Getting his due after decades

Engineering alumnus belatedly honoured with a hometown mural for his pro football exploits. By Brian Caldwell Faculty of Engineering - More than three decades after leaving to make his mark on the world, an alumnus of Waterloo Engineering has been formally honoured by his Ontario hometown for his athletic achievements. A mural of Taly Williams (BASc '94, civil engineering), who played for the Waterloo Warriors before suiting up in the Canadian Football League (CFL), was unveiled recently on the wall of the local arena along with other successful athletes from Haliburton. An effort to recognize Williams and his sister, Lesley Tashlin, who represented Canada as a sprinter and a hurdler at the 1996 Olympics, was spearheaded by a class of Grade 7 and 8 students at J. Douglas Hodgson Elementary School who discovered they had been overlooked and set out to right a wrong. Williams, now a co-founder and managing partner at AQORA Capital, an investment firm in Los Angeles focused on water infrastructure, technology and services, recalled in a speech at the mural unveiling being a member of one of the few Black families in town. "I don't know if Haliburton was proud of me," he said. "It didn't feel like it.