9 of the most interesting people we met in 2024 and 1 dog named Minnie

Every year, CBC Hamilton reporters meet some of the most interesting people in the Hamilton, Burlington and the Niagara regions and tell you their stories. 

It was another great year for finding stories about remarkable people doing remarkable things.

Here's a look back at just a few of Hamilton's most interesting people in 2024. 

Be nice to your mail carrier. He might be a judo master who competed for Canada at the 1976 Olympics. Mitchell Kawasaki began represented Canada in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. In November, the Japanese government awarded him for promoting Japanese culture in Canada, as well as friendship and goodwill between both countries. As a judo coach in Hamilton, he has trained more than 50 Canadian champions and over 150 black-belts at Kawasaki Rendokan Judo Academy.

Kawasaki's parents came to Ontario from British Columbia after being interned during the Second World War. They were forced to live in tents in a prison camp and eventually told they could choose to move east or "go back" to Japan, despite being born in Canada.

"Anyone who was of Japanese-Canadian descent couldn't get work" back then, even in Toronto, he said.

"They heard that in Hamilton some people were allowing Japanese Canadians to work, so my dad got a job here as an auto mechanic and car-body man. He started a judo club here in 1955 or 1956."

When Vicki Gruber was a kid growing up in Stoney Creek, she loved to watch the cargo ships pass from Lake Ontario to the Hamilton Harbour through the Burlington Canal. Now, as Hamilton's harbour master, she's in charge of making sure such vessels transit safely — and as one of only two women in Canada to hold that title, she's also paving the way for other women in the marine industry.

Gruber, who has worked at the Hamilton port for 18 years, started out as a port patrol officer. She was the first woman in that role at the port as well, and recalls that her presence came as a shock to a few people.

"A co-worker was talking to one of the ship captains and they asked if the new [person] had started.… They responded, 'She's right beside me,' and the captain was like, 'A she?'"

Hamilton's Kayla Vespa didn't waste any time making her name known in the new Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL). The PWHL New York forward scored in the league's first-ever game on Jan. 1, 2024, a win over Toronto. 

Before she was crashing the net in the PWHL, she was clearing the roads in Hamilton, where she worked as an overnight snowplow driver.

"The loudness in the rink was crazy," Vespa told CBC Hamilton, speaking on Zoom from her practice venue in January. "I was just looking around and I'm like, 'This is awesome.' And it was a great feeling and definitely a little emotional as well." 

Dr. Anas Al-Kassem, a Hamilton trauma surgeon says that for every child he saved in the hospital in southern Gaza, another would die of their injuries.