Burnaby Joe, and the Ones Actually Born Here

Joe Sakic turns 57 on July 7, born in Burnaby to Croatian immigrants who spoke no English at home. He is the anchor of a small, verifiable list of people who actually started here — and a correction to two names the city keeps claiming by mistake.

Joe Sakic was born in Burnaby on 7 July 1969, to Marijan and Slavica Sakic, Croatian immigrants who spoke Croatian at home. He did not learn English until kindergarten. He picked up the game in Burnaby minor hockey, the same rinks and house-league schedules that thousands of local kids cycle through, and one detail from those years survives cleanly in the record: for the Burnaby BC Selects he scored 83 goals and 156 points in 80 games. He attended Burnaby North Secondary. The nickname that followed him through a Hall of Fame career, "Burnaby Joe," only ever recorded where he was from.

The colour in the early story is small and specific. As a boy, Sakic saw his first NHL game at the Pacific Coliseum, the Canucks against the Atlanta Flames, and he modelled his game on Wayne Gretzky. No verbatim account of what it felt like to grow up on those Burnaby rinks has surfaced in the public record, so there is no quote to offer here. What is documented is the arc: the kid from a Croatian-speaking household on the east side of the Lower Mainland went into the Hockey Hall of Fame on 12 November 2012.

The ones actually born here

Sakic is the July anchor because of the birthday, but he is not alone on the short list of people who genuinely began in Burnaby. Each of the following is confirmed against at least two sources.

Michael Buble was born in Burnaby on 9 September 1975 and attended Cariboo Hill Secondary. Christine Sinclair, the soccer captain whose international goal record stood at the top of the world game, was born here on 12 June 1983, to Bill and Sandra Sinclair. Christy Clark, who served as Premier of British Columbia, was born in Burnaby on 29 October 1965. And Cliff Ronning, the NHL forward, was born here on 1 October 1965; like Sakic, he came up through Burnaby minor hockey, and he led his midget team to gold at the 1982 Air Canada Cup.

That is a compact roll for a single suburb: a hockey Hall of Famer, a soccer captain, a chart-topping singer, a provincial premier, and a second NHL veteran, all with Burnaby on the birth certificate. The list is short precisely because the standard here is narrow. Born in Burnaby, verified twice, and nothing softer than that.

The two the city keeps claiming

The narrow standard matters because of what it excludes. Two names come up again and again in casual Burnaby-pride conversation, and both are wrong.

Harry Jerome, the sprinter, is the first. He is genuinely a British Columbia figure, and the province has honoured him with a statue and his name on athletic awards. He was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, and raised in North Vancouver. Not Burnaby.

Michael J. Fox is the second. The actor is a British Columbian too, closely associated with the Lower Mainland, and the mix-up is easy to see. He was born in Edmonton, Alberta. Not Burnaby.

Neither correction takes anything away from either man, and neither is offered as a gotcha. The point is only that a "born here" list is worth keeping honest, and the two names most often folded into Burnaby's are the two that do not belong.

Why the distinction is worth the trouble

Cities collect famous names the way they collect anything else, loosely, and by the time a claim has been repeated at enough dinner tables it stops being checked. Burnaby has a real list. It does not need the borrowed ones. Sakic, Buble, Sinclair, Clark, and Ronning are all documented starts, and the documentation is the whole appeal: every one of them was here first and became famous afterward, with the birth certificate to prove it.

Sakic's birthday on 7 July is the reason to run the list in July, and his is the cleanest case of the lot. Croatian-speaking household, Burnaby minor hockey, Burnaby North Secondary, 156 points in 80 games for the Selects, first NHL game at the Coliseum, Hall of Fame in 2012. Every line of it is on the record. That is the test the whole list is built to pass, and it is why "Burnaby Joe" was always the accurate name.