Bruce Kellett

I started skating in 1976. Back then, we skated everything, Freestyle, slalom, downhill, banks, high jump, and long jump, although Freestyle was always my favorite. Street skating as we know it didn’t exist. When skateparks started opening up in Ontario in the mid-’70s my friends and I would travel to Toronto to skate them. Back then, there was no such thing as a public skatepark. They were privately owned, and it was “pay-to-play” by the hour. In 1979 I broke my wrist at one of the skateparks and stopped skating. In the mid-’80s, after university, I got back into skating for a couple of years. I even flew out to Vancouver to watch the Transworld Skateboarding Championships at Expo 86. It was awesome to see the world’s top freestylers live! While I was there, I bumped into Rodney Mullen away from the event and had a nice chat. Great guy! I still have my Rodney Chessboard model to this day. Regrettably, I stayed away from skating for the next 30 years or so until I bought a board for my son Blaine for Christmas 2017. By getting out to teach Blaine how to skate, I caught the freestyle bug again, and we have been skating together ever since. In 2018 we went to Cloverdale and watched the finals of the World Round-Up, and we had a blast! We were particularly impressed by all the young Japanese skaters. For Christmas 2018, Blaine got his first freestyle board and has been at it ever since, for the 2019 Roundup Blaine was selected to be the “Pro-For-A-Day.” It was a fantastic experience for him, and I was very proud of him as he performed his routine for the crowd. This year Blaine will compete in the Rookie Division, but I couldn’t let him have all the fun, so I decided to enter the Masters Amateur Division as well. Now I just have to work off all that rust. Some of my favorite skaters are Masahiro Fujii, John Sawyer, Mike Osterman, Yuta Fujii, Marco Sassi, Takashi Suzuki, and Denham Hill, who are all like mentors to me.

I have a BSc in Biology, and recently completed a Diploma in Environmental Technology and work for the BC liquor board. I am a single parent and have two sons, Blaine-13 and Seth-22. My main hobby/interest is birding. I have conducted bird surveys and censuses, led field trips, and taught classes for beginning birders. I also enjoy hiking and camping.