• Co-captain of the Bears football team; named Canada West All-Star on three occasions.
• Played on the 1967 CIAU Championship team.
• Won the Wilson Challenge Trophy as the U of A's most outstanding male athlete in 1971.
• High-school coach and senior administrator; coached wrestling and track teams to city championships and football team to a city silver medal.
• Received the University of Alberta's Alumni Award of Excellence in 2001.

Dan McCaffery entered the University of Alberta after a brilliant career as a student and athlete at O’Leary High School. There he starred in football, basketball, track and field while also competing at a high level in hockey. He was named the school’s Most Outstanding Football Player and its Most Outstanding Athlete” in his graduation year, 1966. That same year he named to the “All-Province High School Basketball Team” in the annual CAHPER tournament. Dan McCaffery was one of the finest all-round athletes to graduate from the Edmonton school system.

Dan joined the nationally acclaimed Golden Bear Football program in 1966 quickly gaining recognition for his skills. He co-captained the team for the three seasons and was named the Canada West All-Conference team on three occasions. In 1967 he Golden Bears won the CIAU National Championship Vanier Cup defeating Western Ontario 10 – 9 in the final game in Toronto. His outstanding performances on the field garnered for him, in 1971, the University of Alberta’s Wilson Trophy, emblematic of our Outstanding Male Athlete. Dan’s leadership qualities were recognized by his peers when he was selected President of the Block “A” Club in 1967.

After graduation Dan returned to O’Leary High School on the teaching and coaching staff. There he shared his special talents by coaching the wrestling team to its first ever city championship; the track and field team to its first city championship, and the football team to the championship game that it lost 21-20 to the Jasper Place Rebels. Dan was quickly promoted to head be the head of the P.E. Department and quickly thereafter to the ranks of senior school administration, a promotion that resulted in his move to Austin O’Brien High School as its First Vice-Principal.

At Austin O’Brien he continued to coach both wrestling and football so as not to lose touch with the world of sport. His talent as a coach of wrestlers was recognized throughout the province and he was named assistant wrestling coach for the Alberta team that competed in the Canada Winter Games in 1975.

By 1980 new vistas were opening in the world of real estate and Oxford Developments, an international company in this field, offered Dan an array of challenges. And Canada lost a highly talented leader. Dan and his family moved to the USA where he proved to be as superb an entrepreneur as he was an educator/coach rising to the position of Senior Vice-President for its USA affiliate, Oxford Properties, Inc. Not yet willing to abandon his love of sport, Dan continued to coach amateur hockey and basketball teams in Minnesota and Illinois over the course of the first 8 years of his residency in his adopted country.

In 1991 another set of new challenges emerged and to meet them Dan founded McCaffery Interest, Inc., a real estate and investment company that has since become nationally regarded as an innovator and a leader in the field of urban real estate projects. Since establishing this firm, Dan McCaffery has been the recipient of fourteen national and international awards including “Man of the Year”, a recognition given by Chicago Hispanic Contractors Association for initiating affirmative action goals in private enterprise developments; the Urban Land Institute (International) Award of Excellence; the Urban Land Institute (Americas) Award of Excellence; the national Historic Preservation Honor Award; Dealmaker of the Year Award (Washington, DC); Trendsetter of the Year Award (Washington, DC), the Richard Dreihaus Foundation Award for Preservation of the Year and in, 2001 he received the University of Alberta Alumni Award of Excellence.

Dan McCaffery is an amazing builder, a superb educator, a highly regarded coach, and one of our University’s most outstanding athletes. The University of Alberta is proud to add his name to the Sports Wall of Fame.