Pinball Clemons: Head of the 2016 Canada's Sports Hall of Fame class

Among the seven luminaries brought together Tuesday in Toronto for induction day into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame, it seemed only fitting that Michael Clemons – Pinball, to the world – would serve as unofficial valedictorian.

The class of 2016 comprises men and women from across the spectrum in both official languages and a variety of pursuits – history makers and boundary breakers, from Clemons’ designated “captain” (Summer and Winter Olympian Sue Holloway), inspirational figure (Paralympian Stephanie Dixon) and humanitarian (Dr. Frank Hayden of Special Olympics renown), and on through hockey’s Bryan Trottier, speed skater Annie Perreault and curler Colleen Jones.

Just where Clemons fits among such company, he didn’t say – the record suggests, practically demands head of the class. At mid-life (51) and nine years out of a locker room where he won three Grey Cups as a player and one as a head coach, he remains an organizer, a champion, a motivator for change – ever the activist, with a foundation that’s building schools and orphanages in Haiti and helping run educational and sports programs here at home for disadvantaged children.

In an age of renewed demonstrations on the playing field, Clemons has been using his status as an athlete to impact the community going back almost to his beginnings here, when as a newly-minted Grey Cup winner in 1991 he followed immediately with a 15-night charitable speaking tour – thanks to an injury suffered in that title game, he hobbled through it on crutches.

“It’s not unusual to talk about great athletes and the fact that you almost have to be selfish – people who are really driven,” he said. “But an athlete has every much the right to go out and speak out as a teacher does, or a police officer. Athletes are no different than any other profession.

“I think athletes have been unequally represented in the areas of activism and being out there and challenging the status quo. When you have that platform you can use it as you will. Some people just want to play sport. Others want to use it for philanthropic, others to leverage business for it, for (politics). For most of us, it’s a combination, but athletes have every right to leverage that platform.

“I believe that my job is to steward that platform. … I’ve got more dreams than I do years.”

One thing he has steered clear of is party politics, having been approached numerous times here only to say no (“I have such a difficult time with the party thing”). And as far as his native country, he says that since he came to Canada he hasn’t voted in a U.S. presidential election – “it’s been painstaking to watch,” he says of this particular renewal. “It’s easy to point at Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump ... It’s actually a prevailing culture of disrespect. We find it at every level.

"I’m not on my soapbox – I just want to be an example. I probably take part in it more than I know and understand. I want to take the plank out of my own eye before I remove the speck out of my brother’s. That’s really what it’s all about – each of us checking ourselves first, and then learning how we move on together because we’re better together.”