Fort Erie’s first Ontario hockey champs enter Wall of Fame 53 years later

The Hicks B.P. hockey team was inducted into Fort Erie’s Sports Wall of Fame on Saturday for winning the town’s first Ontario minor hockey championship in 1973.

The Fort Erie Sports Wall of Fame at the Leisureplex keeps a public record of local people and teams who reached the top of their sport or built sports programs in the area. Its volunteer committee also inducted a marathon runner and two late leaders in golf and football during a ceremony inside Royal Canadian Legion Branch 71.

The Hicks B.P. team won all nine of its provincial playoff games and clinched the Ontario Minor Hockey Association title with a 6-2 win over Bay Ridges in April 1973.

The team won 32 of its 40 games that season and lost six, according to the committee. Former players, now about 69, said they were 15 and 16 years old when they won the title.

“We weren’t thinking about the future,” said a former player who spoke for the team. “We were thinking about hockey and having fun.”

Three players and the team’s coach died before Saturday’s induction. The championship team produced an NHL player in forward Steve Hazlett, who played one game for the Vancouver Canucks in January 1980.

Golf professional Ian Webb, whom the Town of Fort Erie had recognized as an outstanding contributor to golf, mentored young professionals for more than three decades as a PGA of Ontario member. The PGA of Canada renamed its scholarship in Webb’s honour after he died of brain cancer in 2019.

“He made hundreds of friends and set an example for other golf professionals to follow,” said the committee’s address, which Mayor Wayne Redekop read at the ceremony.

Roland “Rollie” Schultz, an Ontario Provincial Police officer, started a community football team in Ridgeway with three other men in 1953. Schultz and his partners began with no players, equipment, uniforms or money.

“Growing up in Ridgeway with Rollie as a dad was a pretty remarkable experience,” said Schultz’s son, Dave Schultz.

The team later grew into the Ridgeway-Crystal Beach High School Blue Devils football program.

Rollie Schultz also worked as the Legion’s groundskeeper in his retirement. A plaque on a maple tree outside the Legion honours Schultz for that work.

Paul Collard took up running in the late 1970s at age 35. Collard finished his first marathon, the 1983 Skylon International, in just under three hours. At the 2006 Boston Marathon, Collard, then 61, placed ninth in his age group in a field of about 18,000 runners.

Redekop, who presented the plaques, told the audience he once ran in the same races as Collard.

“I never knew what he looked like because I was always behind him,” said Redekop.

Cathy Dennehower helped found the wall in 1980 and has served on its committee for all 46 years. Her father, hockey player Mike McMahon, received the wall’s first plaque in 1981.

“As long as I’m around, it’s not going to die,” said Dennehower.

The COVID-19 pandemic halted inductions after 2019, and the wall’s original sponsoring group dissolved, leaving the committee without money. Volunteers rebuilt the wall between April 2023 and April 2024 with money from local businesses.

Dennehower urged the other committee members to keep the wall going after she is gone.

“Do whatever you have to do to keep it up,” said Dennehower.

The committee’s seven volunteers chose this year’s class from nominations submitted by members of the public. The volunteers reviewed every nomination against the wall’s criteria.

“We would not exist without members of the public taking the time to gather all the information required to support their nominees,” said committee chair George Ahern.

The committee will accept nominations for the 2027 class between April 1 and May 31, 2027.

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