Dianne Chiasson BA’81
You won’t find Dianne Chiasson BA ’81 Hons sitting around watching other people play sports. She’s a doer, not a watcher. And an adventurous doer at that.
A multi-sport athlete at Saint Mary’s in the late ‘70s, Dianne has remained active right into her retirement years. In the decades since she graduated, she’s taken up running, biking, golf and skate-skiing. She’s completed numerous marathons, including the Boston Marathon, and has participated in many Grand Fondo biking events.
She’s always been this way - active and athletic. As a child with a father in the Air Force, her family moved around a lot—Labrador, Goose Bay, Northern Quebec—but wherever she went to school, she played whatever was presented. “If it was on offer, I tried it,” she laughs.
In Grade 7, the family settled in the Annapolis Valley, in Auburn, near the base in Greenwood. Dianne played volleyball, basketball, softball and field hockey, in addition to running track, but was soon faced with having to choose her favourites due to overlapping schedules. A sports camp in Halifax one summer helped develop her basketball and field hockey skills; these ended up being the two sports she would carry with her to university.
But excelling at certain sports didn’t stop Dianne from venturing further afield. She even tried out for her high school hockey team, even though she couldn’t skate very well. “My basketball coach wasn’t very impressed with that,” she says. “But it was fun - why wouldn’t I try it?"
Dianne displayed the same independent streak when it came time to figure out what to do after high school. She went against the grain for someone living in the Valley: “I didn’t want to choose Acadia because everyone I knew was going there.” She was drawn to the big city, so when Saint Mary’s offered her an academic scholarship, that cinched the deal.
She decided to study Political Science and became a star player on both the Women’s Basketball and Field Hockey teams. She was named Female Rookie of the Year in 1978, as well as MVP of the basketball team, and earned Female Athlete of the Year for three years running. She was also selected All-Conference on numerous occasions for both field hockey and basketball and received All-Canadian honours.
“Dianne was an immensely talented and hard-working athlete, but someone who didn’t draw attention to herself and her own accomplishments,” says Kathy Mullane, who served as the coach of both women’s field hockey and basketball at the time. “She was our top player and won most of the athletic awards in her years at Saint Mary’s, but was incredibly humble. She was someone you wanted on every team, just a consummate team player, fitting in with everyone and so consistent in her play and positive attitude.”
In addition to her accomplishments on the field and the court, Dianne also excelled academically. She earned a full academic scholarship each year at Saint Mary's, accumulating 14 A's in 15 courses and was interviewed for a Rhodes Scholarship.
Once she graduated, she worked for a year in the Registrar’s Office at SMU before moving west to work for a small oil and gas company. After five years in Calgary, the East called her back home, and she returned to Halifax to secure a job with the Office of the Auditor General of Nova Scotia. Her political science degree came in handy, as did the Intro Accounting course she’d taken and liked at Saint Mary’s. Dianne got her accounting designation and spent the rest of her career working as an auditor.
During those years, she stayed connected to Saint Mary’s and enjoyed volunteering her time as a scorekeeper for the women’s basketball games. She marvels at the opportunities that now exist for young women to continue playing sports after university graduation. And she has a piece of advice for the new players coming up:
“Enjoy every minute of it because it goes by so fast.”
Forty-plus years later, the thing that Dianne cherishes the most are the friendships she still has with a handful of the other women on those Huskies sports teams. “After all these years, we still get together, and we still enjoy each other’s company,” she says. “Our friendships are the thing that remain and are something I am most proud of.”
By Renée Hartleib
