Peter has devoted his life to the Olympic and Paralympic movements, helping athletes realize their potential and achieve their dreams. As an athlete, a Chartered Professional Coach and administrator, Peter believes in the power of sport to change lives.

 

Working with athletes and coaches at every level from grassroots to high performance, Peter is one of the most respected coaches in Canadian sport. He is a four-time winner of the National Coaching Excellence Award, was twice selected BC’s “Coach of the Year” (2012, 2016) and is a recipient of BC’s Medal of Good Citizenship and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.

 

Peter’s love for sport began when he learned to sail with the Royal Canadian Sea Cadets, becoming an instructor and coach in 1985. Moving to Victoria for university, he found a summer job as the Head Instructor of the Disabled Sailing Association. Recruited to be the Provincial Coach for para-athletics, he attended the National Coaching Institute, becoming one of the first two coaches to obtain NCCP level 4 certification in Wheelchair Athletics.

 

A coach with Team BC in the 1990s at both the Western Canada Games and Canada Games, Peter was soon coaching athletes on the national team. The 2002 World Championships began a remarkable streak where Peter’s wheelchair athletes competed at every Paralympic Games and World Championships for 15 consecutive years, winning more than 21 World Championship medals and six Paralympic Games medals (including five Gold). His Victoria-based training group produced several Paralympians including Karen March, Teri Thorson, Alan Bergman and Michelle Stilwell. In addition to winning medals, his athletes broke over 28 World Records.

 

Peter also excels with para-cycling, coaching Mark Ledo to successive Bronze medals at the 2010 and 2011 Para-cycling World Championships and 2012 Paralympic Games, and Karen March to the overall World Cup Championship title in 2011. His athletes have won numerous World Cup medals and national championships. Peter has also coached able-bodied athletes including a World Tour pro.

 

Peter was a member of several Canadian Invictus Games Teams, including being Canada’s Head Coach, and led the bid to bring the Invictus Games to Victoria. He has been deeply engaged in sport at every level for over 30 years, with a decade on the Canadian Olympic Committee Board including six years as Vice President, and serving on the Boards of the Canadian Paralympic Committee, Cycling Canada, ViaSport, Cycling BC, Pacific Institute for Sport Excellence, Canadian Sport Institute Pacific, and PacificSport. Locally, he was the founding president of the Tripleshot Cycling Club.

 

Professionally, Peter is a highly respected lawyer publishing articles on harassment and morality in sport and teaching post-secondary courses in sport law and ethics in sport. He has acted for organizations, athletes and coaches involved in various sport disputes and argued before the International Court of Arbitration for Sport. Peter has served as Ombudsperson for the Canadian Paralympic Team and is an arbitrator for the Sport Dispute Resolution Centre of Canada.

 

SPONSORED BY PISE (PACIFIC INSTITUTE FOR SPORT EXCELLENCE)

Born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1980, Matt moved to Victoria at age two with his family. As a youngster, he was active and interested in all sports, but gravitated to ice hockey when he was around seven years of age. Matt played seven years of hockey at the Victoria Racquet Club and won back-to-back Pee Wee Provincial Championships as a 12- and 13-year-old.

 

At 16 years of age, Matt played Junior A hockey in his hometown for the Victoria Salsa where he went on to earn a full athletic hockey scholarship to the University of Denver after graduating high school from Mount Douglas in 1998. The University of Denver’s hockey team won the WCHA Championship in Matt’s freshman season. In his sophomore year at Denver, Matt was chosen to represent Team Canada at the 2000 World Junior Hockey Championships in Sweden, where the team won the Bronze medal. After playing in the World Juniors that year, Matt decided to leave university and play for the Calgary Hitmen of the WHL for the remaining four months of the season which was his NHL draft year.

 

2000 was a good year for Matt. In addition to his World Juniors medal, he was selected in the 2nd round, 43rd overall, to the Washington Capitals where he would play over 330 games for that team. He scored over 52 goals and assisted on 47 others during his stint in DC, including scoring 20 goals in the 2005-2006 season. There he was teammates with the likes of Alexander Ovechkin, Jaromir Jagr and Ollie Kolzig.

 

Matt was again chosen to play for Team Canada at the 2005 World Championships held in Riga, Latvia, where the team finished in 4th place. In the 2007-2008 season, Matt was traded to his home province Vancouver Canucks where he would play parts of two seasons. He played the 2008-2009 NHL season in Tampa, Florida with the Lightning before playing his final NHL season with the Vancouver Canucks organization in 2009-2010.

 

Matt and his family then took his playing career overseas, playing five years in the German Elite League. His first two years were spent playing in Cologne, Germany where his daughter Abby was born. He finished off his playing career in Hamburg, Germany for a final three years of professional hockey.

 

Overall, during his professional hockey career, Matt played in over 850 professional games spanning 15 seasons. With his wife, Chelsea, and children Abby and Luke, Matt returned to Victoria and now works as a realtor at Avison Young with his well-known realtor father, Rick.