Nanaimo man known for flying down hills on a shopping cart remembered at memorial

CHEK

A well-known and well-liked man within the Nanaimo street community who got his “15 minutes of fame” riding a shopping cart was remembered at his funeral Friday.

You may remember Terry George, who was known to many as simply “Bubba,” from a viral video where he rode a shopping cart down a Campbell River hill a few years ago.

Things were looking up for George, who had finally secured housing, but now those who loved him are grieving his loss.

At a downtown Nanaimo church, Friday family and friends gathered to remember the unique character.

Four years ago, a driver captured a video of Bubba going down the Dogwood Street hill in Campbell River at 40 kilometres an hour.

The video quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of views.

“Oh, I like it. I’m famous. My 15 minutes of fame. Everybody has seen me. Even my worker at John Howard. They’ve seen me. They call me Bubba Andretti now,” said Bubba in an interview shortly after the video went viral in June of 2018.

Bubba told us he often went down steep hills as he collected and returned bottles.

Bubba grew up in Tahsis and was a survivor of the Christie residential school survivor near Tofino. He could have received a $10,000 compensation payment from the federal government but he wasn’t comfortable with it.

“He felt the government did a lot of wrongdoings to the people, our people, and felt it would kill him,” said Rita George, his sister. “He said it would kill me to have all that money in my pocket.”

Bubba lived on the streets for a lot of the past 20 years. He left an impression on those he met.

“It was his strength of character. His humour. His heart always shone through with Bubba. Once you met him you remembered him. He was impossible to forget,” said Kiersten Stewart, who interacted with Bubba through her employment with the Canadian Mental Health Association.

“Bubba was an icon in the city like many people. You see them walking the streets, you see him with his shopping cart for years and now he will be gone and people will miss him,” said Gord Fuller, with the Nanaimo 7-10 Club.

Bubba broke his hip not long before May 25th when died from a drug overdose. His family suspects he took fentanyl to relieve the pain.

“I used to say to him. Who loves you bubba? You do. I loved him so much I’m going to miss him,” said Rita, his sister.

Bubba leaves behind six siblings among other loved ones.

He was 53 years old.

Kendall HansonKendall Hanson

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