No, he’s not going to punch the iguana. Ryan is merely flexing his ample muscles to reflect how holding a probably poisonous relative of a dinosaur makes him incredibly “hardcore” and a man of the animals, too.
By the end of today, one of Vancouver’s coolest community builders will be on a brain-drain-plane headed for Melbourne, Australia. [Editor’s note: it is his being on a plane that cause our typical GTKYC interview to be replaced by a more over-arching narrative]. Ryan McKee was one of the architects of the community built by the Vancouver Whitecaps Football (Soccer) Club. And – as happens with much of our homegrown talent here in Vancity – Mr. McKee hit his professional ceiling in our beautiful city and will now be taking his fan/consumer-engagement talents to Melbourne, home of Melbourne Victory Football (not Aussie Rules) Club.
Ryan’s wife, Elyssa, and my wife, Michelle, went to university together. This meant that, whether we liked it (or each other) or not, Ryan and I would be spending quality time together for years to come. Luckily, ours was/is a relationship rife for/with a bromance typically reserved for films like I Love You, Man and epic stories like Of Mice and Men or Batman and Robin or Paradise Lost.
Along with his unchartable charisma and rugged good looks, Ryan is taking with him to Australia a ton of professional talents that combines sport, media, people, and the transcendance of in-person and online communities. Whether it was his pedal etiquette experiment or his work on the “we’re all in” campaign for the Whitecaps, this man knows what it takes to build meaningful, cordial, family-friendly-with-an-edge community in the twenty-first century.
We’ll miss you, Ryan. May your intelligence, wickedawesome sense of humour, and your passion for the community-driven nature of sport serve the people of Melbourne as well as they’ve served we folk in Vancouver.
Thanks for the memories. Stay classy. Best of luck!