HIGH ACHIEVERS: Various sport halls of fame welcome 6 athletes, 1 builder from capital

By Martin Cleary

One of the favourite, uplifting songs at this time of the year is Deck the Halls.

Well, High Achievers has its own version, to some degree. Instead of decking the halls with boughs of holly, we prefer filling the halls with Ottawa and area sports inductees.

And there are plenty of athletes and at least one builder who recently have been honoured with a special place in their respective sports’ halls of fame.

Last week, the Ottawa Valley Golf Association announced it will be inducting its sixth class over the course of the 2026 season – golfers Lyle Alexander, John Haime and Andre Harvey and builder Jean Stone-Seguin.

Todd Nicholson of Dunrobin was recently inducted into the Canadian Paralympic Hall of Fame as a five-time Winter Games Paralympian and a multi-sport athlete.

Dustin Cook, a former world championship and World Cup alpine ski medallist from Mont Ste. Marie, has become a member of the Canadian Ski Hall of Fame and Museum.

Ottawa’s John Czich, who was inducted into the Canadian Armed Forces Sports Hall of Fame in 1980, has been awarded membership as a badminton athlete onto the Royal Military College of Canada Athletics Wall of Distinction.

The OVGA Hall of Fame was created in 2021 “to recognize, honour and perpetuate the memory of individuals and organizations that have made a significant and positive contribution to golf in the area served by the association.”

The Class of 2026 brings the hall’s enrolment to 28 players, nine builders plus the Ottawa Hunt, Rivermead and Royal Ottawa golf clubs and Flagstick magazine as well as one individual in the special recognition category.

LYLE ALEXANDER

Athletes motivate themselves by setting goals and Lyle Alexander was no different as he moved through his golf career.

Way back when, Alexander pinpointed two significant and challenging goals – win a club championship and shoot his age as he enters the senior ranks. And he has reached them both … multiple times.

When he was a member of the Outaouais (now Rockland), Carleton, Mississippi and Greensmere golf clubs, he won a total of 36 club championships. Starting at age 68, when he matched his age twice at Greensmere, Alexander, now 80, has shot his age or better a remarkable 359 times.

As a player on the OVGA senior circuit, Alexander won 10 field days, three senior city and district championships and three senior club champion tournament titles from 2001 to 2015. He also has registered seven holes in one.

Away from the course, Alexander served as an OVGA rules official for local and provincial tournaments and sat on various committees at several of his clubs.

JOHN HAIME

Whether as a player, a mental performance coach or a philanthropist, John Haime has found success along all three pathways.

The highlight of his junior career came at age 17, when he won 10 of the 13 tournaments he entered, including the Quebec championship. He also earned the first of his two Quebec Golf Association player-of-the-year awards.

His success as a junior earned him a full athletic scholarship to Purdue University, where he played in every one of his team’s events over four years, posting individual and team wins and receiving individual team honours.

A year after winning the 1985 Quebec men’s amateur golf championship, Haime turned professional, when he finished as a co-medallist at the Canadian PGA Tour Qualifying School and proceeded to win four international tournaments plus recording several other top-10 results.

Between 1977 and 1991, Haime estimated he captured 45 junior, amateur, NCAA and professional golf titles, including 20 on the pro circuit.

Haime also expanded his golf experience into becoming a world-class mental performance coach for elite athletes. He also has written two books to develop the mental and emotional muscles for players – You are a Contender and Ride Big.

He teamed with the Ottawa PGA to co-direct the Serge Giroux Golf Dream for 19 years. It raised more than $1.4 million to give “a dream of a lifetime” experience to children with life-threatening illnesses at CHEO.

ANDRE HARVEY

A class A life professional with the PGA of Canada, Andre Harvey worked at several clubs throughout Quebec before joining the Rivermead Golf Club in 1991.

Harvey, the 1961 Quebec junior champion, fared well in Quebec and Ottawa PGA events and regularly played the PGA of Canada senior championship.

At the PGA of Canada Ottawa Zone senior championship, he won the title 10 times between 1992 and 2022. He also captured three senior Spring and four senior Summer PGA of Canada Ottawa Zone titles between 1998 and 2010.

JEAN STONE-SEGUIN

Golf Canada honoured Jean Stone-Seguin as one of four recipients of its Distinguished Service Award, which is presented annually to individuals having made an outstanding impact on Canadian golf, whether locally or nationally.

She currently is on the national rules education subcommittee, preparing the program to teach those wanting to become a nationally-certified rules official.

A certified referee and rules official for the OVGA, Golf Ontario, Golf Quebec and Golf Canada, Stone-Seguin has held many volunteer positions with Golf Canada, including being a member of the rules committee, past chair of the national amateur status committee, tournament chair of the CPKC women’s open in Ottawa, former chair of the Governors’ Council and past member of the board of directors.

Locally, the former high school teacher sat on the RCGA women’s division – Ottawa District rules committee and held the positions of vice-president, president and president of the amalgamated OVGA between 2005 and 2011. During this time, Stone-Seguin also was president of the Camelot Golf and Country Club in 2009-10.

TODD NICHOLSON

A multi-sport athlete and advocate for athletes with disabilities, Todd Nicholson entered the Canadian Paralympic Hall of Fame as an athlete, but he also could have gone in as a builder.

As an athlete, he competed internationally in para hockey, wheelchair basketball, triathlon, duathlon, marathons and skeleton. But his major sport was para hockey, where he was the Team Canada captain for 15 years and won three medals in five Paralympic Winter Games (the first five) – gold in 2006, silver in 1998 and bronze in 1994.

During his more than 20 years with the national-team program, he was a six-time all-star and an eight-time medallist at the world championships and was selected an all-star at the 1998 and 2002 Paralympics.

At the 2006 Paralympic Winter Games, he was the flag bearer for Canada in the opening ceremony.

After retiring in 2010, he took his advocacy work to the highest level, serving as chair of the International Paralympic Committee Athletes’ Council, a role which also gave him a seat on the IPC Governing Board.

He also was the IPC athlete rep on the International Olympic Committee Athletes’ Commission and was directly involved in the staging of the 2012 London, 2014 Sochi, 2016 Rio de Janeiro and 2018 PyeongChang Olympics and Paralympics.

In 2018, the Canadian Paralympic Committee named Nicholson the chef de mission for Team Canada at the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang. That year, he also became the chair of Own the Podium.

Nicholson and his wife Emily Glossop, a former para alpine ski guide, created the not-for-profit Abilities Ottawa to offer para sports opportunities in their community.

He was inducted into the Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame in 2014 and the Canadian Disability Hall of Fame in 2017.

DUSTIN COOK

A member of the Mont Ste. Marie Ski Club, Dustin Cook was an alpine racer for a dozen years, but 2015 was definitely his banner season, which sparked his eventual induction into the Canadian Ski Hall of Fame and Museum.

At the 2015 FIS world alpine ski championships in Beaver Creek, Colorado, Cook sent shock waves through the site by winning the silver medal in the men’s super-G race.

He followed that with a double-medal performance near the end of the World Cup season, winning the super-G gold medal in Meribel and the bronze in Kvitfjell. Those two results helped Cook finish fifth in the FIS World Cup men’s super-G standings, which was the best overall placement in his career.

Cook, who placed ninth in the men’s downhill at the 2009 world junior championships, also competed for Canada at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics and was ninth in the super-G.

Overall, Cook had 87 World Cup starts, five world championship starts, 27 career FIS wins and 72 FIS podium results. He also won six gold, 10 silver and eight bronze medals on the NORAM circuit, and two gold, three silver and two bronze medals at the Canadian championships.

A large fundraising effort helped to create the Dustin Cook Training Centre at Mont Ste. Marie, which has become a focal point for national, provincial and regional teams because of its upgraded slopes, start house and snowmaking systems.

Cook frequently returns to Mont Ste. Marie to mentor young athletes on the snow and during the off-season. He also helped to establish the MSM World Cup Athlete Development Fund to give annual bursaries to promising FIS-level skiers.

JOHN CZICH

A standout badminton player, John Czich was named to the Royal Military College of Canada Athletics Wall of Distinction for his achievements as a student-athlete and around the world.

A member of Canada’s national team from 1976-82, Czich was a two-time gold medallist in the men’s team event at the 1976 and 1979 Pan American Zone Thomas Cup competition. He was the 1977 Pan American men’s doubles champion and the 1978 Commonwealth Games mixed team event silver medallist.

He also attended the 1980 world badminton championships and was 17th in men’s doubles. At the Canadian senior championships, he was the men’s singles champion in 1979 and a two-time men’s doubles medallist with a gold in 1981 and a silver in 1982.

At RMC, Czich was a member of the OUAA co-champion badminton team along with the University of Toronto in 1974. Two years later, he was the recipient of the Tommy Smart Cup as the college’s male athlete of the year. At his graduation, he received the HRH The Prince of Wales Cup for excellence in athletics during his years at the college.