Ski Canada December/January 2021

“And then his hand started reaching for his gun,” Phil told me on an entertaining phone call from Boston last month. “I had no idea how things were going to play out next.” He continued, “My brother Ted was standing by his car, 10 feet away from me, while my 12-year-old daughter sat in ours watching the whole thing go down.” Having lived in the U.S. for 13 years, Phil was “ordered off the premises” within 30 seconds of stopping, while “Ted was hauled inside and berated for half an hour.” Phil had driven four hours to the border from Boston, Ted about the same from Ottawa; the brothers hadn’t seen each other in almost a year. I know what you’re thinking: “Phil and Ted’s Not So Excellent Adventure.” The…

BANFF’S MAIN DRAG Alberta, we thought we knew you! How wrong can Canadians be about that oftrumoured red-necked, truck-driving, oily slice of the West? Sure, the “Corner Gas” vibe rocks on from the Badlands to the Oil Sands, but there’s a new cultural bright light in Banff. Winter nights out in the jewel of the Rockies are hottin’ up. Queue the divas. First in a furling floor-length, candy-floss-pink gown, then a totally Moldavan tracksuit straight from après beer showers at the Mooserwirt in St. Anton, Karla Marx takes no prisoners. The Edmonton-born Victoria Bucholtz is compere and lead singer in the weekly Brilliance Drag evenings at Banff’s newest live music and dinner theatre The Radiant. Karla’s troupe plays to sold-out audiences who dress up, stand up, drink up and generally…

The first time I ordered up a Kokanee lager (with the tagline “It’s the beer ’round here”) was at après ski on a Kootenay road trip on what was much later coined by marketing types “the Powder Highway.” I loved the label art—a rugged, glacier-clad mountain against a blue-metal sheen. It was so much cooler than the Blue or Ex or Canadian of my younger days. The product itself was pretty good, and its popularity skyrocketed with the launch of an imaginative advertising campaign featuring a mischievous Sasquatch and an earnest, befuddled park ranger. Around the winter world, the association between beer and skiers is long and strong. And until a few decades ago, beer sales in B.C., as in most Canadian provinces, were dominated by Molson-Coors and InBev’s Labatt…

1 You’ve reached the summit, the sun’s gone, the wind’s picked up… You know that cold, clammy feeling, especially on your lower back, whether it’s after a huffy-puffy skin uphill or you’ve just hoofed it up from the lower parking lot with all your gear. So do designers at Elemental Layer, and with fast-wicking, water-repellent fabric, made in Japan, they also know how to keep your skin dry and protect it from touching your now sweaty baselayer. Worn snugly as an ultra-thin first layer under your sweat-absorbing baselayer, it’s available in men’s and women’s short- and long-sleeve as well as leggings (from US$48). finetracknorthamerica.com 2 To some, it’s more iCamera than iPhone; to others it’s a 512GB office that enables one to work remotely from the chairlift, lodge or chalet.…

You came to Sunshine Village to ski. You assumed the “Village” moniker was a metaphor. But as you wait for the first gondola, the entire Utilities Department roars up in the dark on a snowmobile. Stopping at various buildings along the way they check the systems crucial to the 280 residents and more than half a million annual visitors. Sunshine’s Utilities Department is a team of two, and for the last 23 years it’s been run by Dave Armstrong. Starting your day on the Standish chairlift, you’ll ski by a series of tiny lakes. You may see Armstrong there dunking a dipstick to check the reservoir levels. The depth is controlled and adjusted to maintain water pressure and make sure that hotel guests can have a shower on the fourth…

There may not be caravans of easterners revving their engines quite yet, but the idea of remote working from a ski area might just get you packing. There’s jolly good news brewing for those who are still flush, newly mobile and want to work a few hours a day from the computer and ski for the rest. They’re the new C-19 ski bums, and the mountains of B.C. and Alberta are beckoning. “Online classes for our teens mean we’re not as tied to home this winter,” explained Lori Knowles, long-time ski writer from Bracebridge, Ontario, who together with her husband, Peter, a retired teacher, have big plans for the winter. “If we have to hunker down somewhere to wait out the pandemic, it may as well be in a ski…