Angus Walters was born in 1882 in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. He gained notoriety as the managing owner of the Bluenose, the famed schooner that won five international races in the 1930s. Angus personally supervised the construction of the Bluenose, which had been built specifically to restore Nova Scotia’s proud seafaring tradition. He was the only skipper the Bluenose ever had, and he knew right from the start that she was going to be a winner.

The Bluenose captured the International Fisherman’s Trophy in the fall of 1921 and the trophy never left Nova Scotia again. The Bluenose defended the title in 1922 and 1923. (The Bluenose retained the trophy in 1923 only because the American challenger refused to take the title by default after Walters was stripped of victory due to a technicality.)

The races did not resume until 1931 and Walters and the Bluenose were again victorious. The schooner represented Canada at the Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago in 1933 and sailed to England in 1937 to compete in the Silver Jubilee events of King George V and Queen Mary. The schooner was in its last race in 1938. Then it was used primarily as a fishing vessel.

In 1940, Walters retired as a fisherman and started a drive to save the Bluenose and preserve it as a piece of Nova Scotia history. The bid failed, in 1942 Walters had to sell the schooner to the West Indies Trading Company.

On January 29, 1946, the Bluenose struck a reef off the coast of Haiti and sank. Angus Walters lived to sail on the maiden voyage of the Bluenose II in 1963 and to see his ship appear on the Canadian dime.

He was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame and Nova Scotia’s Sport Hall of Fame. He passed away on August 12, 1968 at age 87.