Hockey legend honoured with community park naming in Oshawa
Published June 24, 2024 at 11:15 am
The announcement to honour hockey legend Dale Hawerchuk with a park in his name at the former site of his alma mater was made four years ago, just before his death from stomach cancer in August of 2020.
Tuesday morning Dale Hawerchuk Park at the Symphony Towns townhouse project will get its official moment in the sun with a ceremony to commemorate the park opening at Harmony Road and Taylor Avenue in the city’s southeast.
The park is part of a new subdivision on the former Dr. F.J. Donevan Collegiate site. The high school closed in 2010 and was demolished to make way for the 212-unit townhouse development.
Hawerchuk grew up in Oshawa (his father, like many fathers of the day, worked at General Motors) and went to Woodcrest and Father Francis elementary schools before enrolling at Donevan from 1977 to 1979 while playing for the Oshawa Legionaires.
Hawerchuk would go on to a storied junior career with the Cornwall Royals, winning back-to-back Memorial Cups in 1980 and 1981 and earning CHL player of the year honours before beginning a Hall of Fame career in the NHL, scoring more than 1,400 points with four teams, notably with the Winnipeg Jets.
Hawerchuk represented Canada in the 1987 and 1991 Canada Cups and won the faceoff that led to the iconic Gretzky-to-Lemieux overtime winner in ’87, one of the most famous goals in Canadian hockey history.
Dale Hawerchuk Park will be the centerpiece of new Symphony Towns community, with the developer promising the park to be a “community focal point, celebrating a hockey icon and providing a recreational haven for residents and visitors.”
The park naming ceremony will take place at 11 a.m.
