Sport historian and author Burton Russell remembered
“He’s going to be missed. He was a chronicler of everything, especially Valley-related but also Nova Scotia-related and Maritimerelated.” Jim Prime Author
Well-known Nova Scotia sports historian and author Burton Russell, who passed away at age 87 on April 26, is being remembered for his love and knowledge of sports in the Annapolis Valley and Nova Scotia.
Russell, of Kentville, grew up in Kings County and spent most of his life there. He spent 35 years as a teacher in Valley high schools, the last 25 of those at Kings County Academy in Kentville before retiring in 1993.
He spent 15 years as the school's boys' hockey coach and 10 in the dugout as the boys' softball coach, and was twice named the coach of the year in the Valley High School Hockey League.
But Russell was known more for his love of sports in Kentville, Nova Scotia and the Maritimes, about which he filled numerous scrapbooks and wrote 14 books. The most recent, Annapolis Valley Sports, was published in December 2021 and looks at a century of sports in the area.
The previous year he published Down Memory Lane: Highlights of Kentville Sports.
Both books were more than 400 pages of history about various levels of sports in the area.
Fellow sports author Jim Prime, of New Minas, who writes primarily about the Boston Red Sox, said Burton's death is a big loss.
“He's going to be missed. He was a chronicler of everything, especially Valley-related but also Nova Scotia-related and Maritimerelated,” Prime said.
“He was a walking encyclopedia. I get phone calls every now and then about some local sports thing, and I'd say ‘you're talking to the wrong guy; you should be talking to Burton Russell.' He was the go-to guy, no question about it.”
Russell was the statistician for the Nova Scotia Senior Baseball league for three decades.
“I really had high regard for him,” Prime said. “I was always fascinated by the old H&D (baseball) League teams and some of the personalities that went through there, so whenever I wanted to check on some of the big names from back then who went on to play in the major leagues, I'd check Burton's writings and sure enough, he'd covered
it very well.”
Russell had a vast collection of scrapbooks of all things sports in the Valley and Nova Scotia.
“He kept everything,” Prime said.
Russell was inducted into the Acadia University Sports Hall of Fame — which he helped establish — in 2000 as a builder, and in the same category in the Maritime Sports Hall of Fame in 2015. He also has served on the selection committee for the Nova
Scotia Sports Hall of Fame, of which he is not a member.
“He's certainly deserving. If anyone has done anything for baseball in this province in terms of local baseball, or anywhere in the Maritimes, he's the guy,” Prime said.
"He had a good knowledge of New Brunswick baseball, and that's a hotbed over there, too.”
Russell could be found at various sports venues over the years, including the
Acadia arena to watch the Axemen hockey team, and at Memorial Park in Kentville for Kentville Wildcats baseball games.
"I have nothing but good things to say about Burton,” Prime said.
“He was a class act from the word go, and in his quiet, humble little way he did a lot for Maritime sports.”