Throughout the year, Global News’ new series This is BC has highlighted uplifting and unique stories of people, places and communities across the beautiful province we call home.
Twice weekly, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Global BC reporter and anchor Jay Durant has delivered stories of the ordinary and the extraordinary, highlighting diverse voices and stories of success and creativity.
From seniors who excel at sports to iconic legacy business operators to bits of B.C. history you may never have heard about, This is BC covered a lot of ground in 2022.
And there’s more on the way for 2023, but we need your help! If you think you know a story that belongs on the program, you can contact Jay Durant at thisisbc@globalnews.ca.
B.C. breakdancer wins world championship, sets eyes on 2024 Olympic debut
When breakdancing — or ‘breaking’ — makes its Olympic debut in Paris in 2024, Philip Kim will be there, and the B.C. man is shooting for gold.
Kim, who is also known as Phil Wizard, recently beat out more than 250 competitors to claim his first World Breaking Championship, and he’s now aiming higher.
Getting to the top of the game hasn’t been easy.
He started breakdancing at age 11, after seeing a street show by the Vancouver crew “Now or Never.”
“They were spinning on their heads, they were flying,” Kim said. “When I saw it, the first thing I thought was I could totally get girls with that, that’s so cool.”
Now aged 25, Kim is putting in the work — and breaking is his full-time job, complete with sponsorship.
The incredible athleticism required demands a lot of training, four to six hours a day, five to six days a week.
“It takes over my whole life. So most of my day, Monday to Friday when people are working, my work is just training,” Kim explained.
Phil Wizard has won medals at many international competitions. His recent victory now has him as the world’s number-one-ranked B-Boy in the quest for the Olympics, and a gold medal favorite for 2024.
“It’s not just potentially a first for Canada but first for the world,” Kim said.
“This is the first time that breaking is making its debut for the Olympics in Paris so it’s an exciting time for everybody.”
Surrey man and friends build elaborate palki for worshippers in Prince George, B.C.
A gurdwara in Prince George, B.C. has an elaborate, new wooden palki thanks to the efforts of a Surrey man and his friends in Richmond.
Malkiat Singh Hoonjan said he decided to take on the ambitious project last year after learning from a friend that the Sikh place of worship in Prince George didn’t have one. The gurdwara was building an expansion while closed due to COVID-19, but couldn’t find anyone to build the labour-intensive palki.
A palki is a canopied structure at the centre of a gurdwara where the Guru Granth Sahib — the sacred holy scriptures — reside.
“I’ve enjoyed doing this work and I love it because it’s for the community and that’s the community we all belong to,” Hoonjan told Global News.
Hoonjan has previously put his woodworking skills to use building other parts of a gurdwara, but this was the first time he attempted the elaborate palki work.
In the end, dozens of people, including friends at Richmond’s Dominion Woodworking, completed the 12-foot golden structure in about five months.
The palki was shipped in bubble wrap to the Guru Nanak Darbar gurdwara in Prince George on May 14. It arrived, undamaged, on May 15 and took two days to assemble.
Hoonjan said he and his friends built the palki “as a service, as a hobby,” but they’re keenly aware that more requests for palkis are possible.
7 years after losing battle with leukemia, B.C. boy inspires thousands of toy donations
Seven years ago, Tina Richardson suffered a heartbreaking loss. In 2015, her seven-year-old son Sean Thomas lost a long-running battle with Leukemia.
At his final birthday party at BC Children’s Hospital, attended by more than 200 people, Sean was overwhelmed by the massive number of gifts.
“He said, ‘Mommy look at all these toys, but it’s too much. I’d like to share them with my friends,’” Richardson recalled. “I said, ‘Sure honey, what would you like to do?’
“He said, ‘I’d like to deliver them to my friends in the hospital.’”
That’s exactly what the family did. And they didn’t stop: every year, his family runs a toy drive called Sean’s Gift of Sharing which has inspired thousands of people to donate more than 10,000 gifts in their son’s name.
“Parents send me pictures of their kids holding up the toys. They’re overjoyed,” said Richardson.
‘Late bloomer’: 97-year-old B.C. resident smashes swimming records
B.C. resident Betty Brussel has so many medals for swimming, she’s lost track of them.
And most of the 97-year-old’s hardware is gold. But even more impressive than regularly landing at the top of the podium? Brussel didn’t even start competing until she was 68.
“I am a later bloomer,” she quipped.
Brussel grew up in the Netherlands, where she learned to swim in the country’s canals along with 11 siblings.
But she could never have guessed she’d one day set two world records at masters competitions for adults.
“I’m sort of proud of that, yes,” she said. What an understatement.
Brussel has suffered a heart attack, broken both feet, cracked a vertebra in a bad fall, and had an operation on her shoulder. None of it has stopped her. She’s back at the Guildford Recreation Centre in Surrey twice a week to train.
“I always, when I’m recovered, I go back,” said Brussel. “I want to swim the 800-metre when I’m 100, that’s what I want to do.”
‘I will do this to make you proud’: B.C. man converts Rolls-Royce into electric vehicle
How do you reconcile a love of specialty cars with concern about climate change?
If you’re Richmond business owner Vincent Yu, you listen to your daughter — then you get busy in your workshop.
Yu wanted to buy a new Rolls-Royce, but his daughter had a few thoughts about the carbon emissions the car would produce and wasn’t shy about sharing them with her dad.
“He was telling me how great it is and how it takes a lot of horsepower and gas, and I was like, but aren’t you going to pollute the Earth with this, even more than a regular car?” Gloria Yu told Global News.
Yu bought the car anyway, but Gloria refused to ride shotgun with him. So he got to work.
Yu studied EV car batteries and found parts to replicate the technology. It was a “very difficult” costly and laborious undertaking, he told Global News.
Gloria and her mom even moved out of the house for a year because things got so stressful when Yu couldn’t get the engine to work.
But four years after he first started down the road he met with success, and the family reunited.
“One day he just gave us a text saying, ‘Oh I’ve done it!’ And we’re like, ‘Done what?’ And he said, ‘I’ve converted the car,’” said Gloria.
“I’m very, very happy. Very very happy,” he said — not the least because now when he goes for a cruise, he’s got Gloria by his side.
North Vancouver’s iconic Roman Tailor still sewing after 5 decades in business
Guiseppe Dente has an awful lot of fans on Metro Vancouver’s North Shore.
After 50 years in business, the 78-year-old Italian-born tailor has barely slowed down and still does the job he loves in North Vancouver.
There’s been no advertising, no website. It’s his reputation and word of mouth that have built the business.
His workshop looks like a laundromat turned inside out, but Dente has a special filing system he keeps in his own head.
“When they bring it in, roughly I try to remember where I put it you know,” he explained.
Over the years he’s become friends with many of his clients, who drop off a suit, then stay for a chat — just as if they were in the old world.
“Some people go to the tailor, you know, do a little shot, have some talking. That’s the way I try to do it here, too,” Dente explained.
More than a decade ago, his shop was destroyed by a fire, but Dente rebuilt and was back in business within four months.
He’s also acquired some big-name customers over the years, like billionaire Jimmy Pattison, former Canucks legend Pat Quinn and soccer icon Bob Lenarduzzi.
B.C. freediver helps students break records and Hollywood stars get the perfect shot
For more than three decades diver Kirk Krack has been training and educating the diving community. He’s a trailblazer in freediving, writing the book on safety and technique and leading his students to the pinnacle of their sport.
“In freediving, I’ve trained seven different athletes to 23 world records and a dozen or so athletes to hundreds of national records,” Krack told Global’s This is BC.
He’s worked on documentaries including Racing Extinction and The Cove. He taught Tom Cruise to hold his breath for six minutes to shoot a scene for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. And he trained actress Margot Robbie to hold her breath for a long period of time for Suicide Squad and even played Batman in an underwater scene in the film.
“The head of stunts asked me if I knew anyone with my jawline, about six-foot-three who might want to do a stunt and had a great breath hold,” Krack said.
Krak’s latest assignment has had him working with James Cameron for Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 after they met by chance on a flight to L.A.
“I went and handed him the card and said, ‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained,’ and I was about to say something else when he said, ‘How long can you hold your breath?’”
The answer is seven minutes.
Not bad for a guy from Saskatchewan — not exactly a province known for its deep diving opportunities.
‘I wanted to be famous’: Abbotsford, B.C. man holds world records for ball-spinning
It started out as a pastime for Sandeep Singh Kaila, but over 14 years, the Abbotsford, B.C. resident has turned it into a life-changing career of international renown.
While living in India, Kaila realized he had a very particular set of skills — spinning sports balls on his fingertips, and sometimes, off of a stick he holds in his mouth. It was an accident he discovered while juggling.
“Slowly, slowly, balls started spinning on my finger,” he told Global News. “I practiced, practiced, practiced too much.”
All that practice has put Kalia near the top of the highly-competitive world of sports-ball-spinning — and over the years he’s racked up seven different Guinness World Records.
Four have since been broken but he’s still the champ in three categories: “Longest time to spin a rugby ball on one finger,” “Longest time to spin an American football on one finger,” and “Longest duration spinning a basketball on a toothbrush.”
He thinks the toothbrush record is “unbreakable.”
“There was nothing for me to do and I wanted to be famous,” he explained. “I wanted to become famous in the world.”
His YouTube channel now documents his entire spinning career, including all of his performances and the unveiling each time a new Guinness certificate arrives in the mail.
“I feel very proud,” he said. “Even my family, my villagers, and my Punjabi community here, they’re proud of me very much.”
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