Jake Kuzyk is meticulous to a fault at times, but his near-compulsive precision generally serves him well. “I’m methodical,” he says. “Whatever I do has to have a reason, that’s just how I’ve always been.” 

His unwavering drive has made him one of the world’s smoothest street snowboarders. But Jake is beginning to purposely relax his exacting tendencies. “For me,” he says, “it’s a funny balance.”

Jake grew up just outside of Winnipeg, MB as the youngest of three boys, to parents with a strong work ethic. His mother, Sharon, is a successful saleswoman and his father, Mike, worked as a farmer for years—as did Mike’s father before him. The Kuzyks were part of a major migration of Eastern Europeans to Canada’s Prairie Provinces during the late 1800s, a time when the government was actively encouraging farmers to settle in the area. “Canada was giving away acres of land to people just to get the farming going there,” Jake says. “My dad was born in an all-Ukrainian neighborhood a couple of hours north of Winnipeg. He didn’t even speak English until he was 8 or 9. I went to a bilingual immersion school, so I technically have a grade 12 Ukrainian education. Except for some menu items, I don’t remember much of it now though—which sucks, because I like it.”…

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