The late Dennis Victor Cue (1929-2018), can be considered one of the true humanitarians among those who have graduated from UBC’s Kinesiology faculty. Completing his degree in 1951, Victor played and coached basketball until 1962 when he took over as a volunteer coach of the BC men’s wheelchair basketball team. He would remain the team’s dedicated head coach until 1978 with his teams winning nine national championships and several Pacific Northwest titles.
Cue would also serve as the head coach of Canada’s national wheelchair basketball team competing at four Pan Am Games, winning gold in 1967, and at three Paralympic Games. He was selected as Canada’s Chef de Mission for the 1976 Games in Toronto.
Victor also contributed as Athletic Director of both the BC Wheelchair Sports Association and the Canadian Wheelchair Sports Association of which he was one of the founders. He also served on the Board of Directors for the Gordie Howe Foundation for Disabled Athletes. Friends and family remark on Victor’s strong volunteer commitment to wheelchair sports and their athletes. He earned his living by other means yet his real career was caring for and enriching the lives of people he coached.
In 1995 Cue was inducted into the Canadian Wheelchair Basketball Hall of Fame and is also an inductee in the Basketball BC Hall of Fame. The team he coached, the Dueck Powerglides, is an inductee in the BC Sports Hall of Fame.
Supporters of Victor state, “He was one of the real pioneers of the emergence of disability sports . . . (with) . . . the ability to guide his athletes to world class achievements.” His close friend Dr. Maurice Gibbons commends him, in saying “Vic, like a pied piper, with his team, led them all out of hiding, out where they belonged . . . his long and dedicated work with those who were almost invisible when he began.”
Written by Fred Hume, UBC Historian
