BUILDING OUR BRAND FOOTPRINT IN THE COUNTDOWN TO OUR 60TH ANNIVERSARY

February 11, 2025

BY TOM MAYENKNECHT

There are very few days that go by in which the BC Sports Hall of Fame is not actively celebrating British Columbian sport history, heritage and culture, in some way shape or form.  Paying tribute to the extraordinary athletes, coaches, builders, pioneers, teams and media that help define our identity as one of Canada’s leading sport sectors and active living communities is what we’re all about.

Job 1 for us will always be the BC Sports Hall of Fame Banquet of Champions, which will this year take place Wednesday, June 4th, at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver. That special event – our single biggest fundraiser – is first and foremost about recognizing the game-changing British Columbians who have made sport what it is today here on the west coast and throughout BC.

Our galleries, exhibits and displays at the BC Sports Hall of Fame at BC Place in downtown Vancouver are a cavalcade of artifacts, trophies, medals, photographs, and other sights and sounds that remind us of the golden sport legacy of BC sport.

Above and beyond our daily admissions, tours and special events on site, our role as the BC sport community’s go-to storytellers is reflected in regular online and social media features such as On This Day in BC Sport History, compiled more than 300 times per year by curator Jason Beck and our curatorial team. It is also represented in the biographies and photographic images that make up our directory of hall of famers at www.bcsportshall.com.

Add in the inspirational storytelling inherent in our Hero in You program, along with our ongoing media relations campaign and special announcements, and we can take pride in our daily efforts to honour the past and inspire the future. It’s our responsibility and our privilege to do so. And it has been ever since the BC Sports Hall of Fame was founded in 1966, almost 60 years ago, at our original location at the PNE.

That upcoming milestone – our 60th Anniversary celebration — is yet another opportunity to elevate the ongoing work that we do as your custodians of BC sport history. It’s also a reminder of the direction established in the Inspiration 2026 strategic plan – and the Inspiration 2018 plan that came before it.

Counting down to our 60th Anniversary will only galvanize our ongoing efforts to expand the footprint of the BC Sports Hall of Fame. We do so in the context of the 2024 Grey Cup, the ever popular Canada Rugby Sevens, the awe-inspiring Invictus Games and, of course, all of the global interest that will put Vancouver, British Columbia and Canada in the spotlight of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. That will be quite the 60th birthday party!

In the meantime, we’ll continue to work with you to serve as the best BC Sports Hall of Fame that we can be. Central to that is our recent efforts to bring out the “BC” in our Sports Hall of Fame activities, programs and services, in which we have:

  • Recognized our founder and first curator in the form of the Eric Whitehead Inspired Service Awards.

 

  • Established Lifetime Leadership & Achievement Awards for those British Columbians who have literally dedicated much of their lives to the BC Sports Hall of Fame.

 

  • Adopted a commitment to new levels of information-sharing, collaboration and best practices in the emergence of the BC Sports Hall Network, comprised of the more than 40 local, regional and sport-specific halls of fame throughout British Columbia. We are still early days in the ramp-up of the Network, but thanks to the support of our BC Sports Hall of Fame Foundation, the resources of the Canadian Association of Sport Heritage (CASH) and the grassroots passion of local volunteers and staff throughout the province, we are making significant strides.

 

  • Resolved to rotate the Annual Summit of the BC Sports Hall of Fame around the province. Not only has this converted a traditional line expense item for our Annual General Meeting into a net revenue generator, it has spawned increasingly strong relationships throughout British Columbia. After our pilots in New Westminster (2019) and Surrey (2021), we have brought the Annual Summit to Kelowna (Central Okanagan Sports Hall of Fame) in 2022, Greater Victoria (Greater Victoria Sports Hall of Fame) in 2023 and Kamloops (Kamloops Sports Hall of Fame) in 2024. We’re already excited to celebrate the Abbotsford 2025 Annual Summit of the BC Sports Hall of Fame September 18-20, 2025, energized by our partners and friends at the Abbotsford Sports Hall of Fame.

 

  • Promoted various DEFINING MOMENTS IN BC SPORT HISTORY, not only on-site at the BC Sports Hall of Fame, but at our Annual Summits to date.

 

  • Created the designation of “Sport Heritage Community”, whereby the BC Sports Hall of Fame recognizes the role played by communities in supporting extraordinary achievement on the strength of facilities, coaching and volunteer support, sport tourism, sport science and more. It’s our way of saying thank you to municipalities that have consistently put sport first from generation to generation, including the City of Kamloops, the first to be designated as a “Sport Heritage Community” (in September of 2024). Watch for at least one more community to be recognized in the coming months.

 

  • Produced digital learning modules and curriculum for schools throughout British Columbia, starting with the Canadian Metis icon that is Terry Fox, an honoured member of the BC Sports Hall of Fame and arguably the most inspirational British Columbian and Canadian of all time.

 

  • Established our In Memoriam Tribute series, wherein we endeavour to take special steps to protect the memory and legacy of BC Sports Hall of Famers who have passed away. We’re inviting the support of BC Sports Hall families, donors and prospective sponsors to help us keep their stories very much alive. It’s all part of our commitment to ensure that our Hall of Famers are never forgotten.

 

  • Launched our Digital Indigenous Sport Gallery, the first virtual celebration of indigenous sport in the world, building on the award-winning, in-person Indigenous Sport Gallery that was opened in 2018 at the BC Sports Hall of Fame. It will go a long way to ensuring that British Columbians – especially the next generation of indigenous young people – are only a click away from some of the most remarkable sport stories of triumph in the face of adversity, all in the compelling spirit of truth and reconciliation. Our mid-term goal is to create an unrivalled tandem of in-person and virtual galleries so that all British Columbians can live these dreams of achievement, no matter where they reside in BC.

 

  • Embraced the notion of partner halls – such as that contemplated for the Digital Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame and, ultimately, The West Wing of the Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame at the BC Sports Hall of Fame. As we envision the period immediately after the 2026 FIFA World Cup of soccer, we’re thrilled with the notion of such a tribute to basketball in British Columbia and Canada, especially in the lead-up to the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games.

 

  • Working with the tremendous support from BC Pavilion Corp and our friends at BC Place, enhanced the luxury suite experience at the iconic stadium that has been the site of so many of the biggest moments in BC sport history. There isn’t a week that goes by that we don’t appreciate the new-found opportunity to showcase our artifacts in the home of the BC Lions, Vancouver Whitecaps and special events that span World Rugby Sevens and some of the biggest concert acts in the world. Building on these showcases at BC Place, we are striving to identify any and all meaningful storytelling opportunities throughout the community, including potential partnerships throughout the province that will allow us to put much of our back-of-house storage where it belongs, in the eyes of the next generation of young British Columbians.

 

Individually and taken together, we like to think that these initiatives in the countdown to our 60th Anniversary will reflect the “BC” in the “BC Sports Hall of Fame” like we’ve never been able to before. We hope that you can be part of such history and we thank you in advance for your support as we strive to be the best BC Sports Hall of Fame that we can be.