Canada Post honours three athletes with stamps at Calgary library ceremony

When Chief Wilton Littlechild heard that Canada Post was dedicating a stamp to him, "tears flowed."

"My first thought was the years of separation from my grandparents," Littlechild told reporters on Wednesday. A residential school survivor, the Cree chief and lawyer recalled how stamps played a unique role in keeping him connected with his grandparents as a child.

"In that stamped envelope was the love that I needed to carry on. There's a special connection there to fill a missing space."

On Wednesday, Littlechild, along with Bryan Trottier and Edward Lennie, were honoured at the Calgary Public Library with a newly unveiled three-stamp issue, each print commemorating their lives in, and contributions to, Canadian sport.

"These men have broken records and set standards for sportsmanship; their achievements have supported athletic participation and cultural pride across Indigenous communities," said Julie Philippe, vice-president of people and safety at Canada Post.

Littlechild attributed his survival in residential school to sports. "Schooling is where I found sports first," he said. "It was hockey and baseball, and then swimming, judo and football found me. There were many times I ran to sports to run away from the abuse, to exercise and pray or just to cry."

As an adult, Littlechild went on to win 70 championships in sports, earn degrees in physical education, and become the first Alberta Treaty First Nation person to earn a law degree. He was inducted into several sports halls of fame and was instrumental in establishing the National Indian Athletic Association, the North American Indigenous Games and the World Indigenous Nations Games.

Bryan Trottier, in a video message, spoke of his childhood ambitions to make it through one shift with the National Hockey League. "Maybe one shift, maybe score a goal," he said. After getting his start in competitive hockey at age eight, Trottier won the Stanley Cup six times as a player and once as an assistant coach. He earned five major NHL honours, including league MVP and playoff MVP, and was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame and Canada Sports Hall of Fame.

Off the rink, he co-founded the Aboriginal Alumni Hockey team and travelled Canada offering hockey clinics and mentorship.

Edward Lennie was known as the father of the Northern Indigenous Games, after he championed for traditional Indigenous games to continue, whether by teaching them to youth in his living room or founding the Northern Games and advocating for Inuit sports to be showcased at the inaugural Arctic Winter Games in the 1970s. He was awarded the National Aboriginal Achievement Award in 2003, and after his death in 2020, was posthumously inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 2022.