Bob Kronbauer is a connoisseur of awesome.
As founder and editor-in-chief of the award-winning blog site Vancouver Is Awesome, Kronbauer has spent much of the last decade connecting Vancouverites with all that is awesomely awesome in our city: aiming to, according to the web site, “inspire you to enjoy your city as well as getting out and making it even more awesome than it already is.”
Vancouver Is Awesome’s patented heralding-of-awesome has extended beyond the blog to radio (a weekly slot on 102.7fm), social media sites, books (2013’s Vancouver WAS Awesome: A Curious Pictorial History, an alternative history tome that climbed to number two on the BC Bestseller list), and, most recently, to the world of screen-based entertainment via BC Was Awesome: Uncovering Our Curious History, a web series that follows Kronbauer as he pulls the thread on weird, wacky, and (you guessed it) awesome incidents from our province’s rich history.
Kronbauer is nominated for a 2017 Leo Award for Best Host in an Information, Lifestyle or Reality Program or Series for BC Was Awesome. The web series – which airs on TELUS Optik and YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuj3rWl-eKLFWRHop94ba4KLjjMNZMSgm) – grew out of an idea for a book that will be published by Arsenal Pulp Press later this year.
“We’re not making this show for nerds like me,” says Kronbauer, who crafted BC Was Awesome’s first season with directors Jem Garrard and Greg Crompton from Artaban Productions. “We’re making this for everybody, for people to go, ‘Oh, that’s a cool history story.’”
BC Was Awesome packs a ton of awesome history from the distant and recent past into its initial 10 episodes (an impressive feat considering each episode clocks in at five minutes or less). In one episode, Kronbauer shares the story of a group of daring female pilots in the 1930s, and in another, he interviews the great-granddaughter of a former slave who put down roots on Salt Spring Island in the 1860s. He introduces viewers to the Sasquatch hunters of Harrison Hot Springs, tells us about camels that were shipped over from Egypt during the Cariboo gold rush to work in the mines, and takes us to the grounds of an unfinished Okanagan amusement park that’s bizarrely connected to the armed occupation of an embassy in Lebanon.
And then there are episodes that must be streamed in order for their weirdness to be fully appreciated, like the one about Kronbauer’s quest to hug Expo Ernie, and another entitled “Fishing with John Candy,” about Kronbauer’s quest to find the lost pilot episode of a 1980s fishing series starring broadcaster Terry David Mulligan, former Vancouver Canuck Tiger Williams, and comedy icon John Candy.
When deciding what stories to tell, Kronbauer says he gravitated towards those that were “weird and quirky.” Those descriptors certainly apply to the episode for which Kronbauer is nominated for a Leo: “The Pirate Mayor,” about Frank Ney, the long-time mayor of Nanaimo who organized bathtub races across the Georgia Strait.
Kronbauer’s fellow Leo Award nominees in the Best Host category are all broadcast industry veterans: Sophie Lui, Fiona Forbes, Jillian Harris, and Todd Talbot. “I’m just kind of shocked,” marvels Kronbauer. “I feel like I’m stumbling into this going, ‘Hey, this is fun, let’s do this!’ It’s an honour just to be next to those professionals.”
Kronbauer and co. are hard at work on the second season of BC Was Awesome. The next block of episodes will zero in on weird and wonderful stories in Northern BC and the Kootenays. “Geographically, we hope to reach every corner of BC,” says Kronbauer. “There are weird stories everywhere. There’s no shortage.”
The Leo Awards take place June 3 and 4 at the Hyatt Regency Vancouver and recognize achievements in the BC film and television industry. The Leos aren’t broadcast, but Reel People will be live-tweeting the festivities (@sabrinarmf). Check Westender.com for recaps and red carpet exclusives.
Watch BC Was Awesome: Uncovering Our Curious History here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuj3rWl-eKLFWRHop94ba4KLjjMNZMSgm
