There are motivational speakers.
There are speakers with inspirational stories.
There are people who take the stage with a microphone, begin to speak and take the audience on an incredible journey.
And then there is Michael "Pinball" Clemons.
The performance he put on Wednesday morning for the audience at the UNBC Timberwolves Legacy Breakfast in Prince George was extraordinary.
At various moments, he had the audience cheering, clapping, and shouting slogans back to him. And then, he had community leaders, sports fans and young university athletes fighting back tears together.
Clemons is best remembered as the little sparkplug that led the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League to four Grey Cup championships - three of them as a player and one as a coach. He dominated the CFL during the 1990s - all five-foot-six of him - scampering through defensive lines and then bolting into the open field like a man possessed. He broke league records for season and career offensive output.
The man is a walking dynamo. If his energy and drive could be hooked to a generator, fossil fuels would be extinct overnight. Harnessed, his smile alone could light every home on the planet.
What separated Clemons from the many great speakers that have appeared before Prince George audiences over the years was the personal touch.
He explored the similarities between Prince George and his small hometown in south Florida, between UNBC and the College of William and Mary, the small university in Virginia he attended, which boasts Thomas Jefferson among its alumni.
William and Mary was the only school willing to offer a football scholarship to a small, driven young man playing the game of behemoths. When his young single mother brought eight-year-old Michael out to football, people asked where his older brother was and then demanded to see his birth certificate because this small fry couldn't possibly compete against bigger boys his age.
He never stopped hearing the size criticism, even as he went on to dominate junior, high school and college leagues with his speed, his toughness and his incredible ability to elude much larger men attempting to tackle him to the ground.
In Prince George and in UNBC, he made it clear to his spellbound audience that he sees himself - a city and a university that has been told for too long by too many that it is too small to be better than places like Vancouver and Calgary, better than UBC and the University of Calgary.
Clemons saved his most touching words for the family and friends of Matt Pearce at the event.
Pearce, 48, died of a heart-related issue in January.
After a university career that saw him win a Vanier Cup playing football for the UBC Thunderbirds and then a Grey Cup with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in 1990, the same year Clemons was named the CFL's most outstanding player, Pearce returned to Prince George to teach at Duchess Park and to become an active member of the Prince George District Teachers Association.
As part of Wednesday's fundraiser breakfast to support the UNBC athletics program, the Matt Pearce Athletic Scholarships were established, two annual $1,000 awards to deserving student athletes.
Clemons spoke about Pearce's legacy in Prince George - as an athlete, a teacher, a coach, a husband, a father and a friend - and how local residents should follow his example of dedication and excellence.
Better than anyone else in the room, Clemons knew what Pearce had accomplished to play successfully in the Canadian Football League and to win a Grey Cup.
Both men competed against each other at the height of their professional athletic careers so the sadness in the voice of Clemons was mixed with admiration and respect for a fallen fellow warrior.
It was a poignant reminder from one of the most popular athletes in Canadian history and a gifted orator of what Prince George lost with Pearce's untimely death but also how blessed this city and its residents were that he chose to live and teach among us.
