A singing chemistry teacher from Langley is vying to be Canada’s Smartest Person starting this weekend.
Jason Vander-Hoek will appear this Sunday as part of a group of four hopefuls on the CBC game show.
Vander-Hoek drove a cement mixer truck, then enrolled in TWU and SFU to study chemistry, music, and to get a teaching degree.
Since October he’s been working at Johnston Heights Secondary in Surrey, and some of his students have already noticed Vander-Hoek popping up in commercials for Canada’s Smartest Person.
“It’s been a pretty fun way to connect with them,” Vander-Hoek said.
Vander-Hoek stumbled on an ad for the Smartest Person auditions while he was working on an inner city theatre campus program last summer.
The ad asked “Are you Canada’s Smartest Person?”
“My immediate response was ‘Yeah, so?’” Vander-Hoek recalled.
He applied in May and heard back from the producers, who ran him through a number of tests via Skype.
They included mental math problems and spatial and word puzzles, all timed.
He filmed his episode in August, but can’t reveal the details about how he did until after it airs on Sunday.
“It was the most fun I’ve ever had, easily,” he said of filming the episode.
• Watch for an update next week on how Vander-Hoek did on Canada’s Smartest Person.