WEYBURN – Curt Minard was inducted into the City of Weyburn’s Walk of Fame on Saturday afternoon, and he gave thanks to Weyburn for shaping him, and for being behind him through everything he’s gone through.
He was inducted in the categories of athletics and recreation, as he won a gold medal in amputee hockey for Team Canada, and he competed for Canada in the Paralympic Games in PyeongChang, South Korea, in 2018.
Minard was born and raised in Weyburn, graduating from the Weyburn Comp in 1997, and obtaining his journeyman Red Seal certification as a power line technician in 2003. He relocated to B.C. in 2008, and was on his new job for three weeks when he had a workplace accident and was electrocuted by 14,400 volts in five amps, losing his left hand and receiving third-degree burns over most of his body.
“I really want to thank from the heart what Weyburn has meant to me my whole life. Weyburn’s never turned its back on me, and I will never forget that,” said Minard in an emotional speech in front of City Hall, where a large crowd had gathered during the Weyburn Car Show.
“I was born and raised on these streets. I rode my bike down them, and I skateboarded down them, and maybe once or twice stumbled from Detour,” he said, noting some of his “maniac” friends were in the crowd. “We had a lot of good times, and I had a lot of really good relationships. I think that’s what forms a community, and that’s exactly what Weyburn has always been.”
When he competed as a skier, he was always introduced as “the boy from Vernon, B.C.”, but in fact, “it was a Weyburn kid who grew up without a single ski hill around it.”
Whenever Minard was in the gates for a race, or suiting up for a hockey game, he always kept in mind the community he came from and shaped him. “I’m forever grateful for that, and forever grateful to be recognized along with some of these great names on the Walk of Fame. It’s an extreme honour to be put into some of the same categories with some of these people. I want to say thank you to the City of Weyburn and the community for that.”
His love of sports was shaped in Weyburn, he noted, as he played every sport he could, from football and basketball to floor hockey.
Minard also noted he and his extended family are all from Weyburn, “and I think that’s why I’m so emotional about it. I don’t often get emotional when I speak, but you can’t help but think about where you came from. My grandparents, who are no longer with us, Joe and Evelyn Minard and Jean Weber, they taught me that hard work and never giving up was what it took for success.”
He added they also taught him to win and to lose with grace. “That’s two very important messages in life they taught me, and I try to instill that in my son, that not only you win gracefully, but lose gracefully, because nothing in life is ever going to be fair.”
Minard said he experienced that through being electrocuted in 2008, “when a co-worker made a mistake and almost took my life three times over in the next 10 weeks after that, and that wasn’t fair. You can make the decision at that point, to lay down and die, choose a direction of destruction, which happens, or you can choose to accept it, move forward and kick ass, and that’s what I wanted to do.”
When he was lying in a hospital bed in 2008, he didn’t think he would ever pick up a hockey stick again, as he couldn’t put on his shoes or feed himself, and he couldn’t leave the house or drive a vehicle.
One factor that inspired him, however, was in 2010 when Sidney Crosby scored the winning goal for Canada, and “that’s when my passion started to grow, and my son played hockey, and of course not understanding of ‘why can’t you play, dad’.”
He ended up making Team Canada in 2012 to play amputee hockey, and they won the gold medal at worlds. Making the team was a key defining moment for him, he said, as “I realized I beat my disability, the disability didn’t own me any more. I overcame adversity, I found a way to do it, and I believed in myself, and won a world championship with a group of guys who are like my brothers.”
Moving forward, Minard determined he wanted to be a multi-sport national athlete, and he competed in snowboarding and slalom skiing.
“I was able to accomplish much more than I ever dreamed of,” he said, and he thanked Weyburn for that as well as sports for giving him the venue to achieve these things.
He retired from competitive sports in 2020, and is now in demand as a motivational speaker, sharing his story.
Minard brought a jersey that he wore while racing in PyeongChang in the Paralympics, and he donated it to the City, taking time to sign it as well. He gave it to the city as thanks on behalf of himself and his late grandparents.
“I just greatly appreciate the honour that you’ve provided for myself and my family, and I have no more words of what that means to me. It’s incredible that I’ve had you guys behind me the whole way. Thank you, thank you for that,” said Minard before unveiling the plaque on the Walk of Fame, with his extended family gathered around.
