We in Nova Scotia have been richly endowed over the years with the best in amateur sports, both at the team and individual levels. It is the kind of richness that binds us together into a community of effort when an occasion presents itself to pay tribute to those responsible for it happening.  

Therefore, it is appropriate that one of the most respected of these, James H. “Jimmy” McDonald is being  inducted into the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame.  

For decades, Jimmy has forged the careers of hundreds upon hundreds of Nova Scotia athletes.  Organizer, sponsor, manager, coach, executive and most of all a mentor and confidante to the athletes around him, Jimmy McDonald devoted a lifetime of dedication to the development of amateur sport, not only in his native Nova Scotia but in the Maritimes.  

His first venture was in coaching and managing the Halifax Junior Maroons in 1938, leading them on to unequalled success. The Maroons played in the Dartmouth Big Six Junior League.

Jim McDonald’s first taste of provincial success was in coaching the St. Thomas Aquinas hockey team to the Nova Scotia school championship in 1943-44. Out of that club came the St. Mary’s Winter Gardens — Maritime juvenile winners in 44-45, 46-47 and 50-51.  

But it was McDonald’s Junior hockey operation which caught the eye of the sports fans of the late 40’s and early 50’s. Who can ever forget those powerful St. Mary’s teams who provided our province with its first serious Memorial Cup challengers! 

His juniors dominated the Maritime scene from 1945 to 1952, taking such Canadian powerhouses as the Montreal Junior Canadiens, the Nationals (with players such as Jacques Plante and Boom Boom Geoffrion) and Ottawa St. Pats to the limit in national play.  

Then there were the seniors — St. Mary’s and the Atlantics in the old Maritime Big Four and later the powerful Maritime Major League. In the mid-fifties, Jimmy McDonald moved to Moncton where he coached two years and managed a third before returning to Halifax in a management role with the senior Wolverines from 1956 to 1960.  

Not a one-season man, this Jimmy McDonald. In between his busy hockey schedule, he served as business manager of the Dartmouth Arrows of the Halifax and District Baseball League in 1954 and 1956, and the Halifax Cardinals of 1955.  

He managed and coached St. Mary’s teams in junior and juvenile baseball. Basketball, rowing, football — Jimmy was always there. He was president and manager of St. Mary’s Boat Club in 1941 and 1942, and promoted boxing matches on their behalf, bringing in fighters like the late Johnny Greco and former lightweight champion Jimmy Carter.  

We have only touched surface in attempting to chronicle the contributions made to Nova Scotia sport by Jimmy McDonald. There is much more that could be said. That will have to be left to the athletes whose road he made so much easier for them to tell their children and their children’s children.  

Bio Courtesy of Ron Slade