Ole Bakken

Ole Bakken was only two years old when he moved to Canada to follow his father, who found a job in British Columbia working for Canadian Pacific Railway. Ole took up basketball in high school and pursued the sport at the University of British Columbia, where he played for the 1946 UBC Thunderbirds championship squad that was eventually inducted into the British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame. After playing with the school team, he suited up with the Meraloma Sports Club and the Vancouver Clover Leafs to win the Canadian national championships in 1947 and 1948 respectively.

It was as a member of the latter team that he was chosen to represent Canada at the 1948 London Olympics, where the nation was eliminated after winning three and losing two of its matches in the group stage. It then placed ninth overall after defeating Iran in the classification round; Bakken played in four of the six games. He graduated with a communications degree in 1946, but worked for a while as the graduate manager of athletics at UBC and for Time, Life, and Fortune magazines. He eventually moved to Toronto to work in investments.