THUNDER BAY -- There’s one thing all the inductees into this year’s Northwestern Ontario Sports Hall of Fame class have in common – none of them really thought they’d one day be standing at the induction podium.
Rower Liam Parsons, who claimed bronze in the lightweight fours at the 2008 Olympic Games, said the thought never crossed his mind in the midst of a career that started on the lakes of Thunder Bay and took him around the world.
He still couldn’t believe it on Saturday night, as the inductees gathered at the Valhalla Inn for the annual ceremony welcoming them into the hall.
“It is an incredible honour. It’s also very pleasing to gain the recognition of the hall of fame. When you look through the list of former inductees, it’s an incredible list of athletes who have called this region home,” said Parsons, the youngest in this year’s class.
Entering in alongside him were three-time Calder Cup champion and former NHLer Ron Busniuk, boxer Kathy Williams-Waruk, ex CFLer Jeff Treflin, and wrestling coach Todd Hinds and hockey executive Jim Johnson, the latter two inducted posthumously.
Fort Frances’s Treftlin, who won a Grey Cup with the Saskatchewan Roughriders in 1989, also played for Montreal and Edmonton in an eight-year career and today serves as a firefighter in Winnipeg.
It’s humbling to be chosen for the hall of fame, he said.
“It’s amazing, it’s overwhelming. It’s a lot of attention a few years later. It’s very nice. This is looking like a big thing,” Treftlin said.
“I never thought about anything like this, ever. I just wanted to play football since I was five years old.”
Busniuk won American Hockey League titles with the Nova Scotia Voyageurs and Cincinnati Swords, played six games with the Buffalo Sabres over two seasons, then spent parts of four seasons in the now-defunct World Hockey Association.
Thirty-six year after leaving the pro game behind, he was ecstatic to join younger brother Mike in the NWO Sports Hall of Fame.
“It’s fantastic,” he said, recalling his younger days when the pros of the time would take the ice with local players, passing their knowledge on to the next generation.
“Thunder Bay’s been really good to me, and the thing that I like the most is the coaching that I had when I was younger going through minor hockey, then through junior hockey and senior hockey when I came back. The coaching’s been great,” Busniuk said.
Williams-Waruk was the lone inductee who had any inkling a day like this might one day arrive, her coach telling the one-time world junior bantamweight title holder, who hung up her gloves for good in 2003, she might be honoured some day.
“It’s a big honour to be in the Northwestern Sports Hall of Fame for all my accomplishments,” said Williams-Waruk, who has refereed basketball since her retirement and helped as an assistant with the Lakehead Thunderwolves women’s basketball team.
“It’s unbelievable. It wasn’t really something I expected to happen.”
Johnson’s son Ryan, who spent more than a decade in the NHL, said his dad wasn’t big on honours, but probably would have been proud to earn election to the hall. Jim Johnson was well known in the hockey community and helped found the Kings program and helped bring about the return of varsity hockey to Lakehead University.
“He always saw the city as kind of a blank canvas, in that he wanted to do so much,” said the younger Johnson, now an executive with the Vancouver Canucks. “Unfortunately he left us a little too soon because I think there was a lot more to be done.”
Hinds, the 2007 CIS wrestling coach of the year, spent 17 seasons at the University of Saskatchewan. He died in 2015.
