Lauralyn Radford, known to nearly everyone in Red Deer simply as Lyn, traces her instinct for community building back to her parents. Born in Edmonton on January 20, 1956, she grew up watching her mother lead the local Brownie troop and her father coach her softball team and fix single mothers’ cars for little more than the cost of parts. Her father had been good friends with NHL goaltender Glenn Hall, a connection that first showed Lyn a career in sports could be a lifelong one, even though her protective mother discouraged team sports and forbade her from riding her bike on the sidewalk until she turned 12.
From Middle School Gym Teacher to City Builder
Lyn became the first person in her family, and in her mother’s circle of friends, to attend university, earning an education degree from the University of Alberta. She married Reg Radford in 1978, and after running businesses in Bonnyville and Rocky Mountain House, the couple settled in Red Deer in 1986, where Lyn taught middle-school physical education and social studies. Her real turning point arrived on an ordinary winter afternoon, picking up her daughter from gymnastics practice, when she found the kids tumbling in a freezing parking lot because the club had no proper facility.
Rather than simply complain, Lyn pitched Red Deer City Hall on a deal: the city would build a dedicated gymnastics centre and the club would pay back a million-dollar loan over fifteen years. City officials were skeptical, but by 2000 the Collicutt Centre was open, and the gymnastics club has owned it debt-free for years now.
Winning the Bid for the 2019 Canada Winter Games
That success established Lyn as someone who could deliver major events for Red Deer, and she went on to chair bid committees for the 2003 Alberta Senior Games and the 2007 Western Canada Games, as well as the committee that delivered the 2006 Alberta Summer Games. Her biggest challenge came in 2014, when she led Red Deer’s campaign to host the 2019 Canada Winter Games against competing bids from Lethbridge and Calgary. On the day the evaluation committee visited, Lyn’s team closed downtown streets and filled them with residents wearing matching red T-shirts, a show of civic enthusiasm that helped seal the win.
Red Deer went on to raise 14.5 million dollars for the Games, more than 4 million above its bid target, and welcomed 3,600 athletes and over 125,000 visitors and residents. The event left behind lasting infrastructure, including the Gary W. Harris Canada Games Centre, and a generation of young volunteers who stayed in Red Deer to become community leaders.
Decades of Bringing Championships to Red Deer
Long before the Canada Games, Lyn had already built a reputation as someone who could organize a major event, having helped bring the Labatt Brier to Red Deer in 1994, the World Junior Hockey Championship in 1995 and the Alberta Winter Games in 1998. She sat on the boards of the Red Deer Ski Club, the Red Deer Gymnastics Club and the Red Deer Titans Track Club throughout this period, all while raising millions of dollars for causes like Ronald McDonald House. She also chaired the Red Deer Chamber Homelessness Taskforce and founded the Homeless Foundation for Red Deer Region, extending her organizing skills well beyond the world of sport.
A Lifetime on Red Deer’s Sports Boards
Lyn has served on the boards of the Red Deer Gymnastics Club, the Red Deer Titans Track Club, the Red Deer Figure Skating Club, the Red Deer Ski Club, the Alberta Sport Development Centre, Alberta Sport Connection, Speedskating Canada, the Alberta Sport Leadership Association and the Canada Games Council, along with the Board of Governors at what is now Red Deer Polytechnic. In 2023 she became a rare non-athlete inducted into the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame. According to her official Alberta Order of Excellence profile, she was inducted into the Order in 2025 for decades spent building Red Deer’s sporting infrastructure and community spirit. Her honours also include a Senate 150 Year Special Citizen Award, a Women of Excellence Lifetime Achievement Award and recognition as the 2009 Red Deer Citizen of the Year.
Lyn still lives with Reg in Red Deer. She is the mother of four and grandmother of 11, and she remains a passionate believer in what sport can do for a community. As she puts it, sport brings together the athletes, the arts crowd, the social justice advocates, the civil servants and the corporate world, all in the same room, working toward the same goal.
What might your own city look like if one determined parent decided a cold parking lot simply was not good enough?
