Building boys is better than mending men. That has always been Jack Kolt’s credo, right from the time at the tender age of 17 that he organized the Ukrainian Prosvita All-Star Athletic Club.

Kolt, a proud Polish Canadian, gave a lifetime of effort for others as a builder. Kolt laboured to improve the landscape for Winnipeg’s youth. He offered them opportunities to compete and associate through the Canadian Polish Athletic Club, which he founded and presided over for six years. The club took hundreds of children off the streets and earned a name for its athletic accomplishments, sportsmanship and annual scholarship awards. “In his youth in the forties and fifties, there was nothing happening for kids,” Richard said. “He wanted to keep kids off the streets because if you’re playing sports and having fun, you’re out of trouble. He had vision far ahead of his time.”

The CPAC was Kolt’s greatest achievement. Starting in 1954 in the north end, he helped thousands of kids through the years, providing programs in soccer, baseball, basketball, hockey and other sports. Richard estimates his dad’s teams won some 15 national or provincial championships. But he was more than just a coach, manager or administrator to those kids. “They’d come to our house and ask him for advice, as though he was their father,” Richard said. “He was like a father, a big brother, to so many of them.” Kolt also spearheaded the early development of the facility at the Old Exhibition Grounds.

He organized the Canadian Polish Professional and Businessmen’s Association to assist the needy through scholarships, formed the Canadian Pacific Railway Carmen Sick Benefit Club; served on the North Winnipeg YMCA board and helped make the family YMCA Building a reality in 1957. The founder of Kolt Music Studios, he formed the North Winnipeg Charitable Club, and had leading roles in the construction of a Polish senior citizen’s home and a library at Polish Manor.