MONCTON – When Rollie MacDonald goes to  the races, he can hear fans cheer.
They come down after the race to meet him or call out to him when he walks by the stands.
“Even though I’m  65, you still got kids coming up to you wanting your autograph,” he said.
As a race car driver he is already in the famous category. Saturday he had that fame confirmed by his peers and racing elite as he was inducted into the Maritime Motorsports Hall of Fame during a three-hour ceremony held in Moncton, N.B.
This isn’t the first time MacDonald has been honoured. In 2004 he was inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame and in 2005 was welcomed into the Pictou County Sports Heritage Hall of Fame.
MacDonald has more than four decades of experience on tracks throughout the Maritimes, Quebec and the northeastern U.S.
The Pictou County native got his start in racing in 1965 when he built a ’55 Pontiac and took to the dirt track at the Mountain Raceway near New Glasgow.
It wasn’t a fancy car by any stretch of the imagination.
“We built it in the backyard so it wasn’t very nice,” MacDonald remembers. “It was the first one. We learned a lot from that car. We learned how to build a better one the next time.”
But back then it didn’t matter, you brought what you built and if it wasn’t fast enough you made adjustments.
“Racing’s changed 100 percent since we got into it – the cars, the handling, the motors – everything about the car,” MacDonald said. “It’s totally, 100 percent different.”
In 1977 MacDonald was on top of his game with 21 straight wins. Dreams of 22 were quickly ended when he ran into the wall. He was in the hospital for 11 days and was black and blue far longer.
But his racing career was far from over. He quickly returned to the track and in 1983 won the MASCAR championship. In following years he was a runner-up. After a bit of a break from racing he returned in 2005 to become the CARQUEST points champion.
This past year he slowed his pace a bit and only went to seven races.
The car he had wasn’t the greatest though and he didn’t perform as well as he’d like to have.
The season ended for him with what would be the second worst crash of his career over the Thanksgiving weekend. He dislocated his shoulder, broke two ribs and totaled the car.
He’s not sure whether he’ll get a new car and race again next year.
“It’s 50-50,” he says.
But even if he never takes a car onto the track again, he can look back with pride at his accomplishments.
His inductions solidify his place in the racing world.