RESILIENCE: WORKING TOWARDS THE 60TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BC SPORTS HALL OF FAME

Message from the Chair

BY TOM MAYENKNECHT

The saga of the stolen Greg Moore helmet last month is a simple metaphor for the year that we’ve had at the BC Sports Hall of Fame. In the case of the theft of the priceless IndyCar auto-racing helmet, we suffered the loss and it hurt but good news prevailed as we wound up recovering the artifact within two weeks. Ultimately, thanks to the work of the Vancouver Police Department and the collaboration and encouragement of our staff, our friends at BC Place and our network of supporters, the helmet is back where it belongs: In the Greg Moore Gallery at the BC Sports Hall of Fame.

The loss-and-recovery of the Greg Moore helmet reflects the big picture of our operations, where we lost some important ground earlier this year. As in the good outcome around the helmet, we’re striving to achieve a full recovery financially.

In order to do so, we have relied on the resilience of the BC Sports Hall of Fame & Museum and the dynamic supporters – like you — that stand behind us.

One year shy of the 60th Anniversary of the BC Sports Hall, it is a resilience that has shone through on several occasions over the 59-year plus history of the BC Sports Hall. It was demonstrated most recently during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and the resultant recovery in and around 2022 from the adversity that our community – and the larger sport system itself – faced collectively a half-decade ago.

We not only embraced those unique challenges head-on, we bounced back strong from COVID-19, generating several of the best financial and programming results that we’ve ever achieved together, from high-water marks in donations and three of the biggest events that we’ve ever held outside of Vancouver to one of the best-performing Banquet of Champions induction events in the event’s history and the award-winning Digital Indigenous Sport Gallery, the biggest Canadian Heritage (Government of Canada) project in our history.

Resilience is the defining quality for us on multiple fronts and it’s a natural mantra for us given the high performance resilience that so many of our own Honoured Members have shown over the years to earn their place in BC sport history, heritage and culture.

In particular, I wanted to acknowledge our Treasurer Ross Wolrige and his Finance & Audit Committee and our Banquet of Champions Committee co-chaired by Aziz Rajwani and Samantha Chang and also including Ross, Joanie McMaster and Gina Iandiorio. Those two committees and our Executive Committee vice-chaired by Wendy Pattenden and Gareth Rees have been the focus of our governance this calendar year.

We appreciate and honour the resilience of our staff team, including Jason Beck and our staff for their passionate dedication to the BC Sports Hall, week-in, week-out. Operating without a Chief Executive Officer for more than six months and without a business development team for large parts of that, it is the resilience and passion of our staff led by Jason and Barb Chu and backed by our Trustees that has helped us move forward.

The love and appreciation that so many have for the BC Sports Hall of Fame is reflected in part in the support and encouragement of our core partners – including of course the Government of British Columbia through the Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture & Sport, and viaSport, which has been close at hand.

We look forward to working with the Honourable Anne Kang, the new Minister of Tourism, Arts, Culture & Sport, to fulfil our goal of being the best Sports Hall that we can be in promoting sport history, heritage and culture in ways that help the Hall and the larger sport system continue to grow.

Special thanks go to the BC Pavilion Corp management team led by CEO Ken Cretney and BC Place led by GM Chris May. Even with the heavy load of preparation for one of the biggest events in BC sport history –FIFA 2026 World Cp — PavCo has, in words and in actions, shown that they are a special partner of the BC Sports Hall of Fame. We are proud to be part of the BC Place District and we thank PavCo for your vision of long-term development of the Sports Hall as an essential community asset. Your attempts to minimize the disruption of the construction in-stadium has helped and will help us get through this recovery stronger “on the other side”.

We also thank our friends at Sport BC – including Chair Judy Joseph and CEO Rob Newman — for their ongoing encouragement and collaboration. And we also appreciate the understanding and care that’s been taken by our agencies of record, including our long-term communications partners at Laura Ballance Media Group and The One Group, the latter standing strong behind our website and our new virtual creation, the Digital Indigenous Sport Gallery, established in 2024.

Meanwhile, there are two other groups of leaders that have stepped up to show their own love and sense of community for the BC Sports hall of Fame. To that end, the BC Sports Hall of Fame Foundation chaired by Blair Horn and our Council of Chairs led by Dann Konkin deserve acknowledgment for their ongoing support of the BC Sports Hall of Fame as we strive towards long-term sustainability.

Finally, we acknowledge the heart and soul of the BC Sports Hall of Fame; our Honoured Members. With your support and engagement, we plan to bounce back the same way we did from COVID-19 so that we can continue to be the go-to voice of thanks and recognition to all those who have made British Columbia one of the best athlete development and sport development hubs in Canada.

We are looking forward to your continued support and leadership in the new Board of Trustees term ahead, including the accent being placed on making the Inspirations 2030 strategic plan a priority for our Board of Trustees and key partners in 2025-’26. By this time next year, we’ll be nine months into the historic 60th Anniversary of the BC Sports Hall of Fame, founded in 1966 by Eric Whitehead and a group of community leaders who well understood the power of sport and how vital a strong sense of self is, especially that shaped in part through a strong sense of sport history, heritage and culture.

And to that end, that is the upside to some of the challenges we’ve faced this year — the notion that by asking the right questions and pursuing new solutions, we can become even stronger as a BC Sports Hall of Fame in the period coming out of the FIFA 2026 World Cup and our 60th Anniversary year.

In the last two planning cycles, we have made so much progress on many fronts – including in digital, social and virtual platforms, along with some important steps towards growing a truly provincial footprint throughout British Columbia. Yet we have also learned that attention is required for other aspects of our business model that have not adjusted and adapted as much as they could to new marketplace conditions, including economic, political, social and technological.

The themes of financial efficiencies and functional effectiveness – along with capacity and focus – will set the tone and tenor for our planning going forward.

Working as a Board of Trustees with the Foundation, the Council of Chairs and our core partners, that will be the push behind Inspiration 2030; creatively identifying new opportunities to make the BC Sports Hall of Fame highly-sustainable as the go-to storyteller of BC sport history, heritage and culture.

Tom Mayenknecht, Chair
BC Sports Hall of Fame

Tom Mayenknecht is the Chair of the BC Sports Hall of Fame. A principal at Emblematica Brand Builders in Vancouver and a nationally-recognized sport business commentator and founder and host of The Sport Market on Sportsnet 650 and the Sportsnet Radio Network, he is a strong advocate for KidSport, Right To Play and other children’s charities, including the Sports Hall’s own Hero in You programs. He is also a member of the Ringette Canada Hall of Fame as a builder and founding Chair of the Paul Carson Sports Broadcast & Media Awards.