When members of the Ottawa sports community gathered on May 12, 2023 to salute Martin Cleary for an unbelievable 50 years of local sports reporting, some mistakingly thought it was a retirement party.
Nope, he confirmed, the fire is still burning strong and there are still so many stories to tell.
Today, Martin hits another milestone in his marathon career that we are so proud to recognize – five years of writing High Achievers columns for OttawaSportsPages.ca!
Very much coincidentally, that celebration to mark Martin’s half-century of covering the local sports scene came at exactly the half-way point of his current run with the Ottawa Sports Pages, which kicked off on Nov. 12, 2020.
We invite you to look back at our webpage via the link below to see videos, chronicles and comments highlighting Martin’s excellence on the Ottawa sports beat, which began with 39 years of full-time work at the Ottawa Citizen.
Read More: Martin Cleary 50 Years Celebration
The Ottawa Sports Pages, and our readers, are of course extremely grateful to have had these latest chapters continue for the past half-decade, and we are always eager for the next one.
This is a milestone we may not have honestly initially expected to hit (but are incredibly thrilled to have it arrive!). When Martin’s bi-weekly column was paused by Postmedia during the pandemic, he created the High Achievers “Stay-Safe Edition” to provide some positive news during tough times – first via threads on his Twitter account, before finding an online home here.
We weren’t sure how long the Stay-Safe Edition would go, but when COVID cleared, Martin’s passion did not fade in the slightest, so on we went, without the Stay-Safe warning, and back to following Ottawa’s many high achievers in the sports world.
We may have missed another recent milestone actually, or we are at least very close to having 1,000 High Achievers columns published on OttawaSportsPages.ca – that’s a thousand stories on unique topics that are almost never covered by any other media outlets.
The Ottawa Sports Pages, and our local sports community, are exceptionally blessed to have Martin’s continued dedication to the people involved in sport in this city – thank you Martin!
– Dan Plouffe