Three years after it was conceived, the Hamilton Sports Hall of Fame is still a concept more than a place.
A permanent, brick-and-mortar facility is coming soon, the folks who run it promise. Soon enough that memorabilia that is now being collected will one day be on display. In the meantime, the hall remains in the domain of cyberspace as a website.
But the memories and achievements built by the folks being honoured Tuesday night at the induction dinner are very real and very tangible. Among the group of nine honourees, there are thousands of championships and records and victories — yes, thousands — that still stand. Most have names that still prompt a knowing nod of the head throughout the city and across the country.
Equally important are the foundations they laid for athletes who came after them. Legacies that opened doors, changed sports and brought an incredible amount of pride to those who, like them, called Hamilton home.
Those are as solid as any building that might someday house them.
CHRIS ROGERS: Athlete — Horse racing
These days Hamilton isn’t exactly known as a hotbed for the pony world. But once upon a time we were, and Chris Rogers was largely the reason for that.
The jockey, who was known for leading big underdogs to the winner’s circle, won 2,043 races in a career which began in 1941 at Fort Erie. Those victories included two Queen’s Plates and a pair of King’s Plates. Nearly 40 years since his death, he’s still widely considered perhaps the best jockey ever produced in this country.
He’s a member of the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame.
JACK PELECH: Builder
Many people in the local sports community might recognize Jack Pelech’s name but aren’t really sure why. Others won’t be familiar with it at all.
He’d be OK with that. Because most of what he did was behind the scenes, coming up with ideas to advance sports or working to make other people’s ideas become reality.
He helped launch the ParticipACTION campaign that reached tens of thousands of school kids in the 1970s. He was a driving force behind the Canada Games, and the 2003 World Cycling Championships and World Judo Championships in Hamilton.
He also chaired the local bids for the Pan Am Games and Commonwealth Games.
His efforts led him to be named the 1987 Hamilton Citizen of the Year and earned him a spot in the Order of Canada before he died in 2008.
ANGELO MOSCA: Athlete — Football and wrestling
Travel across Canada and you’ll find nobody is more synonymous with Hamilton than Angelo Mosca.
As a football player, he was mean, unforgiving, and revving at 1,000 rpm all the time. His intensity was legendary. His hits are still talked about four decades after his last game. His resumé of nine Grey Cup appearances and five championships is still remarkable. Mosca is the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
He did little after retirement to soften his public image, taking his act into the pro wrestling ring as King Kong Mosca, the biggest, baddest grappler out there.
Yet most people who meet him today will tell you he’s nothing like the scary, intimidating image he built.
JOHN MCGRANE: Athlete — Soccer
It’s difficult to image how big a deal John McGrane might have been if soccer had been as enormous in Canada when he was playing as it is now.
Starting in local leagues, he advanced to the Canadian Olympic team for which he played in the Montreal Games. His work there earned him a spot in the North American Soccer League where he played with and against Pele and all the other great stars of the 1970s.
After retiring, he ran and coached the Hamilton Steelers and became CEO of Soccer World Systems, building the game across this country.
He is a member of the Hamilton, Ontario and Canadian Soccer halls of fame.
BOBBY KERR: Athlete — Track and field
As should be the case, a huge fuss was made over all the Canadian medal winners in London. Chances are, though, few could name the first Canadian to ever win a gold at an Olympics.
That would be Bobby Kerr, who won the 200-metre race in 1908, coincidentally also in London. He also took a bronze that year in the 100-metres, making him one of this country’s — and certainly one of this city’s — earliest sports superstars.
But running wasn’t the entirety of Kerr’s contribution. After he hung up the spikes, he worked as an official in the 1928 and 1932 Games while coaching athletes here in town. He also helped organize the 1930 British Empire Games which turned into the Commonwealth Games and led to the construction of what is now Ivor Wynne Stadium.
FLORENCE HARVEY: Athlete — Golf
You know that old story about golf meaning Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden? It’s not true, yet there was a time when it may as well have been. Or close, anyway.
Florence Harvey changed much of that in Canada. Playing out of the Hamilton Golf & Country Club, she won four Ontario ladies titles, two Canadian championships — and was runner up two other times — and made it to the semifinals of the British Open.
But it was her founding of the Canadian Ladies Golf Association in 1913 that really began to throw the doors wide open for female players. Women had been playing for close to 20 years by this point, but the organization she brought led to national championships and many more opportunities at many more places.
Harvey was eventually enshrined as a member of the Ontario and Canadian golf halls of fame before passing away in 1968.
DOUG HARRISON: Builder — Basketball
It’s one thing to start a local sports organization with the thought that it’ll be successful. It’s another to actually make that happen.
Yet Doug Harrison’s Transway basketball program has eclipsed any reasonable expectation he might’ve had when it launched back in 1983. Since then his organization’s teams have won 75 provincial championships and well over 200 tournaments. And counting.
Transway also runs a massive tournament in Hamilton every year that brings many of the best young players to the city, and has helped make this area a hub of basketball excellence.
Harrison’s efforts earned him the 1998 Sport Volunteer of the Year award and a spot in the Ontario Basketball Hall of Fame.
ED BEATTIE: Athlete — Boxing
In a sport as tough as boxing, the numbers Ed Beattie put up over his career are hard to fathom.
He had more than 200 fights as an amateur, losing just seven of them. Two hundred. In that time, he won 2 Canadian championships and earned a spot as the captain of Canada’s Olympic boxing team at the 1956 Games in Melbourne, Australia.
He turned pro and surely would’ve had as long a pro career as his amateur one but for health problems that sidelined him for a time. He did return and won a number of fights leading to the Canadian lightweight championship in 1960.
In 1974, he was inducted into the Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame, the same year he served as head coach of the Canadian team at the Commonwealth Games.
JAKE GAUDAUR: Builder
It is impossible to have any in-depth discussion about the history of the Canadian Football League and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats without quickly arriving at a story about Jake Gaudaur. Calling him a legend understates his role in the league’s past.
For 11 years he was a player, seven of those with the Ticats in the 1940s and early ’50s.
A year after retiring, he took over as president and general manager of the team and presided over a remarkable tenure during which the team won nine Eastern championships and four Grey Cups.
A year after that role ended, he became commissioner of the league, a job he held from 1968 until 1984. Under his leadership, the Canadian Football Hall of Fame got going as well as a number of other key initiatives.
Gaudaur is a member of that hall as well as a member of the Order of Canada. He passed away in 2007.