Graham Buksa transformed skateboarding with the longboards he builds in his Vancouver workshop. (Photo: Brent Beadle)
In his bio on the Rayne longboarding website, Graham Buksa, '04 BSc(Eng), lists the hardest trick for him to master on the longboard: fear.
Maybe that's because of the next fact on his bio, "Worst Crash: 110km/h, Teutonia, Brazil." Longboards are similar to skateboards but, as the name indicates, they are longer and are used mainly for cruising, downhill racing, slalom racing and sliding. Buksa built his first longboard as a student, and won the Small Business BC Business Plan Contest the same year he graduated from the U of A's Faculty of Engineering.
Now the North Vancouver-based business he founded is home to 30 employees, a racing team that includes former IGSA Downhill Skateboard World Champion Kevin Reimer, and has branched out into ancillary products. (See videos of Buksa and his team in action on the Rayne homepage.)
Buksa is one of 35 University of Alberta alumni to be honored at the 2012 Alumni Recognition Awards, including this year's three Distinguished Alumni Award winners Scott Gilmore, '95 BCom; Lubomyr T. Romankiw, '55 BSc(Eng); and Theodore (Teddy) Aaron, '39 BSc, '42 MD.
Alumni Recognition Awards winners will be honoured Sept. 20 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Winspear Centre. The ceremony is open to the public and tickets are complimentary for those who register.
That mastery over fear that Buksa shows in both longboarding and business, is a trait shared by all of this year's alumni award winners.
Andrew Dawrant, '93 BA, for example, admitted how anxiety-provoking his job can be during an interview with The Globe and Mail last August.
A key moment in his career as one of the premier Chinese-English language interpreters in the world came in 2002 when he provided simultaneous translation of a speech by then U.S. President George W. Bush that was being broadcast across China. If he had made a mistake during this assignment, his career would have basically have been over, he told the Globe.
"That was definitely the most nerve-wracking thing I have ever done," he said.
Dorothy Thunder, '02 BA(NativeStu), on the other hand, has the kind of career where she is able to view mistakes as part of the learning process.
Thunder is a Cree language teacher helping keep the language alive by connecting the community with academic study. She contributed to a translation of Father Emile Grouard's 1883 Cree prayer book and is currently creating an online version of her textbooks for Cree-language classrooms. But in passing along the language, she encourages students to set aside their fears of failure and engage in the classroom discussion, she told the Centre for Teaching and Learning.
"I strongly believe in building a comfortable environment ... where the students can interact and engage in classroom activities," she said in a profile for the Centre. "The most rewarding part of teaching is building a sense of community."
Meet the rest of the 2012 Alumni Recognition Award winners.
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