$3M boost brings St. Stephen basketball exhibit entre closer to reality

Construction will start a year ahead of schedule on a new sports attraction in St. Stephen. It's called the World's Oldest Basketball Court and it just received its final donation to meet the board's $6 million fundraising goal. The centre aims to preserve an old basketball court in the downtown core. Tom Liston is in charge of fundraising for the project and joins us from Toronto. Tom, congratulations on reaching your goal, man. Hey, thank you very much and thank you for having me. So Tom, now that we've reached the required amount of donations, what's next? Well, what we did raise was from private donors and foundations. We've cleared our $6 million hurdle. We had previously raised $1.1 million to buy the building. But the next phase, which we call Phase 2, we completed the private side. So the next phase is to get the governments to continue to progress. They've done a lot of work on the project, including the Premier came down recently to our Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame ceremony that we held right in St. Stephen, New Brunswick. And they did announce initial funding of $430,000 approximately, matched by ACOA, so the federal part of $430,000. And that allows us to continue the design and development work. Is it really the world's oldest, Tom? And how did you guys find that out? Yeah, it's a fantastic story. So the original court would have been used in Springfield College where Dr. Naismith, a Canadian from Ontario, invented the game he taught at Springfield College. And he taught a number of students, and that was the first basketball team. That court burned down almost 100 years ago, but those students that were his first, not only students, but the first basketball team, when they graduated, took the game all over the world to YMCA's all over the world. A gentleman named Lyman Archibald from Truro, Nova Scotia, became what's called the General Secretary of the YMCA in St. Stephen. And the St. Croix Courier, a newspaper that dates back 160 years, I believe, noted that a game of basketball was played in this YMCA so we have a dated record and of all those original courts that people spread over the world from Naismith's first basketball team only two exist one in Paris France and one in St. Stephen New Brunswick and because of St. Croix Courier we can have an exact date which is about seven weeks ahead of where Paris France court is. As you as you look to preserve this old court build this new tourist attraction in southwest New Brunswick what do you hope it will do for for the area on august 20th um canada basketball saw what we were doing with the archie year after year and the archie is a is a festival if you will to to raise money and create awareness for the world's oldest basketball court named after lyman archibald of course and we attract people from all over the world uh golf uh sorry basketball celebrities uh olympians um a number of people that have affinity for basketball and they come to New Brunswick and this past summer canada basketball said, hey, we see what you're doing. We see what a great celebration you're having. Why don't we bring the Hall of Fame ceremony for the first time in 50 years outside of Toronto? Let's bring it to St. Stephen New Brunswick. And St. Stephen, we and the whole province really welcomed Canada basketball with open arms. And we shut down streets in St. Stephen. We had a music festival all day. And we really made the Hall of Famers feel extra special. So much so that Canada basketball CEO at the Hall of Fame ceremony announced that the next Hall of Fame, which will be two years time, will come back to St. Stephen New Brunswick. Well, Tom, thanks so much for the chat and best of luck to you and your team. Thank you very much, Ian.