Hearing the Canadian anthem is one of Higgins ‘favourite parts’ of the game

Growing up in Rothesay, N.B., Colin Higgins remembers watching the Olympics on T.V. for the first time as a five-year-old when Donovan Bailey won gold at the Atlanta Games, though admittedly, he didn’t fully understand what it all meant.

It wasn’t until the 1998 Olympics, when he watched the Canadian men’s hockey team at the Nagano Games, that he had a better understanding of high-performance sport.

“I remember watching the hockey, and Canada lost to the Czechs there – I remember being pretty down in the tubes about that,” Higgins chuckled.

Hockey and basketball were Higgins’ sports of choice throughout his childhood. Though he represented his home province in both sports, Higgins didn’t think playing for Team Canada was attainable.

“I represented my province in baseball and hockey. I was invited to tryouts for the Under-17 Atlantic Team for hockey,” Higgins recalled. “I didn’t make that team, but many guys went on to make the NHL and play for Canada.

“Representing Canada was something I thought about, but I knew I would never play for Team Canada. Even the U17 team was a big deal – Hockey Canada organized those camps. I was exposed to some of that, but I was never like, ‘Oh, I’m going to play for Team Canada’.”

While in high school, Higgins played competitive hockey in New Hampshire on a prep scholarship, which is where his knee problems started. He initially suffered a right knee injury.

After deciding to move home, he tore his ACL, PCL, LCL, and meniscus in his left knee while playing hockey. The left knee injury damaged the perennial nerve in his foot, causing him to develop drop foot.

“When I stopped playing hockey, high-performance sport was very much not part of the picture, the plan or vision at all,” said Higgins. “It was not until I started playing wheelchair basketball that I thought about it again.”

The 33-year-old required months of convincing before he eventually relented and agreed to try wheelchair basketball. Higgins’ mother worked with Karen Ferguson, a Canadian classifier, who first introduced him to the sport.

Less than a year after he hit the court for his first wheelchair basketball practice, Higgins was representing New Brunswick at the Canada Games in Prince George. For Higgins, the experience in B.C. was the turning point in his wheelchair basketball career.

He then went to a development camp in the summer of 2015, where coach Mike Frogley helped open his eyes to the possibilities in the sport.

“Mike asked me if I’d be interested in coming to Toronto to train full time because he thought that with some work, I could do some things,” Higgins said. “That’s kind of when I started thinking about representing Canada.”

A year later, Higgins was classified during a tournament when Canada played host to Great Britain, the U.S. and Turkiye and made the Senior Men’s National Team in 2017.

His first significant competition with the SMNT came in August 2017 when he represented Team Canada at the Americas Cup in Cali, Colombia.

“At the time, it was, ‘Wow, amazing’ – all of those things,” he said, “but at the same time, I just never liked being the guy at the end of the bench. I wanted to try and do more, to try and help the team.”

Higgins said it took the four years following the Parapan American Games in Lima before he felt his game had grown to a point where he could be a significant contributor to the SMNT.

It wasn’t until the Tokyo Paralympics in 2021 that Higgins felt like he could be productive representing Team Canada.

“The breakout would have been the following year when we went to Americas Cup in São Paulo, Brazil,” Higgins said. “Patrick Anderson broke his wrist, and it was Nik Goncin and me doing our thing and we were still able to qualify.”

As he prepares to represent Canada in his second Paralympic Games this summer in Paris, Wearing the Leaf and hearing the anthem are things he still looks forward to.

“When the anthem is going before a big game, it’s honestly one of my favourite parts of the game – just the anticipation, the buildup, the bright lights are on, it’s like, ‘Okay, it’s go time,’ Higgins said.

“Obviously, we play for our country, but hearing the anthem makes me think about my family and friends from back home – the people that are important to me. I’m just trying to do my best to represent them the best I can.”