PICTOU COUNTY MAN REMEMBERED FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Bert Dalling passes away at 85

As the time passed, Courtney Malcolm and Charlie Matheson would go for car rides with Bert Dalling, cruising around Pictou County, swapping memories.

“We were friends for over 60 years, a friendship right till the end,” Malcolm said of Dalling, a former baseball and hockey star who died on the weekend. “We’d just drive around the county. We’d go fishing for mackerel in Pictou, just having a ball. Not only was he a great baseball player, a great hockey player, but he was a pretty crafty fishermen and a pretty fair golfer, too.”

A native of Westville, Dalling is survived by daughters Lynne MacMillan and Lee Ann Dalling, and two grandchildren. Lee Ann Dalling, a powerlifter, is a member of the Pictou County Sports Heritage Hall of Fame, as is her father.

In the Hugh Townsend book Remembering Pictou County, released late last year, Dalling recalled what it was like for him and his friends when they started playing sports as youngsters over in Westville.

“In those days, there was no TV, there were no places to spend your time, so in the wintertime you were on the ponds, in the summers you were at the ballpark,” he was quoted as saying. “In grammar school, we used to play at six o’clock in the morning in Stellarton. There were no buses going at that hour of the morning, but we had people going to the mines to work, and we were usually on the back of the trucks. That’s how we showed up in Stellarton, a little dusty and dirty, but we were there anyways.”

Dalling, a regular patron at Junior A Crushers games, is also enshrined in the Cape Breton sports hall.

“I tell you this, I’m very disappointed he didn’t go into the Nova Scotia sports hall of fame, because he’s got the credentials. At least I think so, along with a lot of other people,” Malcolm said. “It’s a great loss for the sports world, to lose a fellow like that. Every Thursday, we’d work together at the Pictou County hall of fame, holding down the fort. We’d have a great time.”