Dave McCann- Howard Ferguson Award Winner and Western Champion
By Jason Winders
For Dave McCann, the award may celebrate the individual, but the credit will always go to the team.
“You can't get any award in a team sport without acknowledging others first and foremost,” the former Mustangs football co-captain stressed. “Your teammates. Your coaches. The community around the team. These kinds of things are never about individuals.”
And he should know.
In 1984, McCann was the first recipient of a new era of the G. Howard Ferguson Award. Named for Howard Ferguson, former Premier of Ontario (1923-30) and Western chancellor (1945-46), the award annually celebrated top student-athletes between 1929-1966, before going dormant until revived for McCann.
Western will not present the award this year due to COVID-19 disruptions to the athletics schedule.
McCann, BA’82, MA’84, MBA’86, Managing Director of The Carlyle Group, embodies the university brand of ‘purple and proud,’ a man who still treasures not only the experiences of his university days, but the people who made them happen.
“I was very lucky. How do you thank all the people who stepped up for you? I was just a kid. I don't know what they saw in me; I certainly didn't see it in myself. But I am forever appreciative of what they saw in me and how they invested so much time in me.”
McCann had a storied career with Mustangs football from 1978-83, a career that included four OUAA championships (1979, 1980, 1981, and 1982) and two trips to the Vanier Cup Finals (1979 and 1982). He was named the winner of the Dr. Claude Brown Trophy for Western’s Athlete of the Year (1982-83).
When his mind wanders back to campus, the stories the Mustangs Sports Hall of Famer (1998) opens with today do not involve personal exploits in front of cheering crowds. Instead, he speaks almost exclusively of times where individuals on and off the field set him down paths he never imagined possible.
Take his academic mentors. The names easily spring to mind 40 years later: Michael Goodchild. Brian Luckman. Don Janelle. These academic lions encourage him to pursue a passion he never knew he had.
Former President George Connell, a leader who loved the gridiron almost as much as the classroom, took McCann aside to encourage the young man to attend business school and pursue an MBA, even offering to pen a recommendation letter.
“He never had to do that. He was so busy running a university, but still took an interest in a kid who didn’t have strong sense of where he was going to go or what he was going do. But he took the time and made that effort to encourage me and sent me off on another path I never could have imagined.”
Then there are the lifelong friendships rooted in his football experiences. Coaches Darwin Semotiuk and Larry Haylor, who from the start “clearly and eloquently” set down the priorities of the student-athlete in the program (not “athlete-student,” as Semotiuk stressed).
Teammates like Greg Marshall and Mike Kirkley, Pat Brady and Robert Jedicke, along with “brilliant people on both sides of the ball who did great things as teachers, who did great things as police officers, who did great things in their community, and we were all together at Western at that one time.”
McCann continued, “It was all about the people as it always is. It was a shared experience – a shared experience of working hard, a shared experience of success, a shared experience of failure. We never won a national championship. We won four Yates Cups. That's a track record not a lot of people can say they had. But we lost in two national finals and two national semifinals. It's the shared experiences that bring it all together – the good times and the bad times.”
McCann has found plenty of success after leaving campus. Prior to joining Carlyle in 2014, McCann was Head of Asset Management Distribution for Credit Suisse Securities (Canada) Inc. He has held previous management positions at Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, TD Capital, Birch Hill Equity Partners, and Toronto-Dominion Bank in both the United States and Canada.
Through it all, however, the lessons of campus never left him.
Over the years, he has had a chance to thank those who were so instrumental in his success. He also remains a vital part of the Mustangs Athletics team, serving as co-chair of the athletic fundraising committee in the last university fundraising campaign and actively supporting the Champions Club.
“Life has a beautiful circle in it. There's a symmetry to life that gives you the opportunity to loop back and give something back or even tell the people who had an impact on your life what they meant to you. Take advantage of those opportunities when they come by.”
It is that enduring spirit of gratitude that has defined McCann’s professional career and personal relationships. It is a spirit he traces to Western.
“You don't have context at that time. But here I am, a 60-year-old man, and I can look back on the life in a different way and realize like I was lucky as heck. Because of that experience, what you try and do is pay it forward for others today the same way it was paid forward for you back then. That's the big reminder for me of the responsibility I have to others to make that same effort.”
