A former Ottawa Senators head coach, a gold medal-winning wrestler, and the first woman to hold an executive position in the CFL have been named to Ottawa’s Sport Hall of Fame. The 2025 class of inductees was announced Wednesday morning. There are eight inductees on the list this year. Among them, Jacques Martin, the former Ottawa Senators head coach, who sat behind the bench from 1996 to 2004. During Martin’s tenure, Ottawa won a Presidents' Trophy with the league’s best record in 2002-03 and came within a game of reaching the Stanley Cup final. Martin returned to Ottawa as a senior advisor to the coaching staff in 2023 and became the interim head coach between the firing of D.J. Smith and the hiring of Travis Green. Erica Wiebe was born in Stittsville and is an Olympic gold medallist. She won gold for Canada in women’s wrestling in 2016 and is also a two-time gold medallist at the Commonwealth Games. Since announcing her retirement from wrestling last spring, Wiebe has also been inducted into the Wrestling Canada, University of Calgary Dinos and Stittsville Sports Halls of Fame. Jo-Anne Polak was the general manager of the Ottawa Rough Riders from 1989 to 1991, becoming the first woman executive in the Canadian Football League and the first woman to be the general manager of a North American sports team. Polak overcame the sexist attitudes helped keep the team alive. The team’s on-field performance also improved during her three seasons as GM. The Barrett Family will be inducted collectively as builders. Barrett family members helped fuel the construction of numerous arenas, including the Barrett Arena in Leitrim Road, as well as ball diamonds, soccer and football fields, and tennis courts. Fred Barrett Sr., a long-time Gloucester Township councillor and the City of Gloucester’s first mayor, secured sponsorship for the Ottawa Cradle League in the 1950s, which offered registration fees of $1 per player. Barrett’s children would go on to have their own successful careers, including Fred Barrett Jr., who played 14 seasons in the NHL; George Barrett, a champion junior and university goalie who would later enter politics; John Barrett, who played nine seasons with the Detroit Red Wings; and Joan Johnston, whose own children had junior and university hockey careers and whose son Marty is now an assistant coach with the Winnipeg Jets. Ervin Budge, best known as “Budgie”, is a champion snooker player. He learned to play billiards at age seven in the back of a barber shop, in between shining shoes. He went on to win many International Snooker League tournaments in the U.S., England and around the globe, including a dozen world amateur team gold or silver medals. He also helped Broken Cue Billiards open 20 new billiards halls in the region and has been a well-known philanthropist in the city. Don Campbell is a sportswriter who has been serving Ottawa newspaper readers for more than four decades, covering football, baseball and OHL hockey. He was also the first recipient of the City of Ottawa’s Brian Kilrea Coaching Award in 2012 for his decades of work as an Ottawa-Nepean Canadians baseball coach and manager. The 2012 Ottawa Fury women’s soccer team were the most successful Ottawa Fury squad during the club’s 15-year run in the nation’s capital. The Fury provided a launching pad for more than 60 players to compete on senior women’s national teams, while the club was a dominant force in collecting 10 division titles, six conference crowns and eight appearances in the W-League Final Four. Pat Stoqua is a hometown hero athlete, rising from Lisgar Collegiate and Carleton University to a six-season career with the Ottawa Rough Riders. He was a team MVP and conference all-star for the Ravens in both football and basketball. He joined the Rough Riders in 1979. Stoqua later became a coach for local boys' and girls' youth basketball teams, he was a long-time volunteer on the Goulbourn Basketball Association executive, and he helped revive the Ravens football program in 2013. The induction ceremony for the Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame is scheduled for May 28. It will take place at the Horticulture Building at Lansdowne. Tickets are $125 each or $1,200 for a table of 10.
