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

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 661 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