Tourism Winnipeg routinely touts the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, The Forks and Assiniboine Park as must-sees for anybody visiting the city.

The way things have been going lately, the marketing board may want to add an Exchange District shop specializing in UFOs — that’s über-popular, flying objects — to its list of can’t-miss tourist attractions.

Jason The (pronounced Tay) is the founder of Disc Republic, 50 Princess St. The 18-month-old enterprise is devoted almost entirely to disc golf, a fast-growing activity that calls on participants to aim Frisbee-type projectiles at faraway targets, using rules similar to conventional golf. As one of the largest stores of its kind in Canada, Disc Republic, which also carries a small selection of items associated with the disc team sport Ultimate, routinely draws parties from across the country and beyond who inform The that his operation is the reason they’re visiting Winnipeg in the first place.

“Online sales are a huge part of what we do, and to date, we’ve shipped items as far as Australia, New Zealand and Estonia,” The says, touring a visitor past a rainbow-coloured menagerie of plastic saucers sorted onto multiple display racks by size, weight and shade. “Still, lots of people prefer to hold a disc in their hands before buying it, and make a special trip to the city to check us out for themselves.”

The, 40, studied computer science at the University of Manitoba from 2000 to 2005. While there, he and a few pals habitually headed to the “quad” — a green space near the campus’s Duckworth Centre – during their spares, to get some exercise by tossing a Frisbee back and forth.

One day a friend of theirs who played in an organized Ultimate league joined in. On their way back to class, he told The his team was always looking for new players; perhaps he’d be interested? He was, and fell in love with the sport immediately. Before long, he was playing as many as five nights a week on four different teams.

That pattern continued for the next 15 years; at least, whenever The, who also runs his own IT firm, wasn’t criss-crossing the globe as a…