Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk makes surprise visit to B.C. mountain town to open skate park expansion
Hawk helped open small mountain community's new skateboard expansion in mountains of northwest B.C.
One of the world's most recognizable athletes has paid a surprise visit to a small B.C. mountain town, population 5,000.
Tony Hawk, who revolutionized skateboarding with several new tricks and helped popularize the sport through his athletic performances and a line of video games, was in Smithers, B.C., in the province's northwest, on Thursday, to help celebrate the expansion of the community's skate park.
"Hey, what's up Smithers? It's Tony Hawk. Someone told me there's a skate demo happening at your new park?" he said in a video posted to social media. "That's pretty cool, I may have to check it out."
Jake Daly of the Smithers Skate Park Society said the plan to bring the athlete into the mountain community, around 650 kilometres northwest of Vancouver, had been in the works for months but had to be kept under wraps until Hawk arrived.
And as Daly milled about the hundreds of people who had gathered to see Hawk skate, it was clear why that condition was in place.
"We've never had this many people here," Daly said, saying some had made a drive of more than five hours to see the legend in action. "They've skipped school, skipped work and can you blame them?"
Daly spent his high school days skating at a much smaller version of the park and never dreamed that one day he would be welcoming Hawk into his community.
"The parents are almost more excited, right?" he said. "We all grew up on playing Tony Hawk and, yeah, I don't know. The whole community is fired up."
According to the society, Smithers was the first community in B.C. north of Kamloops to have a dedicated skate park, first opening in 1996. Over the past several years it has been working on a major expansion, at a cost of nearly $1 million.
The project includes new features for skaters, such as an eight-foot bowl, as well as lighting, benches and signage.
Hawk said the trip was a welcome opportunity for him to "get away" with his team and that despite having traveled the world, he was excited to see a region he'd never visited.
"I'm an avid snowboarder and I feel like I'd love to come back," he said, looking at the mountain views.
Hawk didn't take payment for the visit, and said he considers the trip a part of his work promoting skateboarding. He wants the sport to be more accessible and acceptable than it was when he was growing up.
"When I started skating, the skate park that I lived near and what I found out later was one of the only ones in existence at the time, it was my salvation. That's where I found my belonging, my sense of community and ultimately my sense of purpose," he told CBC Radio West host Sarah Penton.
He praised the small community of Smithers for how much support it had thrown into expanding the park.
"It's a world-class park in a relatively small town," Hawk said.
For Daly, who volunteers with the Skate Park Society but works with Tourism Smithers, creating a showcase skate park in the heart of B.C.'s Bulkley Valley is a natural extension of the work the community has already done to become a destination for downhill skiing and snowboarding.
"Over time it just became the natural kind of hub of board sports, and grew into something special," he said. "It's been a slow process, but there's always been like a really cool underground skate scene here and kind of a punk scene... so to see it grow and mature and evolve... it's really special."
With files from Nicole Oud and Sarah Penton