The air inside the old gym carried a heavy weight in the fall of 1979. The kind of cold that settles into your bones. But we were shifting. Something new was taking root on the hardwood.

Gary McPherson took the helm as the Alberta Northern Lights wheelchair general manager that year from his Aberhart Hospital room. He was a quiet man. A patient builder. He spent freezing mornings watching the court, his eyes tracking the movement of chairs and the arc of the ball.

He was slowly, methodically building one of the greatest wheelchair basketball programs in North America.

He saw what we could be. He saw it before the rest of the world did.

By Christmas, he gave Edmonton the Klondike Classic. Six heavy-hitting teams travelled from south of the border to face the Lights, including teams from Detroit, Nashville and Los Angeles.

McPherson knew what it took to become the best. He knew the Lights needed reinforcing. So, he looked west. He brought in six players from the Vancouver Cable Cars.

Among them were Rick Hansen and Terry Fox.

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In those early days, the gym was often quiet. League games were few and far between for the Northern Lights in the Northwest Conference of the National Wheelchair Basketball Association with Vancouver and Spokane.

Each team played each other four times. Two at home. Two away. And that was it. We waited in the silence for the regional playoffs.

Vancouver was a perennial stronghold. They were a wall. They won numerous Canadian championships. They dominated the national level. But Gary McPherson was a competitive innovator. He did not accept the quiet. He did not accept the waiting.

He created the Challenge Cup. He invited 10 of the top NWBA teams to compete.

Not the easy teams. Not the local pickups. But the heavyweights.

And with his steadfast leadership, the Lights started turning heads. They punched into the top 10. They were becoming a force. And finally, British Columbia’s run. Alberta became national champions in 1983.

The metal of the chairs clashing. The echo in the gym. The lopsided smiles of men who knew they had built something from the ground up.

The best was yet to come.

It was a rainy afternoon in Eugene, Ore. Early March, 1985. The air was damp and heavy. The Lights were playing the eight-time NWBA champions, the Casa Colinda Condors.

Triple overtime.

The physical toll was immense. The muscles burning. The hands blistered and raw from the rims. But they did not stop. They pushed.

I was courtside for that game as a reporter. I felt the vibration of the floorboards. I heard the desperate, ragged breaths. It remains a career top-three highlight. Because in that gym, on that damp afternoon, history was made.

The Lights beat the Condors.

For the first time in NWBA history, a Canadian team entered the Final Four. The Lights did not win in Lexington, Ken., two weeks later. But it did not matter. They were there. Pushing in the top four of North America’s best.

Not the underdogs anymore. Not the quiet team from the frozen north. But contenders.

Nine years later, in 1994, Edmonton hosted the World Cup of wheelchair basketball. The coach of the Canadian team was Joe Higgins. Joe was a rookie in 1979 with the Lights. He grew up on that court. He was inducted into the Wheelchair Basketball Canada Hall of Fame as a builder in 2022.

The roots Gary planted grew deep. They spread across the country. They touched the world.

This weekend marks the Alberta Northern Lights 50th anniversary. The Canadian Wheelchair Basketball League championships are taking place at the Saville Centre. Twenty-two teams. Three divisions. Friday through Sunday. The gym will not be quiet. It will echo with the sounds of competition, of friendship, of joy.

Clitty-clank. Squeak. The rush of wheels on polished wood.

McPherson died in 2010. He joins Joe Higgins in the Hall of Fame with his induction this Saturday night.

A true pioneer.

His voice may not carry across the gym anymore. His hands may not hold the clipboard. But his heart? Unchanged. It lives in every player who straps into a chair this weekend. It lives in the volunteers, the coaches, the fans.

It is safe to say this weekend’s national championships would not transpire without the vision and hard work of my dear, dear friend, Gary McPherson.

Not the trophies. Not the banners hanging from the rafters. But the community. The belief. The unrelenting drive to build something beautiful.

I miss you, Gary.