Phil Seo recently bought a McDonald’s dinner for a homeless man in Vancouver. He started asking the man about his life and learned that he used to be a construction worker but hurt his back, then lost his job, couldn’t keep up with his bills and ended up on the streets.
“He was just a regular person – it could happen to anybody,” Phil said.
Helping others, giving back and volunteering is the message Phil wants to send to the two million people expected to watch him and his sister, Martina, as the sixth season of Amazing Race Canada launches on Tuesday evening.
“If two million people did something good – could you imagine?” he said. “That’s what I hope to get out of it.”
This brother-sister pair, who grew up in North Vancouver, applied their very different skill sets on a race across Canada – this has all been documented and filmed and will air next week on CTV on the Amazing Race Canada: Heroes Edition. Martina and Phil are one of 10 pairs competing for a grand prize of a 2018 Chevrolet Traverse Redline, a trip for two around the world and $250,000 in cash.
The Heroes Edition of the popular reality TV show features everyday heroes, people who have given back to their communities, and between Martina and Phil, they’ve put in at least 10,000 hours of volunteering.
Phil’s volunteering started in elementary school when he was elected student council president. In high school, he was again student council president, but he also coached roller hockey with the North Shore Kinsmen Inline Hockey League.
“I was the youngest coach – everyone else was a dad with a kid, and I was 16,” he said.
For the past 15 years, he’s been volunteering at the University of British Columbia, mentoring students.
Martina’s volunteering goes back to her university days – she started Street Beat Sandwich Ministries, and she and a group of friends ended up making almost 40,000 sandwiches over two years for people on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Martina’s desire to help others took her abroad for three years, where she worked with homeless people in Australia, HIV patients and orphans in South Africa, seniors in Hawaii and with orphans and impoverished children in Fiji. She also counselled female prisoners in Fiji – which finally inspired her to go back to school to become a teacher.
“A lot of the women couldn’t read, write or do math and it broke my heart,” Martina said. “In 2007, I came back [to Canada] to be a teacher because the biggest thing I noticed in all these areas is if you can’t read, write or do math, you have no future.”
Volunteering has always been part of the Seo family, something they just did, the brother and sister explained. Her parents were among the first Korean immigrants arriving on the West Coast and the first ones in North Vancouver. They arrived in the 1970s with no jobs and no English and they struggled in their early years.
“I think we volunteered a lot because we saw it from our parents – our parents role-modelled it for us,” Martina said.
Throughout their childhood, their parents were constantly helping other new immigrants from Korea get oriented in their new homeland. Korean families would call them from the airport and ask to be picked up, they’d ask for help with filling out papers, dealing with schools – sometimes a Korean family would stay with them till they got their own home.
“We had random Korean families staying in our basement,” Martina said.
Their father, John Seo, was the president of many organizations from golfing, bowling, fishing and veterans groups. Their mother, Hannah Seo, who worked for ICBC in Lonsdale for 25 years, also helped people navigate through the Canadian system. Childhood memories include their parents preparing masses of food in their family kitchen for events they put on for the Korean community.
Martina, who is a home economics teacher at West Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»Secondary, and Phil, a manager at Vancity, grew up in North Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»and attended Plymouth Elementary and Carson Graham Secondary. Martina graduated in 1995 and Phil in 1998 from Carson Graham.
Phil was a huge fan of Amazing Race and when they were looking for people for their Heroes Edition, he asked his sister to try out with him.
The brother-sister pair had to make a three-minute audition tape, which they filmed in Phil’s home in Burnaby.
“She talks a lot so I had to edit it down,” Phil said about their 20 minutes of video. Friends and family also nominated the pair and eventually they were chosen for the sixth season of the Amazing Race Canada that started at Hatley Castle in Victoria, B.C.
Ten pairs will compete in the Amazing Race Canada: Heroes Edition. The competition was stiff on the race, Martina said, pointing out that she’s just a high school home economics teacher and her brother works in an office on a computer. Their competitors include an Afghan veteran, an Olympian and a CFL player.
Martina’s and Phil’s personalities are very different and they have different skills – Martina exudes a larger-than-life positivity and has good social skills while Phil has the analytical skills.Â
When Martina’s energy bubbles over and pushes her all over the place, her brother, Phil, brings her back to earth and focuses her energy on the task at hand.
“We have very complementary skills – I’m really outgoing and energetic and he’s really good at math and he’s very strategic,” Martina said. “He gets me to focus all of my energy.”
The journey Martina and Phil took, both physically and emotionally, brought them together.
“We only had each other during the race – we had no one else,” Martina said. “We had to work things out and we had to figure out where each other was coming from.”
Martina said they had a love/hate relationship before they started out but during the race, they spent a lot of time having deep conversations about growing up together and they feel they’ve reconciled as siblings.
“We talked it all out. Now we’re closer than ever – closer than ever,” Martina said. “I love him so much. I would not race with anyone other than my brother. He knows me better than I know myself.”
Martina hopes her participation in Amazing Race Canada will inspire her students at West Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»Secondary. She wants her students to say – “wow, I can do anything if my high school home ec teacher can go on this race.”
The Amazing Race Canada: Heroes Edition with Martina Seo and Phil Seo airs on Tuesday, July 3 at 8 p.m. on CTV.
