Shirley Burnham Elliott
Elliott A Sport Leader
Best known in Nova Scotia for her work in promoting and protecting the province’s material culture, Shirley Elliott was an active sports woman during her school and university years. She was best known as a basketball player and played on the “punch-line,” Acadia’s high scoring line called the “most potent trio to perform in the Maritimes at that time.” Elliott played on several championship teams; both the 1936 and the 1937 basketball teams won the Maritime intercollegiate women’s basketball title.
Elliott was also a champion tennis player and won her athletic “A” for both tennis and basketball; she received distinction for tennis. Reporting on a tennis match against Mt Allison University in 1936, the Athenaeum commented: “Shirley Elliott, though handicapped by a sore finger, showed great courage in her mixed doubles match. When crucial points were needed the versatile star gave her partner fine support.” She had won a singles match earlier in the meet.
She served as president of the Acadia Girls’ Amateur Athletic Association during her Senior year, an indication of her standing among other female athletes at Acadia. Elliott was on the Athenaeum staff and received her literary “A.” After graduation in 1937, she received a Master’s of Library Science from Simmons College, Boston. In 1954, Shirley Elliott became Nova Scotia’s Legislative Librarian–a post she held until 1982. She was instrumental in the collection, arrangement and preservation of Nova Scotia’s rich heritage both at Province House and elsewhere in the province.
(Citation for 1937 Women’s Basketball team, Acadian University Sports Hall of Fame; Acadia Athenaeum, November 1936, 68)
