BC Sports Hall of Fame Inducts Class of 2026

November 5, 2026

For Immediate Release

November 5th, 2026

Vancouver, B.C. – The BC Sports Hall of Fame inducted its Class of 2026 during a reception at the Hall this afternoon. Joining the honoured member ranks was five athletes, three builder-coaches, one team, one pioneer, one media member and the winner of the prestigious W.A.C. Bennett Award.

The 2026 Induction Class welcomed into the Hall of Champions includes:

Athletes

  • Doug Brown – Football
  • Silvana Burtini – Soccer
  • Justin Kripps – Bobsleigh
  • Georgia Simmerling – Multi-Sport
  • Les Wilson – Soccer

 

Builders-Coaches

  • Ossie Chavarria – Baseball
  • Jim Clive – Beach Volleyball
  • Barb Hart Harris – Field Hockey

 

Team

  • 2006 Vancouver Whitecaps Women’s Soccer
    • Team Members: Paige Adams, Dave Adolph (athletic therapist), Amber Allen, Sasha Andrews, Amy Apps, Sian Bagshawe, Taryne Boudreau, Kirsteen Buchan, Candace Chapman, Jaclyn Dunnet, Martina Franko, Natalie Groenewoud, Carey Gustafson, Randee Hermus, Eden Hingwing, Natalie Hirayama, Selenia Iacchelli, Kaylyn Kyle, Kara Lang, Ciara McCormack, Ashley McGhee, Erin McLeod, Amelie Mercier, Tiffany Milbrett, Andrea Neil (captain & assistant coach), Jan Peace (team doctor), Sari Raber, Erin Ramsay, Jodi Ann Robinson, Lindsay Rohla, Pat Rohla (assistant coach), Sophie Schmidt, Desiree Scott, Steve Simonson (assistant coach), Christine Sinclair, Rheanne Sleiman, Stephanie Smith, Katie Thorlakson, Brittany Timko, Diane Voice (manager), Stephanie Weston, Darren Woloshen (goalkeeper coach), Emily Zurrer.

 

Pioneer

  • Bruce Forster – Sports Medicine

 

Media

  • John McKeachie

 

 W.A.C. Bennett Award

  • John Mills

 

Induction into the BC Sports Hall of Fame is the highest sporting honour in British Columbia, celebrating the extraordinary individuals and moments that make up the fabric of B.C.’s diverse sport history.

Since 1966, the BC Sports Hall of Fame has now inducted 473 individuals and 72 teams to its Hall of Champions, ensuring their legacies will continue to inspire future generations.

 

2026 BC Sports Hall of Fame Inductee Biographies:

Athlete Category

Doug Brown – Football

It’s not often you hear a football player crediting swimming with their success on the field.

But Doug Brown believes the reason he did not undergo a single surgery in 15 years playing professional football is due to the overall strength he built over a decade of competitive swimming while growing up. There might be something to that as Doug’s career as a defensive lineman extended well into his late thirties—almost unheard of for the position—and he stands today as one of the greatest defensive linemen in CFL history. 

Born in New Westminster and raised in Coquitlam, in addition to swimming Doug played soccer and hockey growing up. At Port Moody Secondary he excelled at rugby, playing lock on the BC U17 and U19 provincial teams that both won gold at the Canada Summer Games and earning selection to the Canada U19 national team. He looked up to many of the members of Canada’s 1991 World Cup team, in particular Norm Hadley.

Rugby may have been Doug’s path until he finally gave in to coaches who’d hounded him because of his 6’8” height to try two new sports in his Grade 12 year: basketball and football. Doug played defensive end and tight end for the Blues and helped them to Port Moody’s first and to date only BC provincial high school football 1A championship defeating the South Delta Sun Devils 22-6 at BC Place.

Still raw when it came to football, SFU offered Doug a partial scholarship and he red-shirted his first year there. He continued to play club rugby after SFU’s football season ended, a fact he didn’t advertise with his football coaches, although the occasional black eye or broken nose he sported at offseason practices may have raised suspicions. Doug played three seasons at SFU highlighted by his senior year when he was named an NAIA All-American.

In 1997 Doug was drafted fifth overall by the Calgary Stampeders but ended up signing with Marv Levy’s Buffalo Bills becoming the first ever SFU graduate to sign with an NFL team and later the first to play an NFL game. The adjustment to the NFL proved the biggest leap of Doug’s career, but he put in a tremendous amount of extra work on Buffalo’s practice squad learning what it took to make it in the toughest league in the world. In 1998 he signed with Washington and over the next two seasons he made 22 tackles in 20 regular season games, a starter in eight of those when All-Pro Dana Stubblefield was injured.

 Doug fractured his foot and missed the entire 2000 season and when a contract from Washington wasn’t initially offered the following year, he signed with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the CFL. For the next 11 seasons until 2011, Doug was a pillar on the Bomber D-Line appearing in 188 regular season games and recording 426 tackles and 52 sacks, the latter third most in Blue Bombers club history. Doug’s debut CFL season in 2001 made quite the statement as he won the CFL’s Most Outstanding Canadian Player Award, was named a CFL All-Star, and helped Winnipeg to the Grey Cup final, the first of three he played in during his career (2007 and 2011 the others).

In total he was named a CFL All-Star seven times during his career (second most in CFL history among defensive tackles) and eight times a divisional All-Star. He finished as a finalist for the CFL’s Most Outstanding Canadian Award two more times and for the CFL’s Most Outstanding Defensive Player Award in 2008. In terms of club awards, Doug was named the Blue Bombers’ Most Outstanding Player once, Most Outstanding Canadian eight times, and Most Outstanding Defensive Player three times.

Immediately after retiring, he was inducted into the Winnipeg Football Club Hall of Fame and SFU Athletics Hall of Fame in 2012, along with the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 2016 and the BC Football Hall of Fame in 2022.

Since 2012 Doug has worked as the Blue Bombers colour commentator on CJOB radio.

 

Silvana Burtini – Soccer

Given what was to come for her on the soccer pitch, it’s hard to believe that in high school Silvana Burtini may have actually been a better basketball player.  

Forced to choose between the two sports in grade 12, Silvana chose soccer and her career in the beautiful game rocketed off from there like one of her trademark darting runs towards the opposition goal. It wasn’t long before Silvana’s blinding speed, superb skill, and clutch finishing lit up pitches all over the world. One of the pioneering cornerstones of the early Canadian women’s national teams, to this day she remains one of Canada’s all-time greatest players.

Born and raised in Williams Lake, Silvana loved all sports and being active from a young age. She began playing soccer at age six and ran track and field in elementary school. At Columneetza Secondary she played basketball, volleyball, and team handball. She played mostly on Williams Lake boys soccer teams until her teens when there were enough girls near her age to form an all-girls team that travelled to tournaments all over BC. She made the BC U18 provincial team and while starring at the Canadian championships Canadian women’s national team coach Neil Turnbull selected Silvana to the national program in 1987. The women’s national team was so new, Silvana wasn’t even aware there was such a thing in Canada. “I was very fortunate the doors just kept opening for me,” she said later.

For the next 17 years until 2003, Silvana remained a constant on the Canadian women’s national team alongside fellow BC Sports Hall of Famers Geri Donnelly, Andrea Neil, and even the first few years of a young phenom named Christine Sinclair. Over that time Silvana earned 77 career international caps for Canada and scored 38 goals, the second highest total all-time among Canadian women at the time of her retirement and still ranking in the top five today. Twice Silvana set the Canadian national record for most goals scored in a single match, scoring five goals versus Mexico in 1994 and then breaking her own record by scoring an unbelievable eight versus Puerto Rico in 1998.

Life on the Canadian women’s national team then was a far cry from today. Like most players then, when not coming together to train in brief national team camps or playing internationally Silvana played on local amateur club teams (captained Surrey Marlins SC to national titles in 1992 and 1993), went to school (at SFU, Capilano College, and BCIT), and worked a regular day job (BC Tel/Telus and later the Vancouver Police Department).

Silvana played pivotal roles in some of Canada’s best-ever international results. She represented Canada at three FIFA Women’s World Cups in 1995, 1999, and 2003 making nine match appearances. In the latter, she helped Canada to a strong fourth place finish, our best-ever World Cup result to date. In 1998 Silvana led Canada to the CONCACAF Women’s Championship where she scored eight goals, won the tournament’s golden boot as leading scorer, and was named tournament MVP. On that basis she was also named Canada Soccer’s Women’s Player of the Year. She also boosted Canada to three other CONCACAF medal finishes: silver in 1994 and 2002, and bronze in 1993. Before all of that she helped Canada to a quarterfinal finish at the often-forgotten 1988 FIFA Women’s Invitation Tournament in China that drew crowds of 45,000 spectators and served as a test run for the eventual creation of the Women’s World Cup.

On the club side, Silvana played on the 1999 Raleigh Wings that captured the USL W-League championship. She was drafted by the Carolina Courage for the inaugural WUSA season in 2001 and scored four goals in 17 matches.

In 2012 Silvana was named one of Canada Soccer’s Top 30 Female Players of the Past Century. She was inducted into the Canada Soccer Hall of Fame in 2010 and the BC Soccer Hall of Fame in 2019. In 2005 Silvana was named a FIFA Ambassador for Women’s Football alongside other international legends of the game like Mia Hamm, Michelle Akers, Pia Sundhage, and Sun Wen.

 

Justin Kripps – Bobsleigh

Justin Kripps readily admits that by the age of eighteen his knowledge of bobsleigh essentially amounted to the movie Cool Runnings. 

That script was flipped in 2005 when Bobsleigh Canada coach Matt Hindle spotted Justin sprinting to victory in a 100m race at the BC junior provincial track and field championships. A team of Hollywood’s best scriptwriters couldn’t have dreamt up what was to come next. Justin merely went on to become one of the world’s best bobsleigh athletes and one of Canada’s most decorated over 16 years on the Canadian national team from 2006-22.  

Justin was born in Na’alehu, Hawaii before the Kripps family moved to Cambodia where Justin’s dad performed aid work for UNICEF. They later settled in Summerland where Justin grew up. Caught skateboarding at MacDonald Elementary’s bus stop, his PE teacher Mr. Jones threatened to confiscate his skateboard unless Justin completed fifty pushups and turned out for the track and field team. Inspired by Donovan Bailey’s 1996 Olympic gold medal win—and wanting his treasured skateboard back—it was an easy decision and unknowingly sent Justin down the path towards his own Olympic gold medal.

At Summerland Secondary, Justin played every sport available but track remained his focus. Always fast, the 100m was his best event (with a PB of 10.79 sec). He claimed three gold medals in sprint events at the 2002 BC Summer Games and went to SFU on a track scholarship. For two years he sprinted on the university’s track team when bobsleigh found him.

After performing well in initial testing on Calgary’s bobsleigh track, Justin moved there to train allowing himself one year to give this new sport a fair shot. If it didn’t work out, he planned to return to SFU. While placed on one of Bobsleigh Canada’s development teams, he quickly emerged as a talented brakeman alongside pilot Lyndon Rush and was racing overseas on the Europa Tour within a few months. After one season he was promoted to Canada’s top World Cup team piloted by the legendary Pierre Leuders, who became a mentor to Justin. There was no going back after that.

Justin made his Olympic debut at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, a surreal experience for him competing in his home province in a sport he barely knew existed just five years earlier. A member of Leuders’ four-man team, they finished fifth. The following season Justin moved into the driver’s seat himself and began learning from one of the best in the recently retired Leuders.

Justin moved up the ranks rapidly as a driver and at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi he finished fourth in the two-man event. Four years later at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, he and brakeman Alex Kopacz electrified the nation with Olympic gold in the two-man event after finishing in a rare tie with the Germans, both timed in a combined four-run total of 3min 16.86sec. Justin also piloted Canada’s top four-man sled featuring Kopacz, Jesse Lumsden, and Oluseyi Smith to a solid sixth place finish.

At his fourth Winter Olympics in 2022 in Beijing, his focus shifted to bobsleigh’s salad race, the four-man, and Justin made history once again. With teammates Cam Stones, Ryan Sommer, and Ben Coakwell, Justin piloted his team to a bronze medal less than a second behind the powerful German crews. With that, Justin became the first and to date only Canadian pilot to win Olympic medals in both the two and four-man bobsleigh events.

Justin’s results on the World Cup circuit are equally impressive, accumulating 44 career IBSF World Cup medals in Tour events (seven gold, 14 silver, 23 bronze). He won two Large Crystal Globes during his career as overall season champion while also claiming eight other runner-up Crystal Globes finishing second and third overall on the World Cup Tour four times each. In addition, he won five career IBSF world championship medals: two silvers (2017 Konigssee and 2019 Whistler in two-man) and three bronzes (2012 Lake Placid and 2015 Winterberg in mixed team, and 2019 Whistler in four-man).

Justin retired following the 2022 Olympics and has since devoted himself to coaching Canada’s next generation of bobsleigh athletes on the men’s and women’s national team including at the recent 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina.

 

Georgia Simmerling – Multi-Sport

The list of injuries Georgia Simmerling suffered and then subsequently recovered from to return to elite international competition during her skiing and cycling career reads like an entire NFL team’s injury report: broken jaw, broken teeth, 50 stitches after biting her tongue, three broken vertebrae in her neck and back, fractured wrist, two broken legs, multiple torn knee ligaments. She also battled an eating disorder on top of that.

Georgia will go down as one of the great multi-sport athletes in BC and Canadian history simply for the fact she was the first Canadian ever to compete at three Olympics in three different sports. With the resilience and determination to come back from injury time and time again, she should also go down as one of the toughest to wear the maple leaf.

Born and raised in West Vancouver, Georgia played soccer, baseball, and basketball, but it was in skiing where she truly excelled. From the age of six Georgia and her family skied regularly at Grouse Mountain in North Vancouver. After competing at the BC Winter Games at age 12, by her early teens she was training in Europe and competing in international events. In 2007 she made the Canadian national alpine ski team and in 2010 she was one of the youngest athletes named to Canada’s Olympic ski team competing at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler. In front of family and friends, Georgia finished 27th in super giant slalom gaining valuable experience for what was to come.

In 2011, she switched to ski cross and remained a member of the national team in this discipline for seven years. In what would become a pattern for Georgia, in 2012 she returned from seven weeks immobilized in an upper body and neck brace to win her first career World Cup podium finish. In total she accumulated nine career ski cross podium finishes (five silver, four bronze) on the FIS World Cup tour and finished seventh overall at the 2017 FIS World Skiing Championships. She also finished 14th in ski cross at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

Later in 2014, Georgia attended a Cycling Canada ID Camp at a velodrome in LA and instantly became hooked on the sport. While recovering from a shattered wrist in 2015, she focused her training on cycling out of necessity and soon realized a spot on the Canadian national cycling team was within her grasp. She made the Canadian team in time for the 2016 UCI Track Cycling World Championships in London, England and helped the women’s team pursuit to silver alongside teammates Allison Beveridge, Jasmin Glaesser, and Kirsti Lay. Later that year, this same foursome claimed bronze at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janiero setting a Canadian record. Remarkably for Georgia, it was just her fourth-ever team pursuit race.

Over the next five years Georgia won two gold medals at the 2019 Pan American Track Cycling Championships in Cochabamba, Bolivia, had three top-ten finishes at the UCI World Championships in 2019-20, and represented Canada at her fourth Olympics at Tokyo 2020 where she helped Canada to fourth in team pursuit.

Georgia would have had a fifth career Olympic appearance on her resume in 2018, however she suffered catastrophic fractures to both legs as well as torn knee ligaments in a crash during a World Cup ski cross race in Nakiska just weeks before the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. At that time she was ranked third in the world and considered a serious medal contender. In perhaps her most impressive comeback, still not fully healed after multiple surgeries, she restarted training and unbelievably returned to international competition barely a year later at a track cycling World Cup event in New Zealand in early 2019 helping Canada to team pursuit silver.

 

Les Wilson – Soccer

Les Wilson carried with him an unbridled passion for soccer through over 50 years as a standout player, coach, manager, and administrator. You can trace it back almost to the beginning.

When Les was 13 years old he and a friend snuck off on their bikes riding 20km to the Vancouver airport and waiting hours to meet the arrival of Real Madrid legends Ferenc Puskas and Alfredo di Stefano. His parents only found out when his picture appeared in the newspaper the next day. As it turned out it wouldn’t be the last time Les made the papers during his remarkable hall of fame career, one in which he could be inducted equally for his athlete or builder accomplishments.

Born in Manchester, England, Les first learned to play soccer with his school team in the south Manchester area of Wythenshawe. Interestingly, his mother’s family were all Man City supporters, while his father’s family—and Les—supported Man United. “Can you imagine the goings on when they played one another?!” he laughed.

Les was six years old when his family moved to Vancouver, following his uncle who had settled there after World War II. Here Les captained his Carleton Elementary School team to the Vancouver city championship in 1958. At Killarney High School, Les won the half mile race at the Vancouver and District Inter-High School Championships at Empire Stadium in 1962. One year later at just 16 years of age, Les made the famed Westminster Royals senior men’s team. He was then selected to the BC All-Star team and became the youngest Canadian ever at the time to score in an international match, versus Yugoslavia champions Red Star Belgrade.

Not long after, Wolverhampton Wanderers came through Vancouver on tour, saw Les playing, and signed him to a trial. The following year after Les graduated from high school, he travelled to England and settled into the Wolverhampton youth program. As he adapted to the higher standard of play and battled homesickness, his determination paid off in 1965 when he earned promotion to the Wolves’ senior team. Today we’re spoiled with Canadian players earning spots with pro clubs all over Europe, and even though Wolverhampton were in the English Second Division at the time this was still an incredibly rare feat. It subsequently became historic when Les helped Wolves earn promotion back up to the English First Division (equivalent of the English Premier League today) for the 1967-68 season. With that he became the first North American developed player to play in the top division of English professional soccer.

Incredibly versatile as a player—Les played nine different positions with Wolves—he remained a fixture in England until 1974 playing 144 matches with Wolverhampton, Norwich City, and Bristol City, scoring eight goals. When English clubs were transplanted to North America for several summers in the late 1960s in the first incarnation of what became the North American Soccer League, Les helped Wolverhampton to the league title twice in 1967 and 1969. He also helped Wolverhampton win the 1970-71 Texaco Cup and finish runner-up in the 1972 UEFA Cup (known today as the UEFA Europa League). With the latter Les became the first Canadian or American developed player to play in this competition.

From 1974-77, he returned home to play with the newly formed Vancouver Whitecaps, captaining the team for three seasons and handling the responsibility of marking the legendary Pele on the field whenever facing the New York Cosmos.

Les retired from play in 1977 due to a nagging Achilles tendon issue but he was far from finished with the game. He went on to serve a distinguished career as an administrator, staff coach, and manager with the Whitecaps, the Canadian Soccer Association (now Canada Soccer), and the BC Soccer Association (now BC Soccer). Over the next quarter century Les contributed to the Whitecaps’ 1979 NASL Soccer Bowl championship, as well as the Canadian men’s national team’s best-ever fourth place finish at the 1984 Olympics, its first-ever qualification for the FIFA World Cup in 1986, and the 2000 CONCACAF Gold Cup championship. Back at home, he played key roles locally too, most notably as one of the three founding members of the Vancouver 86ers alongside long-time colleagues and fellow BC Sports Hall of Famers Tony Waiters and Dave Fryatt.

Along with numerous inductions to several halls of fame, Les was one of eleven legendary players named to Canada Soccer’s Team of the Half Century in 2012. 

 

Builder-Coach Category

Ossie Chavarria – Baseball

More than 20 years into his baseball career as a player and coach, Ossie Chavarria never gave a single thought to umpiring. That is, until one day in 1977.

Ossie was watching a game at Burnaby’s Central Park when Howard Chapman, BC’s provincial umpire supervisor, approached him in desperate need of an umpire later that same day. Hours later Ossie found himself wearing borrowed equipment and working as a field umpire in a game for the first time. Two weeks of further instruction later, Ossie umpired a game behind the plate by himself. After that he never stopped, calling balls and strikes at diamonds around BC and beyond over the next 40 years, from the local amateur levels to minor professional and major international tournaments. In the process, Ossie became one of one of Canada’s most respected and accomplished umpires ever to stand behind the plate.

Born and raised in Colon, a seaport city near the Caribbean entrance to the Panama Canal, Ossie’s older brother Victor introduced him to baseball at age 16 when Victor’s team needed a second baseman. Ossie had only played soccer and basketball to that point but he took to the game immediately. Soon he was winning national championships and playing on Panama’s national team.

Signed by a Chicago Cubs scout in 1959, he was traded to the Kansas City Athletics and bounced around the minors—Florida, Idaho, New York, Texas, Alabama—for several seasons learning English, pro baseball, and unfortunately the ugliness of racial discrimination in the American south.

Sent to Vancouver to play for the AAA Mounties in 1965 was like a breath of fresh BC mountain air. Ossie loved it here immediately and excelled. He won the club’s MVP and Most Popular Player awards and earned a call-up to the big leagues the next year. He then played 124 MLB games with Kansas City over two seasons (1966-67) while splitting more time with Vancouver (1967-68). In one memorable game in 1968 Ossie played every field position and even pitched, the ultimate utilityman thrilling the Capilano Stadium (now Nat Bailey) faithful.

After a few more seasons in the minors in the US and Mexico, Ossie retired in 1973. He chose to make Burnaby his permanent home and raise his family here. Later Ossie’s daughter Trina married former Vancouver Canadians pitcher Jack Hardy and their son Matt Hardy played in the Milwaukee Brewers organization and for Panama at the World Baseball Classic. Ossie’s son David pitched in the Texas Rangers system and later worked as a pitching coach for several major league clubs.

From 1974-77 Ossie played on and managed local senior men’s teams the New West Auroras and Burnaby Astros before his fateful introduction to umpiring. From 1977-2017, Ossie served as an elite ump for Canada Baseball and BC Baseball working major tourneys all over BC and Canada like the Kamloops and Grand Forks international tournaments. With a feel for the game at the highest level from his many years playing, no surprise he was soon working internationally. He umpired at the Intercontinental Cup in 1981 (Edmonton) and 1999 (Australia), the Pan American Games in 1983 (Caracas, Venezuela) and 1999 (Winnipeg), the 1990 world championships in Edmonton, and the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. He even umpired occasionally at Vancouver Canadians Pacific Coast League games until 1999.

While still working behind the plate, Ossie also scouted for the Toronto Blue Jays in 1984. He was in Grand Forks when asked to help an unknown teenaged ballplayer from Maple Ridge who was struggling with his hitting. Ossie saw up close the tremendous potential of this young man, a five-tool player if he ever saw one. The player’s name was Larry Walker, a fellow BC Sports Hall of Famer you may have heard of. To Ossie’s great disappointment the Blue Jays passed on Ossie’s recommendation to sign Walker, who went on to become just the second Canadian inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

 

When not behind the plate, Ossie was often in the dugout. He served as an assistant coach for Canada’s men’s national baseball team at the 1987 Pan American Games in Indianapolis and the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. From 1986-1990, he joined fellow BC Sports Hall of Famers Wayne Norton (also a former Mounties teammate) and John Haar coaching at the Vancouver-based National Baseball Institute. Later in his career he helped coach the BCPL’s Langley Blaze.

Ossie was inducted into the Burnaby Sports Hall of Fame in 2004 and the BC Baseball Umpires Association Hall of Fame in 2015.

 

Jim Clive – Beach Volleyball

You’ll never hear a beach volleyball player in BC say they’re playing in a Kits Beach Volleyball Association (KBVA) tournament. You just won’t. Instead, they’ll say they’re playing in a “Cliver.”

And everyone here and in the beach volleyball community far beyond BC knows instantly what that means. It’s a tribute to Jim Clive, the godfather of beach volleyball in BC over the past fifty years.  

Jim didn’t come up with the name. Didn’t even know it existed until people started saying it to him. But it’s fitting for the man who first introduced beach volleyball to Vancouver, then played, coached, promoted, and organized the sport for decades. Jim has cultivated a remarkably tight beach volleyball community here and thousands have now played in a Cliver. Or proudly call themselves one.

Born and raised in New Westminster, Jim played hockey and football on community teams. He didn’t play any school sports while attending Lester Pearson High School (now New Westminster Secondary) because he was too busy working at Woodward’s department store, where over several decades he worked his way up from buggy pusher in the parcel department to store manager.

Considering what was to come for him, it’s surprising that Jim didn’t begin playing volleyball indoors until he was 20 years old in a New West rec league. The fellow running the league taught Jim how to play, retired, and Jim was hired to replace him. He then administered indoor volleyball programs for New Westminster Parks and Recreation from 1966-81. During that time Jim also served as president of the Greater Vancouver Senior B Volleyball Association from 1975-78.

At that time the City of Vancouver prohibited sports played on its beaches. To get around that Jim and a small group played volleyball on the grass behind the Kits Beach concession stand. One of those who played with them over several summers was basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain. In 1978 Jim secured the first permit to host a beach volleyball tournament in Vancouver. Beach volleyball had its start in BC.

After campaigning with the city for a more substantial home for the sport, two years later Jim and friends Shane Donovan and George Mueller were permitted to install the first permanent volleyball net posts in the Kits Beach sand as part of a trial program. It proved so popular that more courts were added at other beaches in ensuing years to the point where 16 courts exist at Kits Beach today and approximately 100 among all Vancouver beaches. In ensuing years Jim organized tournaments down in Santa Barbara, one of the sport’s hotbeds, and brought many of their ideas north to elevate the sport. One of these was the creation of the ‘Challenge Court’ where anyone from Olympians to newcomers can challenge the winners of the previous match.

After not a single BC team made it out of the qualifiers and into the main draw when Kitsilano Beach hosted Canada’s national professional beach volleyball pro tour in 1996, Jim knew something had to be done to help BC players compete. In 1997 he founded the KBVA and incorporated it as a non-profit society. While serving as the KBVA’s executive director from 1997-2020, Jim grew the volunteer organization to over 600 active members, staging nearly 200 full-day tournaments and handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money. At the same time Jim has also volunteered to support the UBC men’s volleyball program and Volleyball BC events including 30 years of working the Vancouver Open, Canada’s premier beach volleyball tournament.

After over 60 years, Jim is the living embodiment of the motto ‘Volleyball for Life.’ Venture down to Kits Beach on a summer day and odds are you’ll find Jim at KBVA Court #1—otherwise known as ‘Cliver’s Office’—raking the sand, keeping score, coaching young players, and generally bumping the game forward.

 

Barb Hart Harris – Field Hockey

As a young girl Barb Hart Harris grew up on her family’s remote homestead on the heavily forested northern edge of Port Moody. Logging, horses, and farm life were all she knew.

Barb was an excellent athlete though, as evidenced by finishing as senior girls champion at the 1953 Fraser Valley High School track and field championships. Field hockey wasn’t even a thought in her head until she attended UBC in 1953. She went out to a practice just to learn and instantly fell in love with the game.

“All I wanted to do was get the ball in the goal,” Barb once said. “I just loved playing so much, I just did all I could to be as good as I could and it worked out for me.”

Did it ever. When Barb wanted something, look out, she went after it. And for the next 50+ years she remained a key figure in BC and Canadian field hockey as an athlete, tournament coordinator, judge, and organizer.

 Under UBC field hockey coach Bim Schrodt, Barb rapidly improved to the point that she was selected to the BC-dominated ‘Canadian’ national team for the 1959 International Federation of Women’s Hockey Associations (IFWHA) world championship in Amsterdam and a six-week tour of matches in the U.K. Four years later, Barb captained Canada’s first truly ‘national’ women’s field hockey team at the IFWHA world tournament in Baltimore. She later played in several Canadian national tournaments as well.

It was as a builder, however, where Barb truly made her mark. While president of the Women’s Athletic Association at UBC in 1957-58, she revived the BC provincial high school girls basketball tournament after two years of inactivity. Just a few years later while working as an English teacher at Burnaby South Secondary, in 1961 and 1964 Barb was thrilled to take the girls basketball teams she coached to the same provincial tournament she saved. The BC high school girls basketball championships continue annually today.

In the 1970s Barb became heavily involved with organizing some of the biggest field hockey events ever to take place in Canada. She served as tournament coordinator and vice-chair of the board for the 1979 IFWHA world championships held in Vancouver. Eighteen national teams participated and delegates from 35 countries attended, at the time one of the largest women’s sports events ever held in Canada. A year before Barb served as tournament coordinator for the 1978 CWHFA Senior national tournament held in Vancouver, an event used as a ‘dry run’ for hosting the world championships the next year. Many of those involved in both events were members of a new fundraising and hosting club Barb founded and organized, the 79ers, which was based on similar international clubs like New Zealand’s Silver Ferns, Netherlands’ Black Tulips, or England’s Roses. The 79ers gathered for their fortieth anniversary in 2019.

Barb also served as a judge on the technical committee for a Canada-Mexico Women’s Hockey World Cup qualifying match held at UBC in 1978 and in the same role at the 1978, 1980, and 1982 CWFHA senior national tournaments, the 1981 Canada Games, and the 1980, 1981, and 1984 CIAU tournaments. Before all of this she served as sport chair and acting technical advisor for the field hockey tournament at the 1973 Canada Summer Games in her hometown of Burnaby, where she was originally born and resided for decades.

Later on Barb continued to play key roles whenever large events came to Burnaby. She served as the venue manager for the 1997 BC Summer Games field hockey tournament, as site director of the 2001 Golden Oldies World Hockey Festival that featured 15 nations and 90 teams, and as director of ceremonies for the 2012 BC Seniors Games. She also volunteered as the Burnaby organizer of the annual Terry Fox Run at Swangard Stadium for 11 years beginning in 2005.

Barb was inducted into the Field Hockey Canada Hall of Fame in 2020 and the Burnaby Sports Hall of Fame in 2024. 

DECEASED, passed away in July 2026.

 

Team Category

2006 Vancouver Whitecaps Women’s Soccer

Before every 2006 Vancouver Whitecaps Women’s home match, the team circled up in Swangard Stadium’s locker room.

Goalkeeper Erin McLeod looked intensely at her teammates and yelled, “WHOSE HOUSE?!”

“OUR HOUSE!!” her teammates roared in response.

Then this amazing collection of many of Canada’s top players burst onto Swangard’s emerald pitch against the backdrop of Central Park’s towering timbers and thousands of cheering, loyal fans. Swangard was more than their house that year; it was a fortress. And those fans, particularly a generation of young BC girls and women, were inspired by witnessing the Whitecaps Women claim their second USL W-League championship in three seasons, this one on home turf to boot.

Coming off a bronze medal finish in 2005, expectations were high in 2006 to move up on the podium. No one could argue based on the Caps roster, which might be the most impressive of any Canadian club team in history. Key returning veterans like captain Andrea Neil, Randee Hermus, and Martina Franko joined returning young stars like Brittany Timko, Kara Lang, Sasha Andrews, and goalkeeper McLeod. They were bolstered by the addition of legendary American international striker Tiffeny Milbrett. Add to that an influx of many of Canada’s best young international players and suddenly you also had the likes of Christine Sinclair, Sophie Schmidt, and Candace Chapman among others gracing Swangard’s pitch.

The Whitecaps earned a bye into the W-League semifinals blazing to the top of the Western Conference with an 11-0-1 win-loss-tie record, while averaging over three goals scored a game and giving up only seven. Their 34 points nearly doubled the next closest team, Seattle Sounders, their archrivals down the I-5. Sinclair led the Caps with 12 goals in just 10 games.

With Swangard hosting the W-League semis, bronze medal match, and final, locals turned out by the thousands. The Whitecaps didn’t disappoint, destroying Seattle 5-0 in their semifinal. Sinclair’s two goals bookended an early second half flurry of Whitecaps goals by Stephanie Smith, Franko, and Milbrett that broke the game wide open.

Facing the Whitecaps in the W-League Final were the Northern Division champions Ottawa Fury Women, returning to the final for the second straight season. Like the Caps, Ottawa too was stacked with many Canadian internationals. As Franko remarked later, “It was almost like a Canadian national intra-squad scrimmage.”

Fifteen minutes into the final, Hermus cleared a sure Ottawa goal off the goal line. Minutes later Sinclair once again opened the scoring, sparking the packed Swangard stands into bedlam. Franko added a second off a rebound just before halftime, while Andrews headed in the insurance marker in the second half. McLeod and her back line turned away many Fury chances to preserve the shutout. Sinclair was named playoff MVP. During the trophy presentation, the Swangard faithful joyously serenaded their champions, of whom many were BC-born and raised, while the Whitecaps raised the W-League trophy aloft.

Honouring this team fully also means acknowledging the harm around it. The team’s head coach later pleaded guilty to, and was jailed for, sexual offences against four teenage players he coached. His harm, including psychological maltreatment and abuse of power, went beyond those convictions, and its full extent is unknown. For these reasons, the BC Sports Hall of Fame has excluded him from this induction. The Hall of Fame honours the players and staff who came forward at great personal cost. Their concerns have since been echoed by Parliamentary hearings and a 2026 federal commission that found maltreatment in Canadian sport remains widespread, systemic, and ongoing.

Eight players on the 2006 Whitecaps later went on to win Olympic medals playing for Canada and formed the core of a golden generation that changed Canadian women’s soccer forever.

Team Members: Paige Adams, Dave Adolph (athletic therapist), Amber Allen, Sasha Andrews, Amy Apps, Sian Bagshawe, Taryne Boudreau, Kirsteen Buchan, Candace Chapman, Jaclyn Dunnet, Martina Franko, Natalie Groenewoud, Carey Gustafson, Randee Hermus, Eden Hingwing, Natalie Hirayama, Selenia Iacchelli, Kaylyn Kyle, Kara Lang, Ciara McCormack, Ashley McGhee, Erin McLeod, Amelie Mercier, Tiffeny Milbrett, Andrea Neil (captain & assistant coach), Jan Peace (team doctor), Sari Raber, Erin Ramsay, Jodi Ann Robinson, Lindsay Rohla, Pat Rohla (assistant coach), Sophie Schmidt, Desiree Scott, Steve Simonson (assistant coach), Christine Sinclair, Rheanne Sleiman, Stephanie Smith, Katie Thorlakson, Brittany Timko, Diane Voice (manager), Stephanie Weston, Darren Woloshen (goalkeeper coach), Emily Zurrer.

 

Pioneer Category

 

Dr. Bruce Forster – Sports Medicine

A globally respected pioneer in the field of radiology for 30+ years, Dr. Bruce Forster elevated sports imaging by developing techniques such as MRI and portable ultrasound to diagnose injuries for thousands of athletes. From professionals and Olympians to weekend warriors. In some cases, his work saved lives.  

In an eerie twist of fate, it was radiology that literally saved his own life. Out cycling one day in September 2025 a speeding vehicle left Bruce with horrific injuries and clinging to life. Doctors used techniques and equipment from his own field—radiology—to determine how to save him. Barely a year later, after a long road to recovery, it’s a miracle he’s here to celebrate his induction. And back at work no less.

Growing up in West Vancouver, Bruce played racquet sports, swam, and skied. Initially he wanted to be a marine biologist and completed his B.Sc. at UBC in zoology before shifting to applied science while completing his MD.

After a year working as a general practitioner in Yellowknife, Bruce took his first radiologist job at Vancouver’s Shaughnessy Hospital before it abruptly closed. As one door shut, another opened and he moved to UBC Hospital where his sports medicine involvement began at the groundbreaking Allan McGavin Sports Medicine Centre. Given the opportunity to develop sports imaging there alongside legendary figures like fellow BC Sports Hall of Famer Dr. Jack Taunton and Dr. Pat McConkey, Bruce subsequently worked at the McGavin Centre as their only radiologist affiliate for over 30 years.  

He provided imaging care for BC-based athletes from UBC (football, baseball, and hockey), the Vancouver Canucks, Whitecaps, and Canadians, the NBA (Vancouver Grizzlies, New Jersey Nets), and Canadian Olympic athletes from various sports. In 1996 he founded the UBC Comprehensive MRI Fellowship (specialist training) and in 2001 the UBC Sports Medicine Radiology Rounds, a monthly program still active today where sports med professionals gather to discuss the management of athletes with challenging injuries. 

More recently Bruce served as the imaging director for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, where he developed and debuted the first portable field-of-play ultrasound imaging program for the Olympics. Bruce then assisted in the planning and execution of imaging clinics at the Tokyo 2020, Beijing 2022, and Paris 2024 Olympics as the only radiologist member of the IOC Medical and Scientific Commission Games Group.

Bruce has delivered over 500 lectures worldwide, most on sport-related topics, while authoring 175 publications, 152 educational exhibits, and eight book chapters, including three in Brukner and Khan’s Clinical Sports Medicine, considered the leading textbook in the field. He also served as associate editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, the highest-ranking journal in international sports medicine.

For his trailblazing work, Bruce received the Gold Medal Award, the highest honour of the Canadian Association of Radiology. He also was awarded the Haughton Medal as an Honourary Member of the Faculty of Radiologists of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, one of only three practicing radiologists in BC to be so honoured.

 

Media Category

John McKeachie

You will hear it again and again talking to those who knew John McKeachie well.

“They broke the mould with McKeach.”

Over a 40-year career working in TV, radio, and print media, John was known for his quirky, self-deprecating sense of humour and for scooping his local colleagues by breaking big stories in Vancouver first using his unmatched little black book of North America-wide sports contacts. McKeach remained among BC’s most popular sports media personalities long after he retired from the airwaves and there for certain will never be another like him.

Born and raised in Victoria, John first fell in love with sports playing for his Oddfellows Little League baseball team. After attending Vic High, he played on UVIC’s men’s basketball team. While John ran the Hocking & Forbes Sporting Goods store on Yates Street in downtown Victoria, he came up with the design for the original California Golden Seals jersey logo when they joined the NHL in 1967 as an expansion team. He also designed the uniforms for the WHL’s Phoenix Roadrunners in 1967, while serving as the team’s assistant trainer and doing some radio work.

After breaking into regular radio work in 1970 with CKDA in Victoria, he joined CKNW in Vancouver in 1972 as a weekend sports anchor as well as working Canucks and Lions broadcasts. In 1973 John moved to BCTV as a sports anchor and host of Canucks and Whitecaps broadcasts and for the next 27 years he remained a staple on televisions all over BC and beyond.

He did so sprinkling his own unique vocabulary of ‘McKeachie-isms’ throughout every story and broadcast. Words and phrases like ‘vis-à-vis,’ ‘proverbial’, ‘notwithstanding the fact’, ‘on the links’, and ‘dem bums’ became unmistakably McKeach. As fellow Vancouver media legend Barry Macdonald once said, “John gave us all the words, we as viewers had to put them in order. But his message was actually clear. He loved what he was doing, and he knew what he was doing. And he did it with panache, humour, knowledge, and flair.”

National viewers grew to appreciate him when he hosted coverage of the 1994 World Basketball Championships and covered two Olympic Games for CTV: 1992 in Barcelona (doing volleyball play-by-play and the Closing Ceremony) and the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. His quirky ‘man about town’ segments about life at the Lillehammer Olympics remain legendary—not many will ever forget 6’6” John squeezing into a skintight luge race suit!

Often going to extreme lengths to break stories, his best known may have occurred in 1996 when Wayne Gretzky was traded from the Los Angeles Kings to the St. Louis Blues. John called a friend who worked as an air traffic controller at YVR and learned where and when Gretzky’s flight arrived. Flagging down The Great One’s limo on an airport road, McKeach was the first reporter in North America to snag that particular day’s most coveted interview continent-wide.

Later in John’s career his versatility as a media pro was on full display as he wrote an entertaining and informative weekly sports column for The Province newspaper from 1997-2000, returned to CKNW radio in 1997-98, hosted the McKeachie in the Morning show on TEAM 1040 radio from 2001-03, continued with MOJO Sports Radio from 2003-05, and narrated the Outdoor Life Network TV show Road Hockey Rumble in 2007-08.  

While a frequent Hockey Night in Canada Hot Stove contributor during intermissions, John also came up with the idea for CBC Vancouver’s HNIC post-game show, and hosted McKeachie’s Hockey Talk from 1998-2000. It proved so popular the show went nationwide and later morphed into the long-running After Hours show hosted by Scott Oake.

Three times John was voted TV Week Magazine’s ‘BC Sportscaster of the Year’ (1987-89). His full personality was often on display as a celebrated and in-demand dinner emcee for countless fundraisers and events around BC over several decades, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for various charities.

DECEASED, passed away in August 2026.

 

W.A.C. Bennett Award

John Mills

In 1973, legendary Canadian men’s national basketball coach Jack Donohue cut a young John Mills from the national program. It was devastating for John, but Donohue was a master at human relations and softened the blow by saying, “You’re going to make a big contribution to the game and we need people like you out there that understand what we’re doing.”

John took those words to heart and for the next 50+ years more than lived up to them emerging as one of BC and Canada’s most vital sport development leaders. And now in recognition of that John enters the BC Sports Hall of Fame as the 28th recipient of the prestigious W.A.C. Bennett Award.

Born and raised in Vancouver, John first discovered basketball while attending Vancouver College. The school’s principal Brother Bates offered John’s class two ‘bitty’ basketballs for anyone who finished their arithmetic early. John couldn’t finish his math and hustle down to the gym fast enough. “I thought of myself as a basketball player from then on,” said John, who still plays to this day with his Tuesday Knights masters teammates and in recent years at the World Masters Games.

 As an undersized, athletic center, John played three seasons at UBC under coach Peter Mullins, contributing to two CIAU national championships in 1970 and 1972. He was also part of the UBC team that represented Canada internationally at the 1970 Universiade in Italy and he remained on the national team radar for several years.

After graduating, John taught at Vancouver College and coached their basketball team for five years. While serving as executive director for Basketball BC from 1979-88 he introduced a summertime elite youth development program and authored two technical books on basketball including one for the BC Ministry of Education. There he developed his influential philosophy of ‘medals earned, calories burned’ on how to measure and drive sport development that then directed every stop in his career thereafter.

As Sport BC’s executive director and president from 1988-97, John created the Kidsport Fund, which has raised over $10 million for youth sport and expanded across the country. He then oversaw two of the country’s most important sports legacy facilities. First as president from 1998-2006 of the Calgary Olympic Development Association (CODA now known as Winsport Canada) that managed and redeveloped Calgary Olympic Park. Then later as chief operating officer of the Richmond Olympic Oval Corporation from 2008-19, overseeing the largest new venue built for the 2010 Olympics.

His involvement with both meant he also played a key role as part of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic & Paralympic Bid Committee (2000-03) that won the Games for BC, Own The Podium (2004-06), Kidsport Alberta (2001-05), and the Gold Medal Plates fundraising program (2006-09). Along the way John also served as a board member for the 1994 Commonwealth Games Legacy Fund (2006-08) and as assistant deputy minister for tourism, sport and the arts (2006-08), which administered ActNow BC that worked to improve physical activity and nutrition of British Columbians.

In 2009, John found his way back to basketball joining Canada Basketball’s board. From 2011-18 he served as chair and helped set the table for the recent success of the men’s and women’s national teams.

 

About the BC Sports Hall of Fame

Located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, the BC Sports Hall of Fame celebrates extraordinary achievement in B.C. sport history and inspires future generations to make their dreams come true.  As a non-profit charitable organization, the Hall curates an astounding collection of 28,000+ heritage artifacts and 100,000 archival documents representing 150-years of sport history in British Columbia. Through Hero in You Youth Education Programs, the BC Sports Hall of Fame reaches over 6,500 young learners each year across the province, advancing a mission of building outstanding community legacies by honouring the past and inspiring the future.

For more information, please visit bcsportshall.com or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram @bcsportshall.