1980s Northern Lights Wheelchair Basketball program with Red Deer roots inducted into sport’s Canadian hall of fame

One of its founding members was Ron Minor, now 68 and from Magrath, Alberta. Minor was just two when he was diagnosed with polio, but went on to compete at five Paralympics.

Minor won a bronze in the 4×100 metre relay in 1980 (Arnhem, Netherlands), two gold and three bronze on the track in 1984 (Mandeville, England), and two fifth place finishes in wheelchair basketball in 1988 (Seoul) and 1992 (Barcelona).

He also competed at the Toronto Paralympics in 1976 — when the Olympics were in Montreal.

At the 1978 Pan American Games, he won three golds, and established world records in the 800 metre and 1,500 metre races, before going onto to break the 1,500 metre record nine more times that year.

For those wheelchair track accomplishments, he was inducted into the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame in 1980, at the young age of 20.

He’d be inducted again in 2018 as a member of the 2004-05 Alberta Northern Lights Basketball team.

“There was a small group of us that decided we wanted to play some ball, and a guy by the name of Reg McLellan made it happen. He organized everything, and in September 1976, we had our first season of wheelchair basketball,” Minor says of the program’s humble beginnings.

“The people involved were great, including Joe Higgins, who was instrumental in Red Deer.”

Minor would go on to play for the Red Deer Rebels wheelchair basketball team, which Higgins also played for and coached. That team was contacted later, around 1992, by a new, and now well-known, Western Hockey League team to ask if they’d be able to use the name.

Earlier, in the late 1970s, the original Northern Lights would enter the National Wheelchair Basketball Association, which at the time, as Minor recalls, had 147 teams. Their squad was ranked 146th.

“We just managed. We grew as a group, grew as friends, and a guy by the name of Gary McPherson became involved. He turned our organization from a five-and-dime into a million-dollar organization,” says Minor.

The Alberta Northern Lights wheelchair basketball team during the 1980s. (Supplied)

“Gary had us going to Toastmasters learning how to speak properly, and then going out and talking to people about the Northern Lights”

McPherson, who was born in Edson and also had polio, was a member of the Order of Canada and the Alberta Order of Excellence. He passed away in 2010.

McPherson also happens to be part of the 2025 WBC HoF class as an individual inductee.

“We took it upon ourselves to develop the sport in different communities, such as Red Deer. We’d go out and do demonstrations. We worked tirelessly on our image.”

For a stretch, the Northern Lights practiced out of the gym at Red Deer’s Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School.

According to Higgins, who also spoke with rdnewsNOW, he made sure to claim gym time at Red Deer College (now Polytechnic), where he was a student, for the team to get in some reps.

(Red Deer Archives, CHCA News stock footage, 1988, VC378)

“I was paying athletic fees, so I said I’d like to use them to utilize the gym. We practiced at RDC twice a week,” says Higgins, who at the same time was swimming for Canada at the Paralympics — which made it even more enticing for the college to allow the team practice time.

Among others, Higgins credits the late Shirley McKenzie (1949-2020), who was a City employee, and became the team’s manager, for helping them with things like making it to the national championships.

He gives kudos as well to veteran Alberta journalist Cam Tait for following the team around and giving it coverage.

Minor tells rdnewsNOW he’s not particularly fond of the word “disabled.”

“I prefer to look at people, as we showcased, as having abilities rather than disabilities. This team [in the 80s] gave them a platform for awareness. I can tell you we weren’t often looked at as disabled. If you ever watch the game of wheelchair basketball, you can see it takes a lot of practice and skill to make moves at that speed and with the ball,” he shared.

“Just like the actual Northern Lights, that team opened people’s eyes.”

As minor also shared, the organization made sure its entire workforce, more than 30 people at one point, was of people with differing abilities.

The organization still runs sports programs in Red Deer, as well as a year-round bingo.

As Minor says, “Red Deer is a part of our legacy.”

According to its website, the Alberta Northern Lights Wheelchair Basketball Society provides wheelchair basketball programming and HiLights school programs to Northern and Central Alberta.

If you would like to get involved as an athlete, coach, referee, volunteer or donor, you can contact the organization here.

Among the program’s alumni is Red Deer Paralympian Tammy Cunnington.

Also going into the 2025 class of the Wheelchair Basketball Canada Hall of Fame are Jamie Borisoff, Jennifer Krempien, Dean MacKinnon, Roy Sherman, and the 2025 IWBF 3×3 Open World Championship Teams.

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rdnewsNOW and The Everything Red Deer Podcast spoke to Northern Lights alum and 2025 Alberta Sports Hall of Fame inductee Ross Norton in June 2025.

by Josh Hall | @Vancan19

1980s Northern Lights Wheelchair Basketball program with Red Deer roots inducted into sport’s Canadian hall of fame

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