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June 2, 2023

James McGregor Stewart Award 2023





The James McGregor Stewart Society is honoured to announce that the winner of the 2023 award of $1000 is Paul Tingley, whose talents are legion and amazing.  A Google search for 'Paul Tingley' yields 1,190,000 results and countless pictures and interviews and a Tedx talk (definitely a first for us).

He is best-known as a sailor in the finest Nova Scotia tradition.  It's worth reading his story in the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame, where you will learn of his transformative experiences, independent spirit, dedication and thought.

He won a gold medal at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing through unusual strategy.  
That gold medal win was the first-ever gold in Olympic or Paralympic sailing for Canada. 

Shortly after Beijing, Tingley continued to prove that he was a top sailor by both able-bodied and para-athlete standards, entering and winning the Open World Championship in the Netherlands, where anyone could compete, with or without disabilities.

“He’s the first sailor with a disability to win a world championship in the open class,” says friend Colin Guthrie. “That was straight up, all the cards on the table, everything’s equal. He delivered in such a great way—still to this day, one of the most popular world champions I’ve ever seen in terms of being really well respected among the group.”

Paul Tingley went on to coach the Nova Scotia sailing team of Jacob Chaplin-Saunders and Oliver Bone at the 2020 Olympic Games. He also spent five years leading the Parasport portfolio at Sport Nova Scotia and is credited with advancing a wide range of parasports provincially and nationally, including sailing, sledge hockey, sit ski, table tennis, and wheelchair basketball.

As an advocate, Paul is without peer, and this recognition is overdue.

Facts:
  • A member of the Canadian Sailing team for 18 years
  • Competed in five Paralympic Games (2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016)
  • Paralympic gold medallist, 2008
  • Paralympic bronze medallist in 2000 and 2016
  • Sail Canada’s Sailor of the Year, 2008
  • 2010 Open World Champion (competitors included able-bodied sailors)

Past winners of the James McGregor Stewart Award are:

2015 Sarah Dube
2016 Clary Stubbert
2017 Gerry Post
2018 Paul Vienneau
2019 Jenn Powley
2020 Kendall Worth
2021 Hope McInnis
2022 Vicky Levack

The award honors James McGregor Stewart 1889-1955, who had polio as a youth. Son of a Pictou lawyer, grandson of a Cape Breton minister, and a principal of Stewart, McKelvey, the downtown Halifax law firm, in his time he was Nova Scotia’s premier corporate lawyer, and he wrote the rules for many of our most successful and long-lived companies. He was president of the Canadian Bar between the wars. He is one of fewer than 500 Canadians to be awarded the Commander of the British Empire for services to the Empire in WW II.

The Award was established by friends of the Society through the Community Foundation of Nova Scotia, an organization that supports philanthropy across the province.

Contact Warren Reed for details - wcreedh@gmail.com
The James McGregor Stewart Society

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