N.S. basketball pro opens gym in Ottawa — and brings a splash of home with him

Keith Gough's hoop dreams started when he was a seven-year-old boy in Lower Sackville, N.S., watching his older brother Kenyon play. 

"Coming up through the ranks, I started at A.J. Smeltzer Junior High and then I did fairly well there," Gough says. 

"I played a year at Sackville High and then ended up moving into Halifax to play for the Halifax West Warriors for the last two years for coach Mark Parker."

He played for Nova Scotia's junior provincial team, including at the Canada Games, where he competed against future NBA star Steve Nash. He moved to Ottawa to study and play at Algonquin College before turning pro in the late 1990s. 

"It was always a dream," he says.  

International playing career

He played and lived in Denmark, France and Iceland. He spent several years on the island, exploring volcanoes and relaxing in hot springs as he played and coached basketball.

"You have to think about it as you're moving into a whole new life, a whole new system. [It's] a lot different from North America," he says of his career overseas. 

"You have to get used to spending a lot of time by yourself. So what I did was spend a lot of time in the gym. I was really perfecting my craft, getting better. I started to really gravitate toward coaching."

The 6-5, 230-pound shooting guard and small forward retired from playing to start a family in Ottawa in the mid-2000s. When his children were old enough to play, he started coaching them. Other parents asked him to help their kids. 

He soon had a growing business, but was frustrated by the difficulty of finding a gym to rent. He formed his own company in 2018, and rented a small space until the pandemic hit.

He'd already been dreaming of doing it "on a larger scale" and this March opened his own training gym: The Performance Factory in Ottawa.  

His friend, the Ottawa artist Falldowng, created an iconic mural for the facility. 

"We were just blown away at how well it came out. It encompasses everything that we've been through in my whole career," Gough says. 

"Obviously our Nova Scotia flag, my two favourite players, Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, Sackville High, Halifax West, details of my time in Philadelphia. Just everything — a complete depiction in detail of my career thus far."

He opened March 1 and coaches a wide range of people. "From people who haven't even dribbled before to people who are home from their pro job and getting ready for another job overseas, or just guys in the city who are looking to sharpen their skills."

He keeps a close eye on Nova Scotia and was delighted to see local players Nate Darling and Lindell Wigginton make it to the NBA.

"It was just a matter of time. I knew it, I saw it from the time I was young. I noticed for a lot of our players, it wasn't that the skill wasn't there — it's just the opportunity wasn't there. And now that these guys, Nate and Lindell, have the opportunity, I think not only Canada, but the world is seeing what the East Coast offers or has to offer."

He says the NBA-drafted player Marial Shayok shows that Ottawa players can make the pro leagues, too.

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.

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