Like a lot of kids, Harrison Lee liked to play with yo-yos. Unlike a lot of kids, he didn’t see yo-yos as just another passing fancy.
“It was a fad at my school, but like any other hobby in middle school, people begin to lose interest,” he said. “But I kept going.”
Lee became a Canadian yo-yo champion and also something of an entrepreneur, having designed his own yo-yo.
“Modern yo-yos values are made out of aircraft-grade aluminum and inside yo-yos,” he said. “Actually, they have ball bearings, which allows them to spin for a really, really long time.”
Lee worked with Canadian company Caribou Lodge for his first yo-yo design called the Orca. His latest creation is The Otter, which is designed to expand the number of trick possibilities.
“That required the Yo-Yo being much smaller, being a lot more nimble, and it’s been for a really long time as.
So why has Lee persevered through the ups and downs of yo-yoing when for most kids it’s something that comes and goes?
“What has kept me going for so long is that I’m a very naturally fidgety person,” he said.
“You can kind of get lost in it. You’re just playing with the string and mood and it’s like, oh, what shape can I make? How can you manipulate it in different ways?”