Jim Durrell ('68)

Jim Durrell ('68)

As quarterback and co-captain of the Acadia Axemen football teams of the late ’60s, Jim Durrell (’68) learned valuable lessons about leadership and life. After graduating with a degree in business, the Montreal native put those lessons to good use.

He ran for and was elected Mayor of Ottawa in 1985 and remained in that position until 1991. He was the first president of the Ottawa Senators hockey team, a franchise that he is largely responsible for bringing to Canada’s capital city. He secured the 1988 Grey Cup game for Ottawa and delivered a Triple-A baseball franchise. He is currently owner of a large car dealership in our capital city and a member of several corporate and charitable boards.

He was presented with the Order of Canada in 2013, an honour he claims rendered him “speechless – and that doesn’t happen very often to me.” He added, “if somebody had ever told me 45 years ago (that) this would be your life, I would have just said, ‘Wow, what a ride!’ I don’t know how else to describe it.

“I was 17 when I showed up at Acadia and 21 when I graduated. What Acadia did for me was it allowed me to grow as a person and not as a number. It was a nice size school and it took me from a boy – literally a teenage boy – to a young man and gave me every opportunity to grow as an individual.

“You know, we often look at a university strictly from the academic perspective and while you cannot diminish it, because that’s their raison d’etre, there’s so much more to university. Every time I see a young person from Ottawa who’s planning to go to Acadia, I tell them that their life experiences and opportunities to develop your self-worth, your self-being and you as a person, are limitless at Acadia.

“Being an athlete, you learn competitiveness and discipline. I look at all the things I’ve been blessed and fortunate enough to have accomplished and I think a lot of it comes down to the discipline I developed playing sports at Acadia. It’s transferable to life.

“Without reservation, I’d recommend Acadia to any student. The academics, in my humble opinion, speak for themselves, and academics become much more important in post-graduate school. When you’re in a postsecondary education, the strongest part of the school is the ability of that school to recognize you as a unique individual and encourage you to grow to your maximum potential. I think Acadia allows and encourages you to do that.”