Honouring 2023 Lifetime Achievement Inductee, Robert K. Barney

Celebrating 2023 Lifetime Achievement award winner Dr. Robert K. (Bob) Barney, an accomplished teacher, mentor, administrator, sports historian and leader.

By Jason Winders

In presenting Robert K. Barney with the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award, the Western Mustang Athletics Association is not only honouring a scholar dedicated to resurrecting and understanding our sporting past, but a teacher and mentor committed to securing his discipline’s future.

Proudly hailing from New England, Robert is a veteran of the Korean Conflict, serving four years in the United States Air Force as an atomic armorer, seeing service in nuclear and thermonuclear testing operations. He earned three degrees from the University of New Mexico (BS’59, MS’63, PhD’68). As an undergraduate student he was a three-sport athlete – football, baseball, and swimming.

In 1972, Robert arrived in Canada as Western’s Director of Athletics in the new Faculty of Physical Education, after spending a decade at three different universities in the United States. In 1979, he left university administration to turn his full attention to teaching, research, and service.

Robert has had an unparalleled academic career across six decades (and counting) comprised of research excellence, mentorship, great humour, and genuine kindness.

Robert has made notable contributions to changing the way we view sporting history, whether cementing Labatt Memorial Park’s legacy, tracing the sporting origins of the maple leaf, and nudging baseball’s roots back north of the border. He has published more than 300 scholarly items, including books, peer-reviewed articles, chapters in anthologies, proceedings papers, reviews, and abstracts.

Robert helped establish the North American Society for Sport History (NASSH), a body that recently celebrated a half century of advancing the academic study of sport.

Perhaps his most lasting accomplishment has been elevating the study of the Olympic Games into the realm of academia.

In 1989, Robert established the International Centre for Olympic Studies at Western, the only independent body of its kind, as well as its scholarly journal, Olympika. The centre has made Western the go-to source for Olympics insights, while also making its founder a reluctant (but outstanding) media darling as the go-to interview for outlets around the world.

In 2002, Robert’s award-winning book, Selling the Five Rings, outlined the rise of the Olympic movement into a transnational commercial giant of imposing power and influence. Winner of the 2003 NASSH Book Award, the book was called “ an important contribution to understanding the modern leviathan of sports” by the Chicago Tribune.

His honours are numerous, including the Olympic Order from the International Olympic Committee in 1997, the Pierre De Coubertin Medal for Lifelong Achievement in 2009, and NASSH Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. In 2017, he was awarded a Doctor of Laws, Honoris Causa from Western.

Although he retired in 1996, Robert continues to teach sports history graduate courses at Western, and supervises master’s and PhD students.

Robert’s influence cannot be counted in publications and lectures, but also measured in the legion of scholars, historians, athletes, and individuals he has prepared to contribute to sport history and the world of academia.

Honouring 2023 Lifetime Achievement Inductee Karen Danylchuk

Celebrating 2023 Lifetime Achievement award winner Dr. Karen Danylchuk, an accomplished coach, teacher, mentor, administrator, sports management scholar and leader.

By W. James (Jim) Weese, former Dean, Faculty of Health Sciences

I’ve known and admired Karen Danylchuk for more than 35 years, and I could not be happier to see her honored by the Western Mustang Athletics Association with the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award. I cannot think of a more deserving recipient.

Karen’s accomplishments as a student-athlete, coach, administrator, and sport management scholar and leader are widely known and internationally acclaimed. She has earned a host of distinguished awards throughout her long and successful career, including several coaching and administrative awards from Ontario University Athletics (OUA), and an array of prestigious competitive leadership and service awards from the Sport Management Academy. Notably, she has been inducted into two sports hall of fames including McMaster University’s in 2006 as a tennis and squash athlete, and Western’s in 2014 for her role as a coach, sports administrator, and athletic alumni volunteer.

Karen is a natural and gifted leader. She has held several leadership roles, including President of the North American Society for Sport Management (NASSM), and as Founding President at the World Association for Sport Management (WASM). Her leadership and significant contributions to these organizations have been recognized in numerous ways. She received NASSM’s highest honour, the Dr. Earle F. Zeigler Award, for her contributions to sport management teaching, research, and service, and the Dr. Garth Paton Distinguished Service Award from NASSM. She also received a NASSM research fellowship for her distinguished research accomplishments.

Throughout her career, Karen has been a tireless advocate and effective champion for women’s sports and for the role of athletics in higher education. She has been a role model and trusted mentor to many students and young colleagues who aspire to follow in her footsteps. She’s been an active graduate student supervisor who has provided direct support and leadership to more than 180 graduate students, including support to 42 doctoral students.

Karen has made a difference in the field and at Western. She has provided strong and effective leadership in the classroom, in her program of research, and to the administrative offices that she has held, including serving as the Coordinator of Intercollegiate Athletics, the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences, and as Acting Director of the School of Kinesiology. I am honoured to call her a friend and colleague and delighted to see her recognized with this prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award that she so richly deserves.

Living life to the fullest: remembering Dinnie (Alice Dorinda) Greenway BA’42

Alice ‘Dinnie’ Greenway was a muti-faceted athlete, avid horsewoman, and founding member of the Western’s Women’s Athletic Alumnae organization.

By Helen Luckman

Dinnie Greenway. Photo courtesy of Susan Thomas Paddick

Throughout her almost 103 years, Dinnie Greenway accepted (with gusto) the joys, challenges and even the odd disappointment life gave her. From her earliest years Dinnie and her family were part of the multi-dimensional fabric and foundation of our local community. A talented linguist fluent in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German, she initially planned to join the foreign service. However, after marriage, her life took a different path.

Dinnie’s great great-grandfather, Thomas McCormick, founded McCormick’s (a local biscuit factory and the McCormick Home). Her father, George Arthur (Art) Brickenden (BA’1918) was a judge who represented Canada at the Privy Council in London, England, and her mother Catharine (Kizzie) was instrumental to the development of local community theatre. She established the foundation of the London Little Theatre in 1922, which eventually became The Grand Theatre. In 2002, Chris Doty (local journalist, historian, author and playwright) and Jeff Culbert (actor and director) honoured Catharine’s contributions by developing the Brickenden Award for Theatrical Excellence.

As a family the Brickendens were avid horsemen and women – training, riding and breeding horses from Brickenden Stables with great success since the 1920s. As a competitor, judge and breeder, Dinnie’s expertise and skill was recognized throughout the field and her horses have represented Canada internationally in the Olympics and the Pan Am Games. In a 2016 CBC interview she told the story of being at the 1936 Berlin Olympics while still a schoolgirl in England. She was invited to join the French Jumping Team’s entourage by Pierre Clave, Chef d’equipe of the team, who was a family friend.

Dinnie’s connections to Western started early. Her father played on the football team and was also a decorated sprinter, winning five gold medals. Sent to boarding school in England at 12 years old, Dinnie returned to Canada when Germany invaded Alsace Loraine during the Second World War. As a student at Central High School and subsequently at Western, Dinnie took every opportunity to compete in track, basketball and field hockey. She played on Western’s fledgling women’s hockey team in 1938 and often told the tale of turning up for tennis tryouts with her wood-framed catgut racquet, inscribed ‘to Dinnie from Fred Perry.’ Fred was the last British men’s champion at Wimbledon (1934, 1935 and 1936) until Andy Murray won in 2013.

While Dinnie’s athletic abilities and enthusiasm were eclectic, her dedication to the equestrian field was lifelong. In 1948 she founded the London Pony Club and represented Canada in Tripartite international competition with the United States and Mexico. In 1949 she was the first winner of the President of Mexico Trophy at the Toronto Winter Fair Jumping Competition. Subsequently, Dinnie represented Canada at many international competitions as both a competitor and judge. Her skills were recognized throughout the equestrian community and she was honoured as a lifetime governor of the Toronto Winter Fair and an honorary director of the Western Fair in London. Jim Elder, 1968 Olympic gold medallist recognized Brickenden Stables as “one of the foundation families, if not the foundation family of the horse show world.”

At Western, we are grateful that Dinnie was a founding member of our Women’s Athletic Alumnae organization in 1987 and served as President from 1994-96. Under her leadership, the organization’s official award was designed by the sculptor Elizabeth Bradford Holbrook.

Predeceased by her husbands W.H. Hall-Holland, O.M. Fuller and Robert Greenway, Dinnie is survived by a loving, large extended family including children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and great great-grandchildren!