Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk makes surprise visit to B.C. mountain town to open skate park expansion

Andrew Kurjata · CBC News

· Posted: May 29, 2025 11:56 AM EDT | Last Updated: May 29

One of the world's astir recognizable athletes has paid a astonishment sojourn to a tiny B.C. upland town, colonisation 5,000.

Tony Hawk, who revolutionized skateboarding with respective caller tricks and helped popularize the athletics done his diversion performances and a enactment of video games, was successful Smithers, B.C., successful the province's northwest, connected Thursday, to assistance observe the enlargement of the community's skate park.

"Hey, what's up Smithers? It's Tony Hawk. Someone told maine there's a skate demo happening astatine your caller park?" helium said successful a video posted to societal media. "That's beauteous cool, I whitethorn person to cheque it out."

Jake Daly of the Smithers Skate Park Society said the program to bring the athlete into the upland community, astir 650 kilometres northwest of Vancouver, had been successful the works for months but had to beryllium kept nether wraps until Hawk arrived.

And arsenic Daly milled about the hundreds of radical who had gathered to spot Hawk skate, it was wide wherefore that information was successful place.

"We've ne'er had this galore radical here," Daly said, saying immoderate had made a thrust of much than 5 hours to spot the fable successful action. "They've skipped school, skipped enactment and tin you blasted them?"

Daly spent his precocious schoolhouse days skating astatine a overmuch smaller mentation of the parkland and ne'er dreamed that 1 time helium would be welcoming Hawk into his community.

"The parents are astir much excited, right?" helium said. "We each grew up connected playing Tony Hawk and, yeah, I don't know. The full assemblage is fired up."

According to the society, Smithers was the archetypal assemblage successful B.C. northbound of Kamloops to person a dedicated skate park, archetypal opening successful 1996. Over the past respective years it has been working on a large expansion, astatine a outgo of astir $1 million. 

The task includes caller features for skaters, specified arsenic an eight-foot bowl, arsenic good arsenic lighting, benches and signage.

Hawk said the travel was a invited accidental for him to "get away" with his squad and that contempt having traveled the world, helium was excited to spot a portion he'd ne'er visited.

"I'm an avid snowboarder and I consciousness similar I'd emotion to travel back," helium said, looking astatine the upland views.

Hawk didn't instrumentality outgo for the visit, and said helium considers the travel a portion of his enactment promoting skateboarding. He wants the athletics to be more accessible and acceptable than it was erstwhile helium was increasing up.

"When I started skating, the skate parkland that I lived adjacent and what I recovered retired aboriginal was 1 of the lone ones successful beingness astatine the time, it was my salvation. That's wherever I recovered my belonging, my consciousness of assemblage and yet my consciousness of purpose," helium told CBC Radio West host Sarah Penton.

He praised the tiny assemblage of Smithers for however overmuch enactment it had thrown into expanding the park.

"It's a world-class parkland successful a comparatively tiny town," Hawk said.

For Daly, who volunteers with the Skate Park Society but works with Tourism Smithers, creating a showcase skate parkland successful the bosom of B.C.'s Bulkley Valley is simply a earthy hold of the enactment the assemblage has already done to become a destination for downhill skiing and snowboarding.

"Over clip it conscionable became the earthy benignant of hub of committee sports, and grew into thing special," helium said. "It's been a dilatory process, but there's ever been similar a truly chill underground skate country present and benignant of a punk scene... truthful to spot it turn and mature and evolve... it's truly special."