Welcome to this week’s Friday Feature, and our first edition of Full Circle Friday — where I check in with people who came through Lethbridge baseball in a meaningful way, went out and did their thing, and came either in baseball or other ways full circle back to us.
Dylan Holton came to Lethbridge in the fall of 2006, barely 18, moving across the country from his familiar area of Pictou County, Nova Scotia. He was recruited because of his talent at the Canada Cup, and immediately became an impact player for Prairie Baseball Academy. Not only did he make the varsity team in his first year, he was asked to play for the Lethbridge Bulls that next summer. That is really where I got to know Dylan, and the great, free-spirited, multi-talented human being he was.
His first place was on the west side of Lethbridge, before he became a billet at my place. The landlord had a way of adding little fee-for-service items to the rent, and Dylan didn’t realize that wasn’t normal — he just figured that’s how the system worked here. Haha. Being a young student, he eventually sought out a different arrangement at a different place. That is partially how I became lucky enough to get to know Dylan so well, when he took up residence at my 24th St. S. Home.
Dylan admits the culture was different in Western Canada than in the east at his home in Nova Scotia. You had to get accustomed to a different way people approach life — not dramatically different, as we’re still all Canadians, but there was a distinct difference. I don’t think he was referring just to his accent (and I do love his accent), but rather to things like how people did things — and the general outlook on life was just slightly different here.
Dylan was multi-talented, as I said. Not only was he a baseball player, he was a very talented musician. I remember somebody once asking why he transitioned to performing on stage after baseball, and I thought at the time the person asking really didn’t know Dylan. He was a musician at heart the entire time he was in Lethbridge, probably the entire time he grew up in Nova Scotia, and certainly for the rest of his life he will be a musician of some type. Writing lyrics and music comes naturally to him. I remember at the house, countless evenings when you’d hear the guitar playing downstairs. He kept it about as close to him as the baseball bat, and he knew how to use both of them very well. He also was famous around baseball circles for doing the best beatbox anywhere around – bus trips, clubhouses, house parties, and even in dugouts!!
When his baseball injuries caused him to hang up the glove for the most part, he went and wrote an album, and thus became a songwriter. He performed on cruise ships — he made the key connection at an airport gate, and that gig took him all over the world and kept the bills paid.
But before the music took over, there was Mount Olive. A couple of years after Lethbridge, Dylan was part of the NCAA Division II World Series title team at Mount Olive College in North Carolina. On May 31, 2008, in Sauget, Illinois, Mount Olive beat Ouachita Baptist 6–2 for the first national championship in school history — any sport. And in the title game, Dylan clutched up, as usual. Batting eighth, he came up with the bases loaded and laced a bases-clearing double that turned out to be the winning hit in the deciding game. With the number of teams in NCAA Division II baseball, that moment — along with fellow PBA players David Cooper and Mike Kicia on that roster — became one of the highlights among all the players PBA has sent on.
I asked Dylan if he remembered, pitch by pitch, what happened in that at-bat. Of course he did! The pitcher was trying to bust him inside but missed the first three pitches — ball one, ball two, ball three. The team had a hitting approach, and Dylan was green-lighted to swing 3-0. He didn’t miss — or in his words, he missed maybe just a bit from knocking it out of the park for a grand slam — but he lined it into the outfield, and when the dust settled, he was standing on second and all three Mount Olive runs were across the plate. I know he wouldn’t want to dwell on this, but I have to give him his dues — he was playing injured throughout that entire Mount Olive run that spring.
When he was a performer, Dylan was one of the first ones we called to perform at the Tanner Croswell and Mitch McLean memorial in early 2012 at the then-Enmax Centre — an event to honor and appreciate the lives of the three victims taken so horrifically from this world in that horrible tragedy just before Christmas 2011, and to celebrate Shayna Conway as a survivor, as she recovered from the horrific injuries she sustained. Not needing to be asked twice, he dropped what he was doing, made his way back to Lethbridge, and was one of the highlights of that afternoon memorial.
I remember Dylan coming to the PBA Hall of Fame induction earlier this year, and prior to the event we really didn’t have a chance to connect much. People were milling around, busy trying to get the program off successfully, and Dylan was probably preparing his words as the evening moved along. I remember him coming over, just putting his arm around me and saying, “Hey Kev.” We got to visit for a while, and it just felt like only days had gone by since I’d seen him and heard that friendly voice with the Maritimes twang. And as I told him, as he approaches 40 rather rapidly, he doesn’t look a day past 20. He said it was awesome to be inducted into the PBA Hall of Fame with his two Mount Olive teammates, who certainly made an impact in the baseball world.
On that trip back to Lethbridge — basically the first time since the memorial — Dylan had to take his beautiful wife Siobhan to all the old stomping grounds around Lethbridge. He mentioned that he was quite disappointed that a couple of the adult beverage establishments were no longer operating in the city. I got to see him come up to Spitz Stadium on that unseasonably beautiful early-February day when there was no snow on the field. He was like a kid in a candy store, taking pictures and looking at all the nooks and corners that were familiar. He even got to visit the clubhouse, where his initials were still on one of the lockers from his years with the Bulls.
Nowadays, in addition to being a dad — including a brand-new dad for the fifth time this past week (congratulations, by the way!) — Dylan does exceptional videography for his own company, Capital Content, in Ottawa, ON. He’s told me about many projects including one trip to Sweden to do commercials and videography with William Nylander of the Toronto Maple Leafs – yes, that is a cheap way to give my hockey team some recognition but still a true story — who he got to spend considerable time with. The website for his business exhibits his usual passion and talent with anything he touches as he showcases his many projects.
Dylan gets to watch his kids play Little League in Ottawa. His acreage — where he raises his now-five kids — is a quiet refuge outside the busy city life. It is within the boundaries of Ottawa South Little League. So now that he’s well on his way to already having a Little League team of his own — and if the kids have any of the talent that Pops had — some of those other Ottawa-area leagues better watch out as the kids grow up. If Dylan ever decides he has some time to get into coaching, I’m sure he’ll be equally successful at that and I truly hope he does that in the coming years.
I think we could do a multi-edition set of stories that we didn’t have a chance (or space) to cover in this Friday Feature, but for now we’ll conclude with a story I find incredibly amusing. Did you know that a musician on a cruise ship has to be aware of how much they’re selling their CDs for on that cruise? Dylan had to be! Because when he got back to Miami International Airport and was going through customs, he had put $9,995 in his portfolio from sales of his CDs on the ship. Well, the customs people knew exactly how much was in there — they counted every single bill! They were very impressed that he knew you couldn’t go over $10,000 cash while travelling, but that didn’t stop them from giving him the third degree, because he looked like such a well-groomed businessman. I’m sure you can see the sarcasm in that statement, because if any of you have had the chance to see pictures of Dylan while he was performing, he had very long wavy hair and probably musician-type clothes — headband, and probably saggy pants to go along with it. Anyway, he cleared customs with flying colours eventually, and continues making music, in more than one way.
We can’t wait to show you some of Dylan’s work. We had him back in the city this spring to showcase what a special baseball community we have. Too often, little things get in the way of the unique and unbelievable experiences, teams, facilities, programs, events, and especially people that make the pathway for Lethbridge and area youth chug along year after year. Capital Content will do Lethbridge baseball proud when you get to see the work they’ve done for us in the coming weeks. Dylan was thrilled to be back in the city — this time with a camera on his shoulder, but with his usual passion and attention to detail that has made him successful in everything he does. The baseball bat, the guitar, the camera — a trilogy of tools he has perfected and that continue to be an important part of family and work.
Dylan, thanks for being our first feature on Full Circle Friday.
Published: October 9, 2026
