Merton Bud Hanson
Basketball, Equestrian & Builder
Inducted: 2012
Bud Hanson was a sports athlete, builder, founder, and organizer. He has been inducted into the Hall of Fame of the American Morgan Horse Association and Cornwall Sports Hall of Fame.
Bud won the 1940 New Brunswick Interscholastic Basketball Championship and the Malcolm Cup Trophy playing for the Woodstock New Brunswick High School team, and as a result the team (coached by famed Bob Brown) was inducted into the Woodstock Sports Wall of Fame on May 28, 2016. At the University of New Brunswick, he was a Letter winner in basketball (1946), and won the Maritime Intercollegiate Senior Varsity Basketball Championship (1947).
In Cornwall, he was a civil engineer for the St. Lawrence Seaway Authority Corporation, and he played many sports.
In 1967, the Hanson family established the well known Big Oak Morgan Horse Farm in South Stormont Township where Champion Morgan horses were raised for four decades. The farm's offspring won Championships and/or produced Champions at the world, grand national, international, regional, state, and provincial levels. Horses carrying the Hanson-bred Morgan horse bloodline have claimed to date 83 World Championships and Reserves, 89 Grand National Championships and Reserves, and at least 130 Regional Championships and Reserves.
Bud served on the Board of Directors of Equine Canada, the national governing body for the equestrian sport in Canada, and chaired the Morgan Horse Rules committee.
He also served on the Board of Directors of the American Morgan Horse Association; chaired the Open Competition Awards committee, and was a committee member of the 1977 World & Grand National Championship Morgan Horse Show.
Bud was President of the Canadian Morgan Horse Association, chaired the Horse Show Committee, and chaired the national Zonal High Score Award System which he and his son Calvin founded.
Bud Hanson died November 2009 at age 86. His legacy in sports lives on.
Calvin Hanson accepting on behalf of Merton 'Bud' Hanson from Noel Windle.