A little piece of NBA history will live forever at the St. Clair College SportsPlex.
A 10-foot-by-six-foot flag, with the rallying cry 'We The North,' has been donated to the college by the organizers of Windsor’s historic Jurassic Park.
"We plan on hanging the flag inside the SportsPlex to mark this historic event," said Ron Seguin, the college’s Vice President of International Relations, Campus Development and Student Services. "Our youth will talk about this for years to come."
Businessman Renaldo Agostino, the event’s organizer, said Jurassic Park Windsor brought 13,000 people to the city core to watch and celebrate the NBA finals and the historic win by Canada’s team, the Toronto Raptors, against the Golden State Warriors in a Game Six decision.
"This flag has brought the country together," Agostino said. "That slogan 'We The North' is something that has brought every city, every province together. It’s beyond basketball."
The flag was given to Agostino by Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment, the company which owns the Raptors, after the company saw large crowds were gathering in Windsor's Charles Clark Square to watch the final games. Windsor was one of the first cities to receive a license by MLSE to broadcast the games on a large screen and St. Clair College became one of the event’s sponsors.
"We couldn’t have done it without St. Clair," Agostino said Tuesday, after presenting the flag to Seguin at the SportsPlex.
Agostino said it was an easy decision to donate the flag to St. Clair College. He said he wanted the flag to live in a building where athletes are inspired to be the best they can be and "the Sportsplex was the first thing that came to my mind."
Seguin said he's not yet sure where in the SportsPlex the flag will be draped, but it will hang in an area that will allow visitors to remember the moment when a Canadian team became NBA champions. "It’ll be a spot where people walk by and say, 'I was there.'"
