Beyond the numbers though, it was the individual and special lives of each of the 27 members that were celebrated by the community at the opening of the expanded Town Hall Thursday night.

“We always thought he was pretty special,” the daughter of Dr. Wallace McCutcheon, a local doctor and one of the founders of Blue Cross in 1941, told a packed crowd in the lobby of the new Town Hall. “I know some patients still do. And now the whole town does.”

For family members of the late inductees, it was a chance to see the community’s appreciation for their relations’ success beyond Milton.

“I think it’s so wonderful to see everything is so heartfelt,” said Victoria Hobbs, daughter of P. L. Robertson, the inventor of the socket head screw and wrench first produced at his Milton factory in 1908. Robertson died in 1951.

Some inductees marvelled at their own inclusion in the Walk of Fame, which is in a glassed walkway connecting the old Town Hall to the new expansion.

“I don’t know what committee thought to put a cattle judge in the Walk of Fame,” joked a genuinely touched Bert Stewart, a 45-year resident of Hornby who’s not only recognized as one of the world’s most successful cattle showmen and judges but also a recipient in 2002 of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for outstanding service to Canada.

The committee Stewart wondered about is the Milton Historical Society, which recommended nominees to Milton council based on certain criteria — they must have been “best-in-class” in their field and with accomplishments of a national or international scope; or in the case of astronaut Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian to walk in space, an interstellar one.

Though some accepted their induction with tears of thanks, others reacted with playful humour.

“I guess I’m the last and maybe even the least — I’m 110 pounds,” laughed Ed Whitlock, who took the podium last in the alphabetically-honoured list. The 76-year-old distance runner, holder of 11 world age group records, was the first person in the world over age 70 to run a marathon in less than three hours.

The evening brought out memories for other senior inductees, including ‘original sixer’ Enio Sclisizzi, who played for the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Sclisizzi recalled growing up on the ‘Red Hill,’ so named because of the way the red clay from the old brickyard flowed down the hill in the spring runoff. In the winter, Scisizzi honed his skills playing shinny on the brickyard pond, Mill Pond, and Sixteen Mile Creek.

“I could remember a bunch of us kids on a Saturday skating on the Sixteen Mile Creek to Oakville,” he said. “It took us all day.”

The Walk of Fame list also included two parent-child combinations including Mayor Gord Krantz’s brother and niece, Robert and Darlene Kranstz. The father and daughter are former multiple world champions in jiu-jitsu.

Decked out in fancy suits, were Tiger Jeet Singh and his son Tiger Ali Singh, both former world-beating professional wrestlers.

Tiger Ali thanked his father and mother, “because they had the wisdom to raise their children in such a wonderful community like Milton.”

The full list of inductees can be found at www.milton.ca/townwide/walk_fame.pdf .

See a story on the expanded Town Hall in Friday’s Champion.

Tim Foran can be reached at tforan@miltoncanadianchampion.com .