committee for the Master Plan for Sport led by the Manitoba Sports Federation, and represented the Government of Canada on the board of directors for the 1974 Manitoba Games. He served as chairman of the 1975 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships hosted in Winnipeg, which coincided with the Manitoba Centennial celebrations. Dawson was relocated to the Recreation and Sport Canada offices in Ottawa in January 1976 and focused on developing the Canada Summer and Winter Games. The Winnipeg office was reopened in March 1978, and Dawson was assigned to oversee programs in Manitoba and Saskatchewan while remaining a senior consultant to Ottawa. Dawson was the federal liaison and advisor for the 1979 Canada Winter Games in Brandon, Manitoba, and felt the event to be the biggest Canada Games to date. He had wanted to bring to games to Brandon since 1973, and was hopeful for government investment to create an infrastructure legacy project in his home province. The government contributed $3.5 million towards permanent facilities. Dawson attempted to level the playing for hockey at the 1979 Canada Winter Games, and negotiated different rules of player eligibility for each provincial amateur hockey association. Despite criticism by coaches for the rules being difficult to understand, he felt changes were necessary since some region of Canada had a limited number of players available. Sport Canada wanted to increase the level of competition in women's sport across the country, and Dawson introduced women's team handball and softball at the 1981 Canada Summer Games in Thunder Bay, Ontario. He arranged talks with provincial sports bodies in 1983 to decide on the future of the Canada Games amid disagreements on whether events should be for amateurs or to develop elite athletes for international sports. He implemented testing for doping in sport in the Canada Games in 1984, and planned for reductions in the number of sports by the 1989 Canada Summer Games. Dawson died at home in Winnipeg on March 28, 1987, due to a year-long battle with lung cancer. Honours and awards At the 1963 CAHA awards banquet, Dawson was named an honorary deputy mayor of Brandon, Manitoba, by its mayor S. A. Magnacca. In January 1964, Dawson was named Western Manitoba Sportsman of the Year by the Brandon Sun and a recipient of the H. L. Crawford Memorial Trophy. Dawson received a citation award from the Amateur Hockey Association of the United States in