In February the Yorkton Sports Hall of Fame and Museum held a public meeting looking for a few good people. Those people were needed to create a new board of directors, and to act as volunteers in order to revitalize the organization.
A sort of rebirth for the local hall of fame was certainly needed. The last time the Hall of Fame held an induction was in 2008. It was the 15th induction, but after the event the organization has struggled finding volunteers and board members.
As a result the limited displays afforded by the limited room allotted the Hall of Fame in the Gallagher Centre, their original home in the old Lands Title Building in the City converted to use by various groups in Yorkton, have rarely seen memorabilia rotated.
The result most of the sports heritage of the city collected through the years; old uniforms, black and white photographs, ancient hockey skates, worn baseball gloves and the like, has been relegated to storage boxes.
While there is value simply in the collecting of memorabilia to protect it from being lost, much is gained by sharing those materials with the general public where it can help tell a story of our community’s sports history.
Certainly there is much to be recognized and remembered;
The Junior A Terriers going to the national finals on five different occasions winning the title in 2014;
Volleyball player Lori Ann Mundt who played on Team Canada at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia;
Jason Parker a speed skater who won a silver medal in the Team Pursuit at the 2006 Winter Olympics.
And the list goes on, but the people can too easily be forgotten without a Hall of Fame and Museum to preserve the legacy.
Fortunately, out of the February meeting came a small group interested in continuing the re-organizational process of the Hall of Fame. They recently held a meeting where the appointment of an Interim Board of Directors took place. A permanent Board of
Officials will be elected at the upcoming AGM that will be scheduled within the next few months.
But a Board is only a small step.
The new organization believes it may no longer be feasible to continue with a permanent physical environment involving a museum. With this in mind a working space is needed to pursue the initiative of developing a website for the YSHF, which would become, in time, a virtual museum.
While a web tour of the memorabilia would extend the range in terms of who might peruse the materials, it won’t have the same appeal as a physical space to visit. A photo of an old ball glove can’t match seeing it in three-dimensions.
Without a physical space the tourism element is lost as well, and more things for visitors to do in the city is most definitely a good thing.
Of course where that space should be is the big question.
Two obvious locales come to mind; the first entailing having more space at the Gallagher Centre. The facility is a great one, but lacks a soul in the sense of a connection to our sporting past. No Terrier trophy case has existed since the retrofit and expansion.
No place for swim club awards. No spot for figure skating to show what they have accomplished. Their absence has left the place a tad sterile in terms of a sense of history.
With a new ice surface an almost given expansion there needs to be space allocated for the memorabilia. If that adds to the cost the City bears, paid back over 10-15-20 years, so be it.
Barring that obvious solution, the alternate home for a Hall of Fame would be the building added one day to the old brick mill. While not as good a fit as a sport facility, it would at the very least build on local history, which of course is another glaring hole in the local cultural fabric, a museum dedicated to the history not related to sport in our city. But, that is a discussion for another day. Let’s focus on saving a physical sports museum first.
