First Black player on national team is still waiting for Basketball Canada to set record straight

The first Black player to ever play on a national team says he was snubbed by the country's national sporting organization for basketball when they first recognized another player for his achievement.

Barry Howson, from London, Ont. is now in his 80s and has had a full career as a teacher, basketball player, Olympian and high school coach.

In 1964, he was the first Black player to make the national team when he played at the Tokyo Olympics. So when Basketball Canada finally recognized the first Black player who played for Team Canada in 2022 he was surprised because the man who was being honoured was someone else.

"Peter "Doc" Ryan called me and told me I should be the recipient after he'd already been interviewed," Howson said.

Ryan was chosen to play on Team Canada for the 1980 Moscow Olympics, though Canada ended up boycotting the event because of the ongoing Soviet-Afghan War and he would ultimately never play on the world stage.

Canada Basketball updated its information to indicate that Ryan was one of the first Black players after learning of the mistake. The organizaton said Ryan's contribution also helped amplify Black Canadian players, coaches and officials who are not in the Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame, said Matthew Walker, director of communications and content for Canada Basketball.

"Mr. Howson was previously inducted into the Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame," Walker said. In 2001, Howson was recognized by the organization for his contributions in advancing and enriching basketball in the country.

But Howson said he has so far been unsuccessful in being officially recognized as the first player to represent Canada. 

Representatives of Canada Basketball have been in touch with Howson to explain that he was already inducted into the Hall of Fame, when he requested a change to the record. 

"They told me they would deal with it later but they kept just putting it aside and waiting," Howson said, adding that it's been over a year since he's last heard from them.

Along with Howson's numerous athletic accomplishments, he also spent decades working as a teacher, and coach, at St. Patrick's Catholic High School in Sarnia until his retirement in 1997. 

He would also go on to play for Team Canada four more times after the Tokyo Olympics. First, in 1966 at the Canada Winter Games where they won gold; in 1967 at the Pan American Games in Winnipeg; in 1971 at the World Championships in Yugoslavia and finally in 1994 at the World Masters Championship in Sydney.

"I met the guy in person and he's in his early 80s and looks like he could take me two out of three on the court very easily," said Jason Winders, a senior writer with Gameday London, an online publication that focuses on London's sports teams. He took an interest in Howson's story and wrote about it earlier in October. 

"He's a real product of this great, citywide athletic system that we had back in the forties, fifties and sixties that created all these amazing athletes through competitions ran through the schools," he said.