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Leo Fahey of Stellarton has spent over sixty years promoting the ideals, philosophy, and fundamentals of sport. He has been involved in baseball, hockey, track and field, and rugby through organizing, coaching, founding and directing organizations, teams, clinics, and physical education programs. An outstanding athlete, too, Fahey is a member of the Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame, the Pictou County Sport Hall of Fame, and the Cape Breton Sport Hall of Fame.

 

Annual Program

Few inductees into the Nova Scotia Sports Hall of Fame can match Leo Fahey’s achievements as an athlete, coach and teacher.

Fahey remains ageless as even today he instructs youth and adults in hockey and baseball. However, his sport achievements over the past 60 years are also documented in running, rugby and boxing.

Born in New Waterford, Fahey had already achieved renown in sport before moving in 1947 to play hockey out of the Stellarton Memorial Rink, which opened that year, and boasted Pictou County’s first artificial ice surface.

Fahey played for the legendary Bob Beaton, who relinquished his player-coach assignment in Pictou to assemble a hockey team in the new rink.

Six years earlier, Fahey won the Maritime featherweight amateur boxing title, then won the lightweight crown in 1942. He spurned offers to turn pro in boxing so he could maintain his amateur status in baseball and hockey. Fahey’s accomplishments include three scoring titles in three highly competitive hockey leagues: the Nova Scotia Senior Hockey League, the Cape Breton Senior Hockey League and the APC Hockey League. He was considered the best center in the New Brunswick Senior Hockey League when he played for the Fredericton Capitals in 1952-53.

Fahey tallied the winning goal in the longest amateur hockey game in Canada as New Waterford defeated Sydney 5-4 to win its first Cape Breton league championship.

He coached New Glasgow Rangers of the NSSHL from 1954 to 1960, winning provincial and Maritime championships in 1957-58, and has instructed at numerous hockey schools.

In baseball, Fahey played three seasons with Stellarton Albions, starting in 1948. He coached Stellarton Juniors from 1947-52 and was a co-founder of the Pictou County Twilight League. He was a player-coach of the Albions in 1960, when they were defeated by the New Waterford Giants for the Maritime senior championship. Never one to slow down, Fahey completed the 2000 Johnny Miles half marathon on skates at the age of 75.

During and after his playing days, Fahey devoted his entire adult life (and still does at age 79) to helping the youth and adults of Pictou County who want to partake in the marvelous life of sport. He has made the community a better place in which to live, using sport as the vehicle to enrich lives in a positive fashion.

Fahey coached hockey, track and field and rugby at Stellarton High School from 1948 to 1957. He coached Stellarton’s hockey team to the Nova Scotia Headmasters title when there was only one division.

During the 1980s and 1990s, he helped Eddie Gillis direct Bluenose Baseball Camps throughout Nova Scotia.

For more than 40 years, Fahey almost single handedly ensured the baseball field in Stellarton was in top playing condition, spending many hours manicuring the field in spring and summer.

For the past two years, Fahey has organized Baseball for Moms and Hockey for Moms so mothers could appreciate the training and instruction their children undergo in sports.

“They love it,” Fahey says. “Many of them never played before, and now they’re playing well.”

Leo passed away on August 29th, 2018.

Annual Program Courtesy of Steve Goodwin