Celebrate 1925 Victoria Cougar’s Stanley Cup Win and 4 other Defining Moments

The BC Sports Hall of Fame will celebrate five of the biggest Defining Moments in British Columbia sport history at its Annual Summit – September 14th-16th in Victoria.

The Defining Moments to be recognized, are:

• March 30, 1925: The Victoria Cougars of the Western Canada Hockey League defeat the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens in four games to capture the best-of-five Stanley Cup Final for BC’s second, and to date, last Stanley Cup win.

• August 2, 1992: Victoria’s Silken Laumann overcomes a devastating leg injury & five subsequent operations suffered only 10 weeks prior to the Barcelona Olympics to win a bronze medal in single sculls rowing, completing one of the greatest comebacks in Canadian sport history.

• September 17, 2000: Victoria’s Simon Whitfield rebounds from a massive crash on the bike portion of the first-ever Olympic triathlon with a blistering finishing kick to pass all competitors and win the sport’s inaugural Olympic gold medal in Sydney, Australia.

• May 8, 2005: After a spectacular season with the Phoenix Suns, Victoria’s Steve Nash becomes the first Canadian to win the NBA MVP award for the 2004-05 season. The following season Nash repeated as NBA MVP becoming one of only ten players in history to win back-to-back MVP awards.

• September 10, 2016: Parksville wheelchair athlete Michelle Stilwell wins the first of two gold medals at the Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, taking gold in the T52 class 400m. A week later she adds gold in the T52 100m as well. This marked three consecutive Paralympics in which Stilwell won at least one gold medal.

The five milestones will be the subject of the Defining Moments Luncheon powered by Canadian Sport Institute Pacific, Friday, September 15th, at the Coast Victoria Hotel in Victoria.

“As storytellers committed to celebrating the athletes, coaches, builders, teams and pioneers who have become parts of the fabric of our culture and heritage, we’re thrilled to have the chance to recall these Defining Moments and the memories they created for us,” said Tom Mayenknecht, Chair of the BC Sports Hall of Fame. “We’re proud to have the chance to celebrate these accomplishments. It’s another way for us to honour the past and inspire the future.”

Silken Laumann (Class of 2004), Simon Whitfield (2002), Steve Nash (2016), Michelle Stilwell (2017) are all Honored Members of the BC Sports Hall of Fame, while the Victoria Cougars were inducted in the team category in 1977.

Tickets to the Defining Moments Luncheon are available for purchase at www.bcsportshall.com/summit.

Previous Defining Moments celebrated at the Annual Summit since 2018 include the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and Paralympics, XV Commonwealth Games in Victoria in 1994, the Terry Fox Marathon of Hope in 1980, the Rick Hansen Man in Motion in 1987, Nancy Greene’s Olympic gold at Grenoble 1968, the Vancouver Canucks runs to the Stanley Cup Final in 1994 and 1982, the BC Lions 1994 Grey Cup victory and the Canadian win at the Alfred Dunhill Cup in 1994. They are all featured in the Defining Moments gallery at the BC Sports Hall of Fame at BC Place.