The Making of a Minute: Norman Kwong’s Field of Dreams

Even with an early-morning mist dulling the glow from the overhead lights, Greg Kwong figured he knew what to expect when he and his son, Brendan, strode onto a football field of dreams at Calgary’s Macron Centre one morning last November. But as he later confessed, nothing could have prepared him for the sight of the figure approaching him – a player suited-up in a 1950s uniform, grinning in anticipation, with the number 95 imprinted in gold on his dark green sweater — the number Greg’s father, Norman Kwong, had worn as an all-star Canadian Football League running back.

“Hey, Dad,” Greg said to actor Patrick Kwok-Choon, who was playing Norman Kwong in the Heritage Minute devoted to Kwong’s role as an athletic diversity pioneer. Then, the two hugged. “It was,” an emotional Greg Kwong later recalled, “surreal.” [MORE]