Glengarry sports hall to induct Hugh Michael MacDonald
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MAXVILLE — This week’s featured inductee to the Glengarry Sports Hall of Fame shows how a commitment to and love of sport leads to opportunities for success regardless of one’s abilities.
Hugh Micheal MacDonald will be posthumously inducted into the hall at its ceremony held at the Char-Lan Recreation Centre in Williamstown on Aug. 21.
MacDonald was born in 1951 and adopted by the MacDonald family as a toddler; one of three children who lived with Rita and Donald on the Seventh Concession, Glen Nevis– though Donald passed away while Michael was quite young. He was an active baseball and hockey player while attending the former St. Margaret’s separate school in Glen Nevis, developing a reputation for protecting smaller children on the playground.
It was during his childhood that MacDonald started having severe seizures, which required frequent medical attention and would eventually lead to a diagnosis of Cerebral Palsy. In the information provide by the hall of fame and Mary Leduc, MacDonald’s brother Garfield is quoted speaking of the patience and love shown by mother Rita and sister Maureen in supporting his increasingly challenging needs.
After his diagnosis, MacDonald lived in a residential treatment facility in Brockville as a young teenager, before moving into the Tercentennial Lodge assisted-living centre in Kingston in the early 1970s.
It was during this time MacDonald rekindled his interest in sports and resumed competing, starting with the Eastern Ontario Games for the Disabled. From 1978-86, MacDonald would win 16 gold medals in running, weightlifting, archery, shot put, club throw and javelin; along with 12 silver medals and four bronze medals.
He also competed in the 1986 Ontario Cerebral Palsy Games held in Windsor, coming home with silver medals in weightlifting and the 100-metre dash, and a bronze medal in shot put. Competing at the provincial championships for the physically disabled in 1988, he won a bronze in javelin.
Aside seeking and competing in these high-level competitions, MacDonald retained strong connections to sports within his community, such as playing with the High Gate Park Lasers wheelchair basketball team. The Ontario March of Dimes recognized MacDonald’s involvement with several certificates of achievement over the years, which Maureen has kept as one of the mementos of her brother.
Outside of athletics, MacDonald worked in the clerical department at the Kingston Ability Centre.
MacDonald died on Feb. 10, 2010, and was interred in the St. Margaret’s Catholic Church cemetery in Glen Nevis.
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