Legacy Awards 2004 to honour eight achievers

by Mike McNeney

The 2004 UVic Legacy Awards will honour eight outstanding recipients. Among them: a high school teacher whose classroom is the great outdoors; a leader in the Victoria software industry; and the first women's field hockey team to claim a national title for the university.

Tickets go on sale in September for the third annual awards dinner and fundraiser for scholarships, bursaries and athletic awards, which takes place Nov. 16 at the Victoria Conference Centre. More than 400 people attended last year's event.

The 2004 Legacy Awards—co-chaired by UVic supporters Murray and Lynda Farmer—will formally recognize three new recipients of the UVic Alumni Association's Distinguished Alumni Award and the winner of the Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching. As well, the department of athletics and recreation will welcome four new members to the UVic Sports Hall of Fame.

Distinguished Alumni award winners:

Allen Halverson, BEd '77, veteran physical education and history teacher at Ballenas Secondary School in Parksville. He inspires students to embrace active, healthy living and excites them about career options in eco-tourism and adventure travel.

Eric Jordan, BFA '93, chief strategy officer with Victoria's PureEdge Solutions, a provider of secure software for transferring legal documents electronically. It's fast, safe and saves a lot of paper. The company got its start while Jordan was a student at UVic along with co-founder David Manning.

Ian McDougall, Victoria College '56, is one of Canada's great jazz trombonists. His professional career began in Victoria at the age of 12, he performed with Rob McConnell's award-winning Boss Brass band and he was director of the UVic jazz program until retiring in 2003.

Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching winner:
Dr. Gweneth Doane, school of nursing, considers herself a learner as much as a teacher of nursing—just one of the attributes that makes her approach to teaching so effective. Under her guidance, students gain confidence to apply what they've learned to the real-life situations they'll face in professional practice.

UVic Sports Hall of Fame inductees:

Al Morrow (coach) is the accomplished coach of the national women's rowing program and a key player in the High Performance Centre in London, Ontario, where the women's teams train during the summer. Between 1978 and 1988 he oversaw the growth of the successful UVic rowing program from a club to varsity-level sport.

Jon Kelly (athlete) was one of the most successful swimmers to ever compete for the university. His powerful stroke earned him seven gold and nine silver medals at the CIAU swim championships during the mid-1980s. He was the 1986 Canadian University Swimmer-of-the-Year and won the 1986 UVic Male Athlete-of-the-Year award (which he won again the following year).

Debbie Scott (athlete) emerged from Claremont High School to become one of the greatest female middle-distance runners in Canadian cross-country, road and track running history. She won 26 Canadian titles, held Canadian records in five distances, and was named to three Olympic teams. She had a stunning victory in the famed New York Mile in 1982.

1984 Women's Field Hockey (team) captured the 1984 CIAU championship, the first national championship in a sport previously dominated by the University of Toronto, York and UBC. The program now has 10 women's field hockey championships, making it the most successful program of any Canadian university sport.