LeQuesne.
“I love what I do and the people I have met along the way in doing it. I’ve had a front-row seat to so many great sporting events in this city.”
The Class was selected by the standing Victoria Sports Hall of Fame induction/selection committee, chaired by Chris Graham.
The induction ceremony will take place Oct. 26 at the Delta Ocean Pointe ballroom. Tickets are available through the Greater Victoria Sports Hall of Fame website at gvshof.ca.
The Victoria Sports Hall of Fame, with Doug Jennings the current president of the Board of Directors, was inaugurated in 1991. Plaques honouring the Class of 2024 will join those of the 267 previous inductees on the concourse walls of Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
