Inadvertently, the Vancouver Canucks played a huge role in making The Perfect Stick happen.
Derek Jory was with the Canucks for 14 years, running Canucks.com and the team’s social media channels. In the infancy of Instagram, he noticed the Canucks tagged in a post by an illustrator named Derek Toye, aka Toyebot. Jory was immediately a fan of Toye’s artwork and he reached out to hire him to create illustrations for the Canucks.
Toye became the go-to creator for the Canucks, producing drawings for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, birthdays, big match-ups, retirements and everything else imaginable. Toye became such a big part of the Canucks that he was eventually asked to design a super hero Canucks logo, which the team wore on their jerseys during a special pre-game warm-up.
When Jory realized he wanted to make The Perfect Stick a reality, there was only one illustrator he approached – you guessed it, Toye.
Derek & Derek are now the new creative duo in children’s literature!
-DJ
The Perfect Stick 