The U Announces Statue Honouring Father Stan

On Thursday, March 26th, StFX sent out an e-mail regarding a new bust of Father Stan, which is to be put on campus. Reverend Father Stan MacDonald passed away on May 11th, 2025, at the age of 92.  Father Stan was an Xaverian, an athlete, playing hockey, and a member of StFX’s last varsity rugby team. He graduated from StFX in 1954, was ordained in 1959, and served parishes throughout Cape Breton until retiring in 1998. 10 years later, he returned to StFX as the “Priest-in-Residence,” and he would remain as a community figure on campus until his death last year. He was especially present at sporting events and to have this memorialized, the bust will have an “interactive element” where students can “fist bump the X-Ring,”, “just as he did so often around campus and before games.” To learn more about the bust, I reached out to Alessandro D’Aquino, Executive Vice-President of StFX’s Student Union to ask about the statue, the legacy that Father Stan left behind, and the funding of the statue. 

Harrison Stewart: In regard to funding, the email that was sent yesterday, the school is looking to crowdfund the bust. 

Alessandro D’Aquino: Yes. So basically, we set up a donation page, and we are trying to collaborate with the students, with the broader StFX community and alumni, to try to raise this money for the statue. 

HS: Is the university putting any money up front? 

AD: No. There are no amounts as of now from the university. Everything will be raised. 

HS: None of it will be charged as a fee to students or anything. It’ll be all donations? 

AD: Yes, all donations, I’ve had a few students asking if it was a mandatory fee, and my answer was no it's not a mandatory fee. We are doing this because Father Stan had such an impact on the broader community, people are free to decide if they want to donate or not. 

HS: What’s the total amount needed for the bust? 

AD: As of now, the statue could cost around $27,000, but if we raise more, that money will be donated to the bursary that was created by Father Stan.  

HS: What do you think the statue is going to do for his legacy? 

AD: When I came up with this idea, it was I think weeks after he passed away, it was June, I think. I brought this to the team, and in my opinion, it shouldn’t be just a statue, because we know that we have many statues on campus, but when students walk by, it’s like, “who is this person? I don’t know.” And sometimes, there are not even, any descriptions so you don’t even know. You cannot understand. So, I feel like what can make the difference for us is really, like, trying to keep alive the tradition that he has. Like the fist bump, the interactive statue, and we put it like, outside Saputo, which could be potentially the spot, people will be able to fist bump it before the game. And even, like, the first-year students or new people coming to campus can see other students or people in the community going over to the statue and fist bumping it, they would get curious, go in there, and try to understand more about the statue. So, we will have a plaque explaining who Father Stan was, a supporter of the students, supporter of the games; and people will get an image of who he was. And also, a particular thing that we want to put in the statue is like, the material. It’s bronze, and the more you fist bump it the more it’s going to get like shiny. So people are going understand the significance of it. 

HS: And so you think that that will sort of keep his legacy going, the fist bump, along with the plaque that says some information about him?  

AD: Yes, the big smile, the fist bump and the “Go X Go” how he would do in the games. All of these things will keep him alive, you know?  Even if there are first year students who never met him, they are hearing about him a lot, and they are understanding how much impact he had on the community. In three or five years, when new students will see the statue and hear his story, they will understand too and I'm sure they will fist bump it! I think that's the best way to keep him alive! 

H: And you said outside Saputo is the supposed location? 

A: Yes, potentially. That would be our goal, because we were thinking about a location, and then we were not too sure, but I remember like doing this to recognize his support to the athletes of the games, and it was like… definitely then outside Saputo could be a good spot because of the basketball games, people walking to a hockey game, or like even when you go to the football game. For these reasons we thought that was a good spot. 

At this point, I asked Mr. D’Aquino about the statues religious value, as Stan was the “Priest-In-Residence” as well. 

HS: There’s nothing that examines his legacy through the religious aspect of the statue? It’s completely secularized. 

AD: Yes, exactly. So, what we want to explain to the broader community that our goal is to celebrate and do this in honour of Father Stan as the person that he was. Just like, supporting students, smiling to everyone, be always positive and full of energy, not as like a church person. It's important to explain this and avoid confusion, the main goal is to celebrate him as one of the biggest supporter on campus. 

HS: That wasn’t who we saw at the football games, hockey games.  

AD: Yeah. Obviously like, if you asked students who graduated 20 years ago, they would say “I remember Father Satan as the priest who was on campus.” If you asked the students who were here for the last 10 years I think, they would say like “Father Stan was the person who was at the game and was saying ‘Go X Go’” So like, many people did not know he was a priest honestly. So that’s what we are trying to do, like just for the impact that he had and supporting students and the game, and like, honestly, even the first video of Father Stan when he says “Go X Go” at a football game, the best fan in the world, that was my first video I took at StFX and Father Stan. 

HS: Oh, really?  

AD: Yeah. I didn’t know him, I just took the video because like, that’s awesome. There is someone like… this elderly gentleman just like, cheering for students at the game! It’s awesome. Like something I’ve never seen before. And they have the X ring. And it’s like… I love this community. And so like, since that moment, I’ve been like this community is very unified and everyone cares about each other. So, I think that that has a very important meaning for our community. 

Because the statue is in a secularized location, I reached out to Dr. Ken Penner—head of StFX’s Religious Studies—for comment about his thoughts on the legacy of a former religious figure being secularized. In a blog post, Penner states 

“Traditional religious gatherings no longer are the primary locus where community cohesion happens, especially among Canadian university students […] Instead, the athletic stadium, the hockey arena, and the gymnasium take over that function as the modern forges of collective identity. […] Father Stan understood the intense sociology and psychology of these spaces. He recognized that to pastor effectively to the modern university student, he had to enter their sanctuaries. So he became a permanent fixture in the crowd for all varsity sports over a span of fifteen years, providing unwavering support for both the X-Men and X-Women teams, whether football, soccer, rugby, hockey, basketball, or cross country. 

With this context in mind, let’s circle back to the question: Does the placement of a bust of a Catholic priest in a multi-million-dollar sports complex constitute a “secularization” of his legacy? By monumentalizing him primarily as a “Super Fan” in an athletic centre rather than as a priest in a chapel or a library, is the university community stripping away the specific theological and sacramental realities of his lifelong vocation? 

Well, from a strict traditionalist or classical Weberian perspective, an argument can be made that placing the bust in the Saputo Centre secularizes and dilutes Father Stan’s legacy. He was, after all, fundamentally and permanently an ordained priest who served as a spiritual shepherd for nearly forty years in conventional parish settings across Nova Scotia. 

But a post-secular sociological perspective suggests the exact opposite. The placement of a Catholic priest’s monument in a secular sports complex isn’t the dilution or erasure of his religious vocation, as classic secularization theory would have it; rather, it is the most authentic reflection of his incarnational ministry. Father Stan deliberately chose to execute his post-retirement ministry in the secular spaces of the campus. He didn’t wait passively in the chapel for students to seek him out; he proactively went to the hockey arenas, the running trails, the dining halls, and the coffee shops. The concept of incarnation (present in multiple religions) dictates that the divine enters into the messy, physical reality of the human world. Father Stan’s ministry was nothing if not incarnational. He was indeed the “Super Fan,” using the universal language of collegiate sports to bridge generational, cultural, and ideological divides, offering guidance, joy, and spiritual steadying to thousands of students regardless of their personal religious affiliations. 

Viewed this way, the Saputo Centre is the very site of his most impactful work; it’s not a profane space that degrades his memory. To place his memorial in a quiet, purely religious space—a space he frequented but which did not define his public persona over the last two decades—would be an exercise in historical revisionism. Instead, the placement of the bust in the Saputo Centre accurately acknowledges that in the modern, pluralistic university, the sacred is encountered more often in the bleachers, the locker rooms, and the shared pursuit of excellence. “ 

Father Stan’s legacy is being preserved as just as he created it, as someone who cared deeply about this campus, its student body, and this statue will help keep his legacy alive for years to come.  

Special thanks to Dr. Ken Penner, whose comments were used for biographical information about Father Stan as well. Quotations and other information taken from StFX email about information about the Father Stan Bust, and his obituary. 

Dr. Penner’s thoughts on secularism and the Father Stan bust: https://kmpenner.hcommons.org/2026/03/28/secularization-and-memorialization-in-the-father-stan-bust-project/  

Father Stan’s obituary: https://macisaacs.ca/tribute/details/797/Fr-Stan-MacDonald/obituary.html  

To donate to the statue: https://secureca.imodules.com/s/650/lg21/form.aspx?sid=650&gid=1&pgid=4138&cid=7706