Got Blundstones? Then you’ll likely need this award-winning, 4th generation Vancouver cobbler

He’s a sole man.

Patrick Nijdam, a fourth-generation cobbler, won the 2023 Grand Silver Cup of shoe repair on July 22, the highest honour awarded by the Shoe Service Institute of America, in a competition known as the Shoe-lympics.

This follows his dad Ronald becoming the first Canadian to win the Silver Cup in 2019, making the Quick Cobbler at 430 West 2nd Ave. the first shoe repair shop in North America to win the coveted Cup twice.

Their wins bookended the 2021 Cup, awarded to a cobbler in Thunder Bay, making it three in a row for Canada.

“There were audible groans in the crowd, all the Americans were like ‘what the heck?’” Patrick said. The event, held every two years, was in Chicago this year.