The Ottawa Sports Pages was founded in Fall 2011. We are Your Not-For-Profit Voice for Local Sport, sharing all the great stories from the high school, university, community club and elite amateur sport ranks.
Our motivation is to fill a gap in Ottawa amateur sports coverage that’s existed for far too long in the nation’s capital and to share our passion for sport with a thriving sports community that owns it in spades.
OttawaSportsPages.ca (formerly SportsOttawa.com) features daily coverage from High Achievers columnist Martin Cleary, a 50-year local sportswriting veteran. The Ottawa Sports Pages’ free email newsletter is delivered to subscribers’ inboxes each weekend, and on a daily basis during major multi-sport events like the Olympics, Paralympics and Canada Games.
Since 2016, we have operated as an incorporated not-for-profit organization called the Ottawa Community Sport Media Team, which also runs the CAMPS Project – a program that provides free sports opportunities to children/youth from low-income communities.
Our organization’s efforts are possible thanks to our advertising partners, readers’ contributions to the Ottawa Sports Pages Fund and with the participation of the Government of Canada‘s Canada Periodical Fund.
From 2011-2021, we printed 98 editions of the Ottawa Sports Pages newspaper. Though we announced that the Ottawa Sports Pages would cease to be available in its print format in 2022, we are proud to continue our tradition as the voice for local sport with our website and our newsletter. Join our subscribers list today!
By clicking on the submit button, you consent to receive the above newsletter from the Ottawa Sports Pages. You may unsubscribe by clicking on the link at the bottom of our emails. Ottawa Sports Pages | 21 Kolo Dr., Ashton, ON, K0A 1B0 | 613-261-5838
Ottawa Community Sport Media Team Board of Directors
ANNE DUGGAN (Chair)
EMILY KENNEDY (Treasurer)
DAN PLOUFFE (Secretary & Executive Director)
JOSH KARANJA
CHARLIE PINKERTON
MOHAMED SOFA
Ottawa Community Sport Media Team Executive Director Dan Plouffe
Dan Plouffe was born and raised in Ottawa. His list of sporting accomplishments is very short. In Novice hockey, Dan tripped and slid into the goalie, knocking the puck in for the City of Ottawa tournament-winning goal at the same time. His Golden Diggers beach volleyball team once won a rec league title, and about the only legitimate performance award he’s received was as 2002 track-and-field MVP at Nepean High School.
Dan was better known as the NHS Knights’ school mascot and for being a big-time booster of others who possessed more athletic talent than he did – a trait that’s continued to shape his career years later.
A graduate of Concordia University’s journalism program in Montreal, Dan wrote for The Link, The Fulcrum, La Rotonde and Canadian University Press, and interned at the Canadian Junior Golf Association and Volleyball Canada during his student days.
He has covered several international multi-sport events: the Rio 2007 Pan American Games, the London 2012 Paralympic Games, the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games and the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games.
Dan began his professional career at the Port Hope Evening Guide (now Northumberland Today) and then came home to work for community newspapers including the Orleans Star.
In 2011, he founded the Ottawa Sports Pages and SportsOttawa.com (now OttawaSportsPages.ca), and led the creation of the Ottawa Community Sport Media Team and its CAMPS Project, which provides free sports opportunities to youth living in Ottawa Community Housing neighbourhoods.
Dan is married to his wonderful wife Cheryl and is father to his darling daughter Karina and his super son Andre.
Dan is the Executive Director for the Ottawa Community Sport Media Team and can be reached at execdir@ottawasportspages.ca as well as 613-261-5838.
High Achievers Columnist Martin Cleary
For more than 50 years, Martin Cleary has written about amateur athletes, coaches, teams and issues in Ottawa and the Ottawa Valley, primarily for the Ottawa Citizen newspaper.
Martin’s assignments allowed him to cover six Olympics (Summer Games in 1976, 1984, 1988 and 2000, and Winter Games in 1980 and 1988), five world figure skating championships, the 1997 world women’s hockey championship, and hundreds of Canadian, Ontario and Ottawa championships in about 60 sports.
While his amateur sports portfolio covered everything from Little League Baseball to profiling Ottawa’s elite athletes, Martin also wrote weekly columns about local sports, skiing and fitness, and he had a weekly SportsRoots page dedicated to local topics in the 1990s. Martin expanded his 25-year coverage of high school sports in 2007 with a daily blog, a dedicated high school sports website, and a year-end High School Best section, which paid tribute to each school’s senior athletes of the year.
In 1983, Martin received the Doug Gilbert Medal as Canada’s sportswriter of the year for his coverage of amateur sports in 1982. At the 2007 Ottawa Sports Awards dinner for amateur athletes, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award for sports media.
Martin has also been honoured with the National Capital Marathon’s Ernie Calcutt Memorial Award for media coverage in 1985, a National Newspaper Award special projects Citation of Merit in 1993, the Ottawa-Carleton Breakthrough Award in the media category in 1995, a Distinguished Merit Award from Ontario University Athletics in 1999, and the National Capital Secondary School Athletic Association recognition award in 2008.
Martin retired as a full-time sportswriter with the Citizen on July 31, 2012, after almost 40 years. In January 2013, he initiated the biweekly High Achievers column on Ottawa amateur sport for the Citizen, and it was later picked up by the Sun (also in the Postmedia chain).
When Martin’s High Achievers column was put on a pandemic pause because of the overall effects of the coronavirus, he started to write thread stories about the Ottawa sports scene under the headline HIGH ACHIEVERS: Stay-Safe Edition on his Twitter account (@martincleary). Since December 2020, Martin’s daily stories can now be found here on OttawaSportsPages.ca.
Martin can be reached by e-mail at martincleary51@gmail.com and on Twitter @martincleary.
Former Ottawa Sports Pages Editor Charlie Pinkerton
Charlie Pinkerton served as Ottawa Sports Pages Editor from 2017-2022 and contributed immensely to our publication and the local sports community. He now serves as a director for the Ottawa Community Sport Media Team’s board.
Read our Farewell Letter announcing Charlie’s departure in September 2022 here.