Dazzling light displays, local singers hitting the big time, a shocking discovery about Nanaimo's history, and remembering a Parksville icon were all part of our top viral stories for 2023. (File photos/NanaimoNewsNOW)

By NanaimoNewsNOW Staff

going viral

Top stories of 2023: Viral stories highlight Island’s popular people and events

Dec 27, 2023 | 2:26 PM

NANAIMO — A number of local stories touched our readers in a variety of ways, whether it be through humour, heartache, or overcoming amazing obstacles.

Despite challenges for Canadian news media and social media companies this year, several of our stories still made the rounds online and resonating strongly with readers and listeners alike. Here’s a look at our most viral stories of 2023:

Impressive people
A 19-year-old Nanaimo woman made international headlines in May, when she entered, and won, an annual Cheese Rolling event in Gloucester, England.

Contestants run down the steep Coopers Hill chasing a rolling seven-pound wheel of cheese, with Delaney Irving getting there first in the women’s race.

Irving might have won the race, but certainly paid a price with a heavy fall at the finish line resulting in a concussion plus some scrapes and bruises.

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“The very end is where I fell and right when I hit my head I believe that’s when I was knocked unconscious. You see me losing speed at the end and that’s because I just wasn’t really there anymore. I was just going with whatever was pushing me and I woke up a few minutes later.”

Both Irving’s friend and her friend’s dad also ran in the races and made it through with only sore ankles.

Nanaimo’s own Delaney Irving won the 2023 Cooper’s Hill cheese rolling event women’s race on May 29, after a spur-of-the-moment decision to take part. Here she is pictured with her cheese prize. (submitted photo)

A local bodybuilder proved in 2023 that age was just a number when it comes to keeping fit.

63-year-old Patricia Light decided to focus on her health and fitness in 2020 when the pandemic kept people indoors.

Three years later, Light was winning bodybuilding competitions in her category, including the Canadian Physique Alliance body-building competition in Calgary in May.

Light has since shifted her focus from bodybuilding to powerlifting, and is already looking ahead at competitions in 2024.

Raymond Salgado, from Lantzville, represented the region on Canada’s Got Talent in the spring of 2023. (submitted photo)

The mid-Island was front and centre on Canada’s Got Talent this spring, as 24-year-old Lantzville resident Raymond Salgado received a standing ovation and praise from the judges during his first performance.

Signing a cover of Bryan Adams’ song “Heaven”, all four judges voted to progress Salgado through to the next phase of the competition, with judge Howie Mandel suggesting he was “the best we’ve heard”.

Salgado had another chance to sing about a month later on May 10, where his cover of “Feeling Good” by Michael Bublé.

While he was unsuccessful in earning a fast track to the final, his strong performance and votes from the audience were enough to land him a spot in the finale.

“It was so validating because I think I was really yearning for those four ‘yes’s’, and just being able to share my story of not giving up and just taking a risk and not living a life with regret.”

When it comes to familiar faces in the Parksville area, no one was more recognizable than “Flying” Phil St. Luke.

The long-time Parksville resident and unofficial community ambassador passed away in the early morning hours of Friday, Jan. 13 after a battle with illness.

“He had a large stature, he was as large as life, he had a big wave and a booming voice,” Parksville Mayor Doug O’Brien said. “He represented the City of Parksville at every opportunity because Phil was a great walker, he never had a driver’s license but he had more miles on his boots than anyone else I know.”

By March, plans were in the works to immortalize St. Luke in Parksville through a community-driven fundraiser to collect at least $80,000 to create a statue in his honour.

“Flying” Phil St. Luke (centre) was a constant presence in the Parksville community, like this parade in 2012. (submitted photo)

In July, a 39-year-old man swam 30 kilometres between Davis Bay in Sechelt and Piper’s Beach in Nanaimo without the use of his eyes.

Scott Rees slowly lost his sight due to a genetic condition, with swimming being one of the few physically intense activities he was able to hold on to.

Wearing a headset to communicate with his support crew, Rees got into the water in Davis Bay at 6 a.m. on Sunday, July 23 and began to swim.

After about 11 hours of swimming, including avoiding the annual World Championship Bathtub race in the Nanaimo Harbour, Rees made landfall at Piper’s Beach. Rees managed to raise over $130,000 for Canadian Guide Dogs for the Blind.

Rees said his legs felt good but his shoulders were “cooked” after swimming 11 kilmetres from Davis Bay in Sechelt and Nanaimo’s Piper’s Beach. (submitted photo)

Major Events and a Bit of Fun
2023 also included the return of a notable retail store, as the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) announced plans in January to bring its first 25 Zellers store experience locations within Hudson’s Bay.

By July, the announcement was made official: Zellers was coming to Nanaimo’s Woodgrove Centre in the summer, part of 21 new pop-up stores across Canada.

HBC said the Zellers component within Hudson’s Bay will be between 8,000 – 10,000 square feet depending on location.

A popup Zellers store opened inside the Woodgrove Centre Hudson’s Bay location in August. (Ian Holmes/NanaimoNewsNOW)

In January, a downtown Nanaimo retail business, tired of dealing with overnight social disorder and garbage and debris left in front of their store, the owners of NYLA Fresh Thread had a unique idea to deter overnight loiterers.

Before leaving for the day, owner Leon Drzewiecki began playing the viral children’s song “Baby Shark” by Pinkfong on the speaker outside his Commercial St. storefront.

The one-minute and 20-second song then plays over and over and over for hours between the store closing and re-opening the next morning

“I thought I’d get…something that was definitely annoying but wouldn’t really be intrusive to anybody who’s going to be walking by,” Drzewiecki told NanaimoNewsNOW. “But if you’re going to be spending any time there, it’s not something you want to be listening to all night long.”

While an effective method to deter loitering, the speakers were vandalized a few months later, which made the song sound even worse and made it almost more effective.

Unfortunately, the speakers were eventually damaged into silence, but NYLA Fresh Thread said in December their issues with social disorder have since cleared up, without the use of Baby Shark.

The owner of NYLA Fresh Thread in downtown Nanaimo has resorted to a popular, albeit annoying, children’s song in a bid to deter overnight stays in front of his store. (Alex Rawnsley/NanaimoNewsNOW)

An Aurora Borealis took nighttime star gazers by surprise this year, as it lit up the sky multiple times.

The first show was at the end of February, when a Parksville resident was able to capture the images of the space show, describing it as a night “in the epic category.”

Fans of the space display had another chance to view the Northern Lights in July when they made back-to-back nightly appearances.

A rare occurrence for Vancouver Island, the Northern Lights were spotted through Nanaimo a few times in 2023. (submitted photo/Dr. Gregory Arkos)

Finally, in a ground-breaking, controversial, and completely fabricated NanaimoNewsNOW report released on April 1, a discovery was made indicating the world-famous Nanaimo bar was actually invented in Port Alberni, but was stolen and rebranded to promote trade to the Harbour City.

A group of hikers discovered a message in a bottle while walking around Nanaimo’s Westwood Lake, found lodged in a submerged tree.

Inside the bottle, the note contained a recipe for the ‘Port Alberni Bar’, which started the journey of discovering what turned out to be Nanaimo’s dirty little dessert secret.

Historians, professors, and locals who remember the tale of the stolen snack told their story, in hopes to finally right a historic wrong and restore the Port Alberni Bar to its proper glory.

Same ingredients, same method, but a different origin. A discovery at Westwood Lake in February upended Nanaimo’s international culinary claim to fame. (submitted photo)

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