“I’d like your help,” said Jon Montgomery. I shook my head. “Much too busy. Swamped. Have to wash my hair. Both of them.”
“I’d like you to take part in a pizza-eating event,” he continued.
“Miraculously, a window has opened in my schedule,” I replied. “Always happy to serve the community. Jack Knox is all about giving. That, and speaking of himself in the third person.”
The Jon Montgomery Pizza Pigout goes Oct. 19. It’s a fundraiser for KidSport Victoria, a charity that ensures money isn’t a barrier to children who want to get into sports.
That’s one part of the story. The other is the guy with his name on the event.
Montgomery first gained fame by guzzling beer in the heart of Whistler moments after winning Olympic gold in 2010. He went on to become host of CTV’s The Amazing Race Canada.
Jon and Darla Montgomery moved to Victoria from Calgary in 2014, the day after wrapping up that year’s version of the reality show. Now, three years later, they figure it’s time to become a little more deeply rooted here. Hence the Pizza Pigout.
What they should know is that this sort of action is a little sudden for Victoria. Sure, as competitive skeleton racers from get-’er-done Alberta the Montgomerys were used to going fast, but here in City of Gardens (civic motto: “We liked the old one better”), we cultivate a more cautious approach to new ideas: Our still-being-built sewage system was promised in 2006, our still-being-built McKenzie interchange was supposed to go up in the 1990s and our still-being-built Johnson Street Bridge project has dragged out longer than the Second World War.
But that’s not Jon’s style. He is a live wire, always appears on the verge of jumping up to run a couple of laps around the block just to burn off excess energy.
That exuberant persona came through in 2010 when, fresh from Olympic victory, Montgomery wound his way through an O Canada-singing crush of fans in Whistler. Someone offered him a jug of beer. He accepted, and knocked it back in an on-camera moment that encapsulated the cheerfully cocky, upbeat, celebratory spirit of the Winter Games.
The 39-year-old readily admits that moment was a springboard to everything that came after: the appearance on Oprah, auctioning off Justin Bieber’s cell number on the Juno Awards, spoofing himself on George Stroumboulopoulos with a re-enactment that included not just a pitcher of beer, but a tequila shot, a piña colada and a dry martini.
Having learned the identity of the Beer Angel who handed him the jug — a New Zealand dairy cow veterinarian named Keara Brennan — Montgomery is keen to finally meet her when she travels to the Lower Mainland next month. “We can meet each other’s newborns,” he says.
Right, Jon and Darla are parents now. Jaxon was born just over a year ago. Maybe that has something to do with their desire to weave themselves more tightly into the fabric of Victoria. Jon’s Amazing Race work takes him away for the month of May each year, and his public speaking business is mostly out of town, so they want to tighten their bonds to their new city by borrowing an idea from their old one.
The Oct. 19 event at Distrikt nightclub in the Strathcona Hotel was inspired by the Eric Francis Pizza Pigout, a long-running fundraiser in Calgary. “We hijacked this event knowing it was successful in Alberta,” Montgomery says.
The idea is people buy tickets to wolf down pizza, then vote on their favourites in a variety of categories. “It’s a loosely judged competition,” he says. It’s not terribly serious, not like there’s one big winner. “All the pizza participants will get our love and attention.”
The proceeds go to KidSport Victoria. “Nobody’s making money on this. Nobody’s getting paid.” The details are at jonmontgomerypizzapigout.com. It seems like a good fit, pizza going with that famous Olympic beer.
But here’s the thing: It wasn’t really the Whistler beer that made Montgomery famous. It was the eight years of training and racing that earned him the gold medal that put him in a position to drink from the jug. It was the decision to act, not just dream.
