Claude Hardy, who passed away on December 5, 1999, was a pioneer of the Canada Games from their very beginning. Claude’s first involvement with the Canada Games was as an athlete at the inaugural Canada Games in Québec City in 1967. In 1969, he was a coach for Team Québec at the Canada Summer Games in Halifax-Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. And from 1971 to 1999, excluding only the 1975 and 1979 Canada Winter Games, Claude Hardy lead Team Québec as Chef de Mission. His last Games were the 1999 Winter Games in Corner Brook where it was announced that, at each edition of the Games, an award in his name would serve to recognize a provincial or territorial Mission Team who best exhibits leadership, cooperation, integrity and esprit de corps. The first Claude Hardy Award was presented at the Closing Ceremonies of the 2001 Canada Summer Games in London.