OTTAWA, ON – On Wednesday, May 27th at Lansdowne Park’s Horticulture Building, the Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame will induct the Class of 2026 into our local sports shrine. Each week leading up to the ceremony, the Sport Hall will share an article on our upcoming inductees. Today’s feature is a profile on Val St. Germain.

2026 SPORT HALL INDUCTEE – VAL ST. GERMAIN

Val St. Germain was one of the most durable offensive linemen in Canadian Football League history. The 14-year CFL veteran’s total of 204 regular season appearances places him in the top 1% of most games played all-time, despite practicing one of football’s most unforgiving positions.

The son of a Cree mother and French-Canadian father, St. Germain played just about any sport he could growing up. Before he developed into the perfect mould of an offensive lineman, St. Germain would attend Ottawa Rough Riders Games at Lansdowne Park, where you could sit in the end zone for all of $3.

“I’ll date myself a little there,” St. Germain laughed in a recent interview with TSN 1200.

As a youth, St. Germain idolized Rough Riders legend and Hall of Famer Tony Gabriel and even met the towering tight end at an Ottawa 67’s game.

St. Germain took to football himself at age 10, kicking off his career with the Westboro Wolverines. He went on to suit up for the Myers Riders, where he played alongside future CFL players in Jeff Traversy and Harry van Hofwegen. A timely growth spurt all but sealed his future in Canadian football.

“You kind of grow a little bit and all of a sudden you’re 6’3″, 6’4″, and approaching 300 pounds,” he said on TSN 1200. “You kind of become an offensive lineman pretty quickly.”

St. Germain went on to dominate at the university level, appearing in 32 games for McGill. He would win 13 lineman-of-the-game awards, the Touchdown Club trophy as the team’s most outstanding lineman and the Forbes trophy as McGill’s male athlete of the year in 1993-94.

Early reporting on the young St. Germain necessarily had to highlight his ongoing obsession with Elvis Presley, sparked by lengthy car rides with his father.

“When we’d drive from Ottawa to see his family, he’d stick Elvis on the eight-track cassette,” St. Germain told the Montreal Gazette‘s Michael Farber. “There wasn’t much choice of the music. You know, I can do a little Elvis.”

Indeed, St. Germain would share his impression with anyone who would listen. He would belt out Elvis songs at karaoke bars and even made an “Elvis pilgrimage” to Memphis in 1992 in search of a suitable wig and sideburns. And he kept a bust of the King in his locker during his professional career.

St. Germain made a second trip down south in 1994, this time for the East-West Shrine Bowl in Palo Alto, California. He was one of two Canadians invited to the event that served primarily to showcase NCAA seniors. The prospect of an NFL contract was more than a little enticing, but St. Germain maintained he was happy to remain in Canada.

“I’m pretty realistic,” he told Farber at the time. “I think I can play with these guys. But in the NFL, guys 6-4, 290 are a dime a dozen. The CFL will give me a chance to see Canada, play a sport I love, give me some good experience.”

It was hardly a surprise when he was selected first overall by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats at the 1994 CFL Draft, becoming the first McGill player to be taken number one since 1958.

St. Germain quickly became a mainstay in Hamilton, appearing in every game in his rookie season. He got his first taste of postseason action the following year and his first Grey Cup game in 1998, where the Tiger-Cats suffered a heartbreaking 26-24 loss to the Calgary Stampeders. He signed with Edmonton the next season.

In Edmonton, St. Germain visited Indigenous communities all across northern Alberta with the team’s Stay in School program. A visit to a trade show in his mother’s native Cold Lake turned into an unanticipated family reunion.

“I found out that I had a lot of relatives up there and they had been following me during my career in the CFL,” St. Germain told Darrell Davis of the Regina Leader-Post in 2002.

He returned home that year to sign with the Ottawa Renegades and remained with the club for the entirety of their brief existence. St. Germain still looks upon those four seasons fondly even as they failed to make a single playoff appearance.

“It was a nice opportunity to come home and play football here in front of friends and family like that experience was really good,” he told TSN 1200. “When looking back on it, I really, really enjoyed my time playing here.”

St. Germain was named a CFL all-star for the third time while with the Renegades in 2003. He re-signed with the team in 2005 with every intention of ending his career where it had started and was named the team’s best lineman and most outstanding Canadian that season.

“It’s probably one of my last contracts and it will be nice to retire in my hometown, if it comes to that,” he told the Ottawa Citizen’s Matthew Sekeres.

It wasn’t to be. The team dissolved before the 2006 season and St. Germain was taken by the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the resulting dispersal draft. Then 35, St. Germain had to head west shortly after moving into a new home in Ottawa with his wife and eight-month-old daughter.

“Right now, I feel more for the guys who weren’t even picked up,” St. Germain told the Winnipeg Free Press’ Ed Tait. “What a way to go out.”

St. Germain, conversely, wound up going out as a champion. After one year in Winnipeg, he signed with the Saskatchewan Roughriders and rejoined fellow former Renegade Kerry Joseph. St. Germain protected Joseph and helped the Riders win a west division title and a trip to the Grey Cup. Although he missed the championship game due to injury, St. Germain got to celebrate the western Riders’ 23-19 triumph over his most recent club, and then retired afterwards.

“I can think of no better way than to end my career as a member of the 2007 Grey Cup-winning Saskatchewan Roughriders,” St. Germain said in a statement announcing his retirement. “The past 14 years have truly been good times and I am thankful for the opportunity to have played the game I love for so long.

“There is no better moment than standing on that sideline, listening to the national anthem, with feelings of pride, determination and camaraderie coursing through you, waiting for kickoff. I will deeply miss this.”

Since then, St. Germain has coached with numerous local programs, including the Carleton University Ravens, Nepean Eagles and St. Joseph Jaguars, where he was part of the first high school girls’ tackle football game in Canada. He was recently presented with the CFL Alumni Association Indigenous Champion Award for advancing Indigenous representation within the game and community.

St. Germain’s next ticket to an event an Lansdowne Park will cost him even less than $3 he paid once upon a time, when he’s welcomed for the 2026 Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame induction ceremony on May 27 as a member of the Hall’s Class of 2026.

“Unfortunately for us (offensive linemen), if we do get recognized, it’s because we’re holding or some sort of penalty,” he smiled while speaking to TSN 1200 about his upcoming induction. “For my kids who weren’t around to see me play… it’s nicer for them, I would imagine, to kind of see that I don’t make up every story I do tell them, and there is some truth behind it.”

MAY 27 OTTAWA SPORT HALL OF FAME INDUCTION EVENING

The Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame will be welcoming four new athletes, a builder and a team as part of its Class of 2026, plus eight more historic honourees in the Legacy Category.

More details and full features on all the upcoming inductees and Legacy members will be shared in the weeks leading up to the 2026 banquet on the Hall’s website at OttawaSportHall.ca and through the Ottawa Sports Pages.

Tickets for the Wednesday, May 27th Induction Ceremony at Lansdowne Park’s Horticulture Building are now sold out!

Sponsorship opportunities are available. See OttawaSportHall.ca/Sponsorship for more details.

About the Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame:

The Ottawa Sport Hall of Fame is a non-profit organization, which documents, curates and celebrates outstanding achievement in local sport heritage. The Sport Hall is overseen by a volunteer Board of Directors to maintain and preserve our rich sporting legacies. Each year, the Hall of Fame Board receives nominations from the public and selects new inductees to be honoured in the Hall.