Hilary Caldwell came out of the Saanich Commonwealth Place pool to win Olympic Games and world championship swimming medals. Rugby player Ed Fairhurst came out of St. Michaels University School and the University of Victoria Vikes to play in the 2003, 2007 and 2011 World Cups for Canada.
From different sporting worlds, but the same city wellspring, their paths crossed Saturday night at the Delta Ocean Pointe ballroom in the induction ceremony for the Victoria Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2024.
Caldwell won the 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.
“We had such a special, high achieving-group in Commonwealth Pool, with so many swimmers on the national team,” said Caldwell.
“And role models breed success. I tried to replicate and emulate what Ryan [two-time Olympic medallist and previously-inducted Ryan Cochrane] did.”
Cochrane and Caldwell stood as role models for those have accounted for Canada’s recent slough of medal in Olympic swimming.
“It’s all popped. Canada doesn’t go in looking for one medal anymore but six or seven,” said Caldwell, 33, now working in sales and marketing in Vancouver.
The building blocks established by Cochrane and Caldwell, the latter who came across from White Rock to join the late Randy Bennett’s group at Saanich Commonwealth pool, had a lot to do with that.
Meanwhile, with a keen ability to read the pitch, Fairhurst amassed 57 caps, the most for a Canadian scrum-half at the time of his retirement. He also used his swiftness and ability to rip holes in opposition defences in sevens and represented Canada in the 2002 Manchester Commonwealth Games and the 2005 Rugby Sevens World Cup in Hong Kong.
“All the opportunities I got came from coming out of the Island at SMUS, UVic and the national U-23 team based here,” said Fairhurst, 45, an investment adviser in Vancouver.
“They provided me the springboard, so this makes this night very special.”
Also inducted Saturday with the Class of 2024 was 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 who recently retired as executive director of the CFL Players Association.
“Sport has taken me around the world and I’ve always been proud to call Victoria home,” said Ramsay, now executive director of the union which represents AHL and ECHL pros in hockey.
“Tonight’s honour makes you reflect on how you got here and all the early mornings and late nights and all the people who picked you up along the way when you fell.”
The fourth athlete inducted is the late softball star Dennis Eckert, known for his efficiency both in the field and at the plate, as he helped lead Canada to the gold medals at the 1979 Puerto Rico and 1983 Caracas Pan Am Games and Victoria teams to 11 B.C. and six Canadian Senior A championships.
Inducted into the builders category was Dick Midgley, who came out of Western Speedway to race cars in all the top NASCAR tracks from Daytona to Watkins Glen; Kelly Mann, the longtime former president and CEO of the B.C. Games; and Dr. Liz Ashton, the two-time equestrian Olympian and former Camosun College president who was crucial in the creation the Pacific Institute for Sport Education, known simply as PISE, and now a hub of sports.
Mann’s and Ashton’s roles have been critical in the Island’s success of producing athletes for multi-sport Games from Commonwealth, Pan Am to Olympics.
“Builders don’t get the medals, the checkered flag or make the podium like the athletes but we help the athletes get there and that’s our legacy and our impact,” said Mann.
Ashton noted she is being inducted as an Island sports builder after her career from away as an Olympic equestrian: “Once equestrian was finished, I looked at building up multi-sport when I came to the Island.”
Cliff LeQuesne, who has provided the voice soundtrack for Victoria sports for more than five decades, was inducted into the media category. LeQuesne has commented on the Island sports scene on radio, beginning at CFAX in 1972, and then at The Q since 1987. Starting in 1985, he has also been the arena PA announcer in hockey for the Victoria Cougars and Royals of the WHL, Salsa and Grizzlies of the BCHL and Salmon Kings of the ECHL, 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 in a vote by the Victoria Sports Hall of Fame induction/selection committee, chaired by Chris Graham.
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.
