2025 Hall of Fame Inductee – Ron Fraser

Ron Fraser is one of the most enthusiastic and versatile volunteers this community has ever known. Ron’s volunteer involvements have been recognized by the town of Antigonish and the province of Nova Scotia and are far too many to mention in this post, so here we will focus only on how Ron earned induction in the Antigonish Highland Games Hall of Fame. For this we begin Ron’s journey at a boy’s school he attended from Grade 9 to 11 at St. Augustine’s Monastery.

“As I look back,” Ron said when representing Antigonish at the 2007 provincial volunteer awards ceremony, “I realize things I’m interested in today were established in those formative years at St. Augustine’s.”

One of those interests was long distance running, a discipline Ron practiced for 35 years, racing in such prestigious events as the Johnny Miles Marathon. As a born volunteer, it didn’t take long for Ron to turn this personal interest into a way of helping young people develop into well-rounded adults. Ron was one of the many children about town who remembers Frank McGibbon telling them to “Come to the Field, Come to the Field” and many did spend their Saturdays and evenings at Columbus Field learning to run and throw and jump. While a student at StFX, Ron was invited by Dr. John Hugh Gillis, principal of Antigonish High, to help out with the school’s  cross country team. This early experience in coaching stayed with him after he graduated from university and took his first teaching job in Digby, Nova Scotia.

During his four years as a guidance counsellor in Digby, Ron began to take coaching clinics and started the school’s first cross country team. Even then he knew he was not just teaching students to run, he was helping them become happy, healthy and contributing members of the community.

Back in Antigonish, Dr. John Hugh Gillis, now superintendent of the Regional High School, was always on the lookout for staff who would combine excellent classroom skills with a willingness to volunteer for extra-curricular activities. John Hugh had a great love of sports and a great love of Scottish culture and particularly the Highland Games. He hired such versatile teachers as Gerarda MacDonald, Bernie Chisholm, Angus Grant and Neil McKenna whose extra-curricular activities included the formation of dancers, runners and drummers and who are all members of the Highland Games Hall of Fame. When an opening came up for a guidance counsellor, John Hugh could see that Ron had the experience and skill for the job as well as a burning desire to help young people develop through sports. It was a match made in Highland Games heaven.

While Ron immersed himself in coaching at the high school and acting as assistant to track and field meet director Angus Grant at several Highland Games, he continued his training as a coach and as a track and field official.

“I had a certain perspective I brought to how a meet should be run. Proper shirts and identification for officials, seeing that everything was done on time and accurately. For instance, there were 10 heats of 6 kids each in the 100 yard dash. The starters had to be right there, with scorers at the other end ready with their stop watches, then they would have to take their results over to Duffy (MacDonald) in the tent. Duffy was a math teacher, and very good with numbers, and his job was to put them all on the big board so that team points could be calculated. All of these steps had to be done accurately and efficiently for our meet to be sanctioned by the governing body and for our records to be official.”

In 1979 Nova Scotia was chosen to host the first-ever International Gathering of the Clans outside of Scotland. Ron at the time was president of the Nova Scotia Track and Field Association and was also given the role of Meet Director for the International Gathering of the Clans. He pushed hard for the Antigonish Games to be a showpiece for the became Meet Director for 1979 Games and was able to secure $50,000 in funding through Allan MacEachen’s office. The money was used to improve all the facilities and equipment needed to run a world-class event at Columbus Field and to bring in top athletes from Scotland to compete.

Ron remembers “Those Games would be the largest track and field event to take place in eastern Canada, with over 700 athletes, and many of the best track and field athletes from eastern Canada and Scotland attended. Participants included Nat Muir, Maggie Woods and Adam Schumaker, some of the premier international athletes of their time.”

Ron recalled that one of the Heavy Event athletes who came from Scotland was caber champion Bill Anderson. He had a special request for Ron. The fame of Hughie MacCarron had reached across the Atlantic and Bill Anderson wanted to meet the famous farmer and caber tosser from Maryvale. Hughie had retired from throwing cabers a few years earlier, but Ron was happy to take Bill to the MacCarron farm to meet the gentle giant and future Highland Games Hall of Fame member.

Ron continues his involvement with the Highland Games today as starter for the 5-Mile Road Race, a job he has had for the past 25 years. He will be there again on Friday, July 11th, the day after he is inducted into our Hall of Fame to fire the shot to start the 5-Miler

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