Ian Tomm is a CAA Avalanche Professional who was the Executive Director of the Canadian Avalanche Association and Canadian Avalanche Centre from 2008 to 2012. He began his career in the avalanche industry teaching courses shortly after university while he worked his way up to becoming an ACMG Ski Guide. He joined the CAA as the ITP Manager in 2001 and became the Operations Manager in 2005, the Executive Director in 2008. He continued guiding after leaving the CAA in 2012 and soon became the Executive Director of Heli-Cat Canada. He is now the President of Eagle Pass Heliski.
Here is the transcript of our interview with Ian Tomm:
John Woods: Hello. This is John Woods on behalf of the Canadian Avalanche Association oral history project. As the CAA approaches its fortieth birthday in 2021, we are speaking with former association board members and staff to help preserve the CAA’s rich history through the eyes of those who worked to make the association a world leader in avalanche safety professionalism. Today, Friday, December 19, 2019, I’m joined by Ian Tomm in the Eagle Pass Heli-skiing lodge, just outside Revelstoke, British Columbia.
Thank you for joining me today.
Ian Tomm: Yes, thank you, John. It’s quite exciting.
And I’d like to start by backing up a bit from the CAA history to a little bit of your history if we could, particularly how you became interested in avalanches: snow avalanches and avalanche safety.
Yes, I think that’s a question I’ve often asked myself, you know, how did it all start?
I think it was [in] high school. I learned how to ski, learned how to ski tour, started to get outside. I knew that it was a big, scary place. But didn’t quite know enough to know where to go for a [avalanche safety] course or anything like that. So, you know, a few experiences, never with an avalanche, but a few exciting experiences in the back country. But by the time I hit university… I was exposed to the outdoors through the Outdoor Program Centre at the University of Calgary: they rented stuff, there [was] a climbing wall there [and I] took a course in avalanche safety. And so, very early on, I was just drawn to the backcountry in the winter and at a young age, had an avalanche course. And that was a very subtle, but I think now quite profound, experience, you know, right out of high school, to get that first course… it was [with] Steve Chambers[1]
So, Calgary was where you were learning to ski…?
I lived in Australia for a number of years and moved back in ’88 [1988], and it took me a couple of years, but learned how to ski. And yeah, the rest is history.
So, what ski areas would you be visiting?
Fortress Mountain. …[When] you look at some of the ski hills, all over, these community hills, now I think we would call them, it’s the one lift hills: Paskapoo, Canada Olympic Park or now I think it is Win Sport in Calgary, I definitely spent a little bit of time there, but it was all Fortress. These small hills produced so many skiers in those years.
And there’s a funny story here which is: I bought a season’s pass at Fortress Mountain before I learned how to ski or had any ski equipment. In high school [with a] good buddy [I] learned how to climb. He was the guy I went ski touring with in high school. And his dad approached me and he said, “hey, so we bought a season’s family pass to Fortress Mountain, and well we said we have three kids, but we only have two. And so, we’re just wondering if you would like to be the third kid.” And I was like, sure… it was so dirt cheap. I can’t even remember how much money it was, but I had a paper route and I had enough money to pay for it, you know, because of my paper route in high school. But that’s where I learned to ski [at] Fortress Mountain. And I learned that winter. The next winter, I took my ski instructor certification and then [I] was in the back country.
Fortress Mountain, this is the now defunct ski area just east of Canmore?
Yes. It’s in the Kananaskis Country, you know, about an hour and a half from Calgary. Small little hill. It’s had a very storied history. They’ve been cat-skiing there in recent years and it sounds like they’re going to get up and going again. But yeah, that small little hill, like lots of other ski hills across B.C. [and Alberta], introduced so many people to skiing. You know, it was cost effective, family-oriented. These small little hills. They are such a gem.
Did that hill have had any kind of avalanche safety set up?
Definitely pretty serious avalanche concerns actually in Fortress and in, a couple of years later, I think it was ‘98-99, the winter in ‘98–99 or ‘99–2000, I actually became avalanche forecaster at Fortress. So, I learned how to ski there. I became a ski instructor there. I learned how to backcountry ski at Fortress Mountain and then I went away to become a guide and get senior avalanche forecasting training and then I came back and did a year forecasting Fortress before I started heli-skiing basically.
Were you exposed to the issue of avalanches from another time?
Oh, yeah, I can’t remember how old I was…I’m pretty sure I was in university. There were four high school kids from Western Canada High School, I think Western Canada is downtown Calgary, who before Fortress opened up, went back in to ski. And they’re going bootpacking and they trigger a slab and all four were killed. It was actually quite dramatic at the time. Major headline news. It was a multi-day search. And so, you know… I was quite a young adult when that all happened…if my memory is correct…and so that’s where I cut my teeth was at Fortress and now there was four kids who were killed in an avalanche[2].
Now, I ask everyone this question: can you remember when you first saw an avalanche?
Oh, at Fortress Mountain in the spring. I was still in high school. I think my dad was at a conference at Nakiska, I skipped school and then hitchhiked to Fortress from Nakiska and spent the day. But it was a big spring cycle in April. Like a big, big warm up, and all the bowls were rocketing. And that was the first time that I can remember that it really stuck in my head about avalanches. But if…I think a little bit harder, I also remember the Bay Street, the Bay Street Incident[3] on TV, as well. That was ’91, I think. So, it’s all around the same time…because I was still in high school in 91′.
Have you ever had a close call with an avalanche?
Yeah. Three, two of which have been turned into case studies for avalanche education in the guiding industry for the last 15 plus years. So, it’s been an interesting process to go through. [I had] a couple of close calls…No injuries…[but] very, very close [calls].
But then [to] have those turned in to educational curriculum that a whole generation has been trained on now, it’s humbling, if not in the early years, maybe a little humiliating experience, too. But I think [from] where I look at it now, really important.
I was just this super open guy, right. So, I had this big wreck first year at CMH, nine guests involved. Oh, yeah, it was bad. But no one got hurt and we learned a lot from it and all that sort of stuff. But the very next year, at guide’s training, I stood up and did my thing, explained the details of the CMH incident, and in many ways that presentation was really the first one, one of the first times I really stood up in front of a peer group to sort of debrief an incident, …and I was still in diapers [laughs].
So, that one at CMH was a guiding action, but I also went for a ride [caught in an avalanche] that year that I was the avalanche forecaster at Fortress—with a pack full of explosives, [caught] in a size three.
So, we have you then as a teenager in Calgary, skiing in Fortress and then starting to make your way into the backcountry. Can you take us through the years coming up to your association with the Canadian Avalanche Association? Either as a [board] member or as staff.
Yeah. Well, you touch on the membership and that’s how it started. I was in Calgary, a Calgary kid, ended up graduating from U of C[4] with an outdoor-pursuits degree—that was a phys-ed discipline under Murray Toft. He’s quite a well-known mountain guide now and in retirement, but still guiding…
How [did] you make that transition from the Calgary teenager to then becoming a member of the CAA?
So, I graduated from university. Good exposure, you know. It was clear I was going into outdoor recreation; I think is what we called it then. No, there wasn’t really a good name for the industry. It’s tourism. It’s adventure tourism really at the end of the day. And I really liked avalanches and I really liked teaching, and so I went through my Level 1 ops, CAA ops, to become a tail-guide at a cat-skiing operation—that’s right after university—but also to start teaching, because I had been exposed to teaching assistant sort of roles in university with Murray and with Bruce Hendricks and a few others.
You know, I was sort of ‘one of those guys’ in university that was helping in my senior years (third and fourth year), helping in first year courses and whatnot. I liked education. I was on a good track—good mentors, in a good educational program. And, so I got my training, I got my certification, and then I got my membership [in the CAA] right away so I could start teaching avalanche courses.
This is winter guide certification?
No, this is CAA Avalanche Operations Level 1. That’s the first stage of professional training. Prior to this stage, it would be just sort of one-and-two-day recreational courses, which I had had exposure with. But yeah, it’s the seven-day certification. There’s tests, it’s really around digging snow-pits, it’s run by the CAA.
So, I took that course then I was eligible for membership [in the CAA because I had my first level certification. Then I became an avalanche instructor in and around the Calgary area, and there was a huge demand and there was no-one running them. It was a really, really interesting time.
So, this was on behalf of the CAA course?
You got the training and the certification and then you got the membership and then you got access to the curriculum. So, then you could go hang your shingle as just an independent to offer one- and two-day recreational courses to the general public. This is right out of university. This is ’96.
That certification allowed you to then teach the public?
Yep… Sign their certificates and all that sort of stuff. And it’s sort of a terrifying thought when you really think about it. You know, this super young, you know, quite keen, quite engaged, guy, right out of university, has got his first aid-training basically, and then takes a seven-day avalanche course and is now teaching people about avalanche safety. OK, it’s fundamentals, but those pressures are still here today, right? Because you know, they’re young instructors who want to teach students, and they’re available, you know, to teach. And there’s a lot of energy there. But now, where I’m in my history, I look back at how good of an instructor was I, you know, in 1996? I’m definitely better now. But that’s a pressure now, I know that the avalanche centre and all those folks, they still deal with the same pressures, you know, of the minimum qualifications required to teach the public an avalanche course.
But it worked out. It was good for me. I think it was good for the public that I know that I was exposed. It made me money so I could go start to pay to go through guides courses. And, it was a generator—I learned how to be a businessman and away we go!
At this point, you are a Professional Member of the CAA?
No, I wasn’t. It wasn’t a Professional because I was only Level 1. You need to be a Level 2 to be a Professional Member. I can’t remember what they used to be called because the membership categories have changed over the years. I think it was Affiliate, and it’s different now. The meaning is different now. But I think it was Affiliate, which is, you know, you’re just at the start of your career, but you can start teaching. And then a year later, I took my Level 2 and was a Professional member right after that,
I was aggressive. That was December ’96, my Level 1, and February or January, or maybe February of ’98 was my Level 2.
And your winter guide training and qualifications, [when] were they?
A little bit later, 2001. I was an entrepreneur. I actually started a company in the summer as well. So, I had this company in the summer, company in the winter teaching of avalanche courses, ski-touring as much as I could because I was resumé building, tail-guiding at Powder Cowboy and Island Lake Lodge.
A quick pause–tail-guiding. Could just explain what that is?
Yeah, taking people up in a snowcat, typically in groups of 10–12, you know, and going skiing. There’s a certified guide out front, responsible for route selection and avalanche safety. And then there’s the guy who cleans up at the back, the tail guide… It’s client care. It’s first aid. And it’s teaching people how to ski [powder].
And the qualifications to be at the front of the line and the back of the line are different?
[They] are different. Absolutely. Well, that’s the entry level position, tail-guide. Even today.
And is tail guiding usually spelled as two words? Is that enough of a term that people just call it tail guiding?
Well, there’s a lot of slang around ‘tail guides,’ too. It’s ‘powder-ponies’ or ‘powder-slaves.’ But job-description-wise, and employment-wise, you’re a tail guide, two words. And when I started, maybe not a lot known around a lot of specifics around the expectations and training of a tail guide. But, you know, today it’s very clear.
So again, to recap to make sure I’ve got it straight: you start with skiing. You’ve got involved in the Fortress operation, also backcountry. You then get involved in the formal training offered by the Canadian Avalanche Association. And then you get your Level 1 and your Level 2, and then, parallel to that, your winter guide certification?
I was aggressive through the whole thing. It was year-after-year. I graduated high school in ’92, graduated university in ’96. My Canadian Avalanche Association Operation Level 1 was ’96. I was tail guiding that winter. Tail guiding the next winter, took my Level 2 in ’98. So the winter of ’98-’99 must have been when I took my Level 2. And then the next winter, I worked at Fortress and then I became a certified guide in 2001, the spring of 2001, which was also when I was hired by CMH to work the next winter and by the Canadian Avalanche Association to step into Phil Hein’s role, which was managing the training programs for the CAA.[5]
You just mentioned you’re working for the CAA. Can you tell us about that link?
And then I got my lucky break. And I just think about it, you know, you sort of reminisce on some of these things and you can’t help but chuckle a little bit. So, I passed my Assistant Guide’s exam, did well. I was focused. I wanted to heli-ski and nothing [else] really ever mattered, so passed that. Got hired by CMH in my interview, which was not uncommon at the time. CMH would support guide’s courses, fly them into the backcountry and help reduce costs by it, you know, but also enhancing the quality of the exam. There were CMH staff at the exit interview and it was like, “OK, so next winter, you know, we’d like you to come to CMH.” I mean, that doesn’t happen anymore. It was what happened then. So that happened. And then, all around the same time, I was successful through the competition to step into a management role at the CAA. I passed my exam, got hired by CMH and got hired by the CAA all in the same period.
And you can have two jobs at once because…?
Well, it’s seasonal work. We’re looking at a guide, an assistant guide, at CMH. OK, I had as much work as I wanted in the winter, but there’s no work in the summer. And what the CAA job signaled was work in the summer—lots of work in the winter, but more stability for my life, long term. The CAA was a year-round job. It wasn’t full time. So, I could fill in the other pieces. And that’s what I was looking for. I was looking for that sort of stability in my annual income, but also the opportunity to move into management. I was definitely motivated.
What then was your role in the CAA on your summer [job]?
I was the, what was it called at the time, the ‘CAATS Coordinator.’ CAATS: Canadian Avalanche Association Training Schools. There’s a long story here that is fascinating, from the avalanche courses being under federal government purview and then a move to BCIT. But by the late ’90s, I think early ’90s, the Association had taken over the training. There’s lots of reasons why at the time. There was economic value to the CAA by bringing the revenue in, instead of government and its limits. The CAA earning the money and that’s ‘gas in the gas tank’ for an association to be able to do more. I think there were lots of reasons for it. Phil Hein was the manager, the CAATS manager, I believe, for quite a long time. He lives in Golden, still does, a long-time Mountain Guide. I can’t remember how many years he was the CAATS manager. I took over in 2001 as a newly minted assistant guide who was a total unknown to the entire industry. All the instructors, no-one knew who I was. [Laughs]
Was there an executive director of the CAA at that time?
That was Clair Israelson. So, the hiring committee that I went through, it was Clair, Colani Bezzola, Phil Hein, and Robbins Siggers from Fernie. He was the patrol director of the time; now he runs the whole place, I believe. But Colani was with CMH and Phil wanted to move on in his career and a change of pace.
So, I went through this interview process, drove back and forth between Calgary and Revelstoke, [and] took a couple of times doing day trips for the interviews. And, you know, in hindsight, I was just like this young kid, newly minted, unheard of. No-one really knew who I was, and then all of a sudden, I’m in this interview with these larger-than-life individuals. But, you know, I’ve got a lot to thank those guys seeing my potential. And they gave me the professional training programs for Canada for professional avalanche workers. “Here it is, manage it, grow it, make it better.” And when I left, it was around a $1 million in training programs. I think when I took it over it was under $400,000.
So, many students were then signing up?
Yeah. We’re talking the golden years of professional training. I mean, it’s still growing. The conversations that the CAA is having today were the same conversations that we were having in 2002, 2003, 2004, like “When, is the growth going to stop? When is the demand going to stop?” Well, it hasn’t yet. So, yeah, it was the high time. Like, we could literally put on as many courses as we had instructors.
How long did you stay in that role?
So I was 2001 to 2005. And then what happened in 2005, the spring of 2005, Evan Manners, who is the longtime Operations Manager for the CAA, sort of Clair’s number two, if you will, he said time for a change. I’m moving to Pincher Creek. So, there was a long departure, was a well-planned succession. I applied for that job, for the Operations Manager job, and got it. So, I moved into the Operations Manager role in 2005 while still also doing the CAATS manager position. And then, you know, I basically did more.
Was this a full-time job now?
Yes, full time, but I’m still an assistant guide.
For CMH?
I worked at CMH for, I can’t remember how many winters. I think 2007 was my last winter with CMH. I remember going to Banff and sitting down with Rob Rohn at the time, and he was on the board of the CAA at this time, so I just said, “Rob, I can’t focus on CMH and be a good assistant guide and train for my exam, for my final exam, and also be in this management position at the CAA and be responsible for the budgets and the people” at however over old I was. I was still an infant, I think. And, you know, it’s interesting, Rob and I have continued to work together throughout our entire career together on different initiatives and different things. He’s one of the people that our paths consistently meet and I really enjoy working with that guy. Anyway, that’s a different discussion.
So [I was] Operations Manager 2005. Left CMH for winter, I went and ended up doing a little bit more ski touring for a couple of years to get through my exam. I was a workaholic. So, you know, I worked lots. I had young kids, so I wasn’t very fit.
This exam was…?
It was the full Ski Guide exams.
So, the full winter guide?
Yeah. So, I never went for the summer stuff. I was just focused on the winter. But yeah, that full exam. And so, I actually ended up failing it twice because, in hindsight, I was really poor at balancing young children, a meaningful, loving relationship with my wife, management at the CAA, still training for guides’ exams.
You know, the CAA was exploding [at that time]. We had tons of grant money from the government and the impact was my inability to pass my guide’s exam. But that eventually happened. By 2008, I got through it, and boy, that was a relief. [laughs]
So, now you are doing very little if any part-time guiding and you are working for the CAA?
So the spring of 2008, I passed my full guides exam, thankfully. And in the fall of 2008, Clair stepped down and took a leave and I assumed his role as Executive Director of the CAA in 2008, the fall of 2008. I think it was November of 2008. And he ended up [officially] stepping down in the spring and the board decided to just do an appointment, not go through a final formal selection or competition. It was obvious, you know, I was the next guy. And so, I got to be the training program manager, the Operations Manager, and the Executive Director of the CAA for that winter, as well as the Executive Director of what is now Avalanche Canada. But then, it was [called] the Canadian Avalanche Centre. So that was the whole public side. That’s how I got involved in public safety.
So, up until 2008, I was 100 per cent focused on the professional side: training certification standards, the InfoEx information exchange, regulatory issues, working with the coroner, you know, again, training and certification standards. But in 2008, when I stepped in, when Clair took his leave, that’s when I took over the public portfolio.
You cut down by actually taking on all the jobs?
Well I passed—and no-one saw any of this coming. We had reasonably good succession plan in place, but, as is normally the case, sometimes you don’t know when career changes come. And, so it is time for Clair to step down and time for me to just suck it up and get it done.
So now you’re the executive director of Canadian Avalanche Association, which still includes, the public component at this point. Can you take us through that?
Man, it’s actually quite complicated, talking about it, because why do there need to be two avalanche organizations in Canada? What had happened already up to this point in this is, if you ask me really, what defined Clair’s tenure as Executive Director, was how he stickhandled and worked with stakeholders and government through the 2000s—from the big accident in 2003[6] all the way through to when he stepped down in 2008.
They had actually structured things so there was a separately incorporated, non-profit, federally incorporated non-profit, called the Canadian Avalanche Centre that was born out of many things, but the accidents of 2003 up at Rogers Pass, and elsewhere, and governments said, we need to do a little bit more, but we’re not giving all the money to industry. So, you’ve got to incorporate this separate non-profit, separate bank accounts, separate finances, separate everything. Staff are fully integrated. There [were] a lot of the same people that have been involved for years. But now their paycheques were coming from a different bank account.
So, Clair had set that all up—very important things to set up, this sort of government governance structure and whatnot. And when I took it over, I was running basically two organizations with overlapping staff by about 50 percent.
Just to be clear on the titles of these organizations of the time. So, the one was the Canadian Avalanche Association…
And then this newly born was the Canadian Avalanche Centre. So, and thus, brand confusion was born. [laughs] But it makes a lot of sense. And if you look at the model now, I mean, this is what Claire set up. He set it up. I refined it and finished the job, which is actually to fully separate the staff and governance structures, which is my tenure. But if you look at both organizations now, all the reasons that we went through all those exercises have, in my opinion, and I understand not everyone would agree, have more or less fully manifested themselves.
We have a fully, truly independent, publicly funded public avalanche safety entity. It’s unlike anything in the world. It’s looked at around the world as a leader, but on their own. They own their own building and they just got $25 million from the federal government, you know, a year ago. That’s the avalanche centre, the Canadian Avalanche Centre—public training curriculum, avalanche hazards, all the media work around public notification, tons of research, everything focused on public safety.
So, this is the professionals providing the public and the other organizations, like news media, with their opinions and their bulletins and their forecasts? And the other organization is…
The Canadian Avalanche Association, and that’s the professional side. That’s a regulatory and accidents history stuff.
I’ve heard of another organization, the Canadian Avalanche Foundation?
Oh yeah! Brand confusion doesn’t stop at the CAA and CAC, we also have had to add an F to this mix. [laughs] And in fact, we went through a period in our planning where we just called it the CAX [laughs again]. Really, it was the sign of success. And so the Foundation, the Canadian Avalanche Foundation was started.
The impetus around that was really when Michel Trudeau[7] was killed in the Kokanee Glacier avalanche accident[8] in the late-90s and the Trudeau family sort of said, “OK, you know, we can help. We can help here.” And part of that’s fundraising, so they started a foundation. The Foundation of that time was a charitable fundraising arm that was meant to support the public programs. And then it matured along with everyone else. And this is the 2000s, [saw] lots of growth, lots of change of all three of these organizations.
Back to my time as Executive Director, there are both of them [CAC and CAA], 2008 through 2012. That was a time of refinement. And so all the discussions about branding and changing the name to Avalanche Canada, those were all discussions that were started during my tenure because we were cleaning up the governance. And then brand was next—we’re going to have to figure out the brand.
The foundation—it’s fundraising. The foundation is now the Avalanche Canada Foundation. There’s a direct line relationship between Avalanche Canada and Avalanche Canada Foundation. Just like a hospital and a hospital foundation for fundraising. That’s the model it that was structured on, [with] the CAA is its own professional, industry-focused trade and professional association.
That’s very, really interesting. Thanks for explaining it so fully.
It’s just a bizarre story.
It’s probably not uncommon for a professional organization?
It’s a sign of success, right? A sign of success.
If we could go back a little bit to another topic. One of your professional programs that you would have been administrating during your years as head of the CAA and the CAC, is InfoEx.
You’ve got it right!
What was going on with InfoEx during those years?
I love the story InfoEx, it’s such a good story. You know, I used to do this presentation, and it’s still around, I’m sure it’s been chopped up and used for other purposes, but it was 100 of avalanche safety in Canada. And one of the phrases that I used in that presentation is, “The avalanche industry has been defined by tragedy, but shaped by professionalism.” And I think there aren’t any clearer examples of that than InfoEx.
To do a little background on InfoEx—InfoEx is short for information exchange. As I understand the story—and there are other stories—Chris Stethem and Claire Israelson for sure, they’re the fathers of the system—there had been talks, as I understand it, talks for a long time on the importance of sharing information, avalanche-related information. But the technology in the ’70s and even in the ’80s allowed one-to-one communication at best or very slow one-to-many—write a letter, make copies, mail it to everyone, have a phone call. As I understand, even conference calling was not really around in those times, 70s and 80s.
Fax machines were…?
As I understand it, the fax showed up in the late-80s when the technology started to really grab hold and there were, as I understand the history, there were a couple of court cases that happened in the ’80s that just showed, you know, the importance of maybe dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s a little bit better.
So, by that time, there were a couple of court cases that were showing the industry, the guiding industry, the avalanche industry, that, it could do a better job, right, and let’s just leave it at that. And so, phone calls were starting to happen. And there was definitely information sharing starting to occur. This is the early ’90s, the fax came on board. And again, I don’t know a lot of the fuzzy details here, but people started faxing information, faxing and phoning information into this tiny little office in the post office or above the post office in Revelstoke and they started typing up InfoEx.
They are typing up what?
So, professionals in the industry are submitting every day, every evening, every afternoon, their detailed snow, weather, and avalanche occurrence observations. And then someone in Revelstoke would basically compile all of those messages and faxes into a document, a single document, edit it down, use lots of abbreviations and then do the one-to-many fax outs. So, lots faxes coming in, data compiled, not analyzed, compiled and condensed, and then faxed back out. And so that was the start of InfoEx.
And then there was a big accident in ’91[9], and in ’96, and as I understand it, the judge who adjudicated this particular court case basically validated the quality of information-sharing that was occurring in the industry at the time. And so, it was sort of granular, this sort of organic, we need to talk more, and then a system got in place, the facts that enabled that and then there was a court case in the mid ’90s that sort of validated it. I should say there was a court case in the late-70s. I think it was 1979 heli-skiing[10] where the judge, and you can read it in in the judge’s final judgment, was that in this particular case in 1979, that the operator would have benefited from improved information sharing from their partners. So, the judge right there, after looking at this case and in the late ’70s has said, OK, you know, the key to this industry is communication, obviously. And so, he felt it important enough that they wrote it in the judgment.
If I could summarize to make sure that I have it right: the key is the sharing of field observations amongst the larger group of [00:43:10] practitioners out there in the field?
Yeah, the essence of it is raw data that is shared amongst those responsible for avalanche risk management and forecasting to broaden the data set that they’re using to forecast. It’s very similar to weather forecasters. [If] you have a little bit of data from one place, you don’t know very much. You have a lot of data from many different places and you know a lot more. So that’s the essence of InfoEx, that data feed and the facts enabled it.
In our chronology here, you’re working as the director…?
I started managing in InfoEx in 2005.
What was it technologically-wise in 2005?
Well, this is the transition to the digital age and it had started prior to my taking over responsibility for InfoEx. A lot of the early development, the conceptual development, had occurred under Evan Manners. But my job within InfoEx was to work with industry and complete the transition from analogue, which is handwritten stuff submitted via a fax, to now going onto the web and using a database and all the tools that the digital age promised, and is still promising, I might add. But yeah [laughs], that 2005 through 2008, that was the digitization of InfoEx and a whole bunch of money, a whole bunch of time, a whole bunch of conflict. That’s probably what I remember most about InfoEx during those years is the conflict. Because it was important to debate the policy and the legal agreements that were being crafted at the time, it was important.
I take it you’re implying creative conflict, like discussion?
Yeah. Well, it’s an interesting group of very, very passionate people. And yes, you’re right, there is, “Let’s get this right.” There’s that discussion. It’s a small industry and a lot of these people have known each other for a lot of time. And so even now, there’s a lot of history between, you know, lots of individuals. And that got in the way at the time. It got in the way.
So then this transition happened during your tenure. You said it had started with Clair?
Ian Tomm [00:46:09] Clair and Evan. Claire and Evan set up the digitization.
Who was your point person on this as your staff member? Did you have a staff member for InfoEx?
Yeah. Well, it was more or less me. And then, you know, we had a developer, Yves. Yves Richard was a key individual during that time, a staffer and …
He was the IT person?
Yeah. I’m trying to get stakeholders to agree. I’m trying to get legal agreements in place, data-sharing policies in place. Again, all stuff that Clair, you know, had all started, but I was the guy to implement it. I was the guy to make it work and part of that was just understanding, you know, software development and what the capabilities of one programmer was, you know, to bring this service to industry.
Since we’re on to InfoEx. InfoEx continues to this day. From your perspective, tell me. What’s happened to InfoEx in current time?
It’s another example of Canadian innovation going abroad. It’s now used in the U.S. as I understand it. In the U.S. and in Scandinavia. And I’m sure over time there will be more discussions. I mean, during my tenure there as the as Executive Director until 2012, there was lots of discussion around the system’s value to more and more subscribers.
So, we were getting more subscribers coming into the fold. We had figured out, you know, cost structures a little bit fairer, but we realized that this was just the start of the possibility and the opportunity and international was talked about. Also, lots and lots of discussion on the value of the data. And I still feel that’s still one of those discussions in our industry. We still don’t quite understand the true value of InfoEx data. If it was to disappear, we would lose so much.
So today it is alive and well?
Alive and well, feature rich.
Used in more locations than in Canada? Is it licensed for use in other countries?
You’d have to talk to Joe[11] and Stuart[12]. Stuart’s the guy responsible for InfoEx now, Stuart Smith.
But yeah, it seems to be thriving. There was a ‘funding fairy’ right around 2012, the spring of 2012, I think. The funding fairy, a group, Tecterra, and they were a G.I.S. and software development sort of incubator, if you will. And they basically dropped $1 million on the CAA’s deck in 2012 to take InfoEx to the next step. And now they’re doing it again. So now, there’s a big application going in again, another big, you know, $1 million investment in InfoEx. It’s amazing.
InfoEx is based on professional observations?
That’s all InfoEx is.
Was there public citizen science, recreational input? There was no interface, not a direct interface. You had to be a subscriber [of InfoEx] but was there any [public] input into it?
You bring up some of the discussion, some of the criticism and arguments, or not even a criticism, just some of the arguments and the conflict at the time.
You know, digitizing InfoEx, is it all that it could be—this new digital system? And I think all of us were maybe, well naïve, at the time. I think we all saw more in InfoEx than I think it ended up being, in the ’90s or in the 2000s and 2010s.
But it’s only professional observations. Lots [of people] talked about it. When its digital, why can’t we have public submitting data? It was right there. The system was all set up. It would have been easy to start accepting data from the public. But then what you would have as an untrained public user group. OK, it’s citizen science, but the concern of the time was it was polluting the professional, higher-quality data-feed, and there was no easy way to filter those two, and then, there were issues.
So InfoEx was always 100 percent professional. Efforts to be able to submit public data into it were never successful. And also, you know, flipside of that coin, public request to get access to the data were also never successful because it’s a private exchange of technical snow, weather, and avalanche of observations, including avalanche accidents.
So there, InfoEx has the details for professionals to interpret properly. That raw data in many other domains, we see it in society, but raw professional technical data in the public eye can—the concern at the time was that it could be misused and/or misinterpreted. And so that’s why it was always kept pro, pro, pro only, still to this day. However, it’s that dataset that’s analyzed by public avalanche forecasters to produce the public bulletins and all that sort of stuff. So, it’s not like this is a closed data set. It is given to professionals to be able to analyze properly and then produce the public avalanche bulletin. So, there would be no public avalanche bulletin without InfoEx.
I’m just thinking of how any input by the public could be tangential then. For example, if a forecaster happened to be talking to ski-tourers who had observed.
That was the problem, there’s a lot of value potential from public observations.
So they wouldn’t be able to incorporate those observations in their summary?
Well the forecasters do, forecasters do, but…[No formal input into InfoEx].
[So ] there’s no the direct way [for public input]. [Just] whether or not you happen to be able to talk to a licensed user of InfoEx?
So now, the current day and age, 2019, there is a whole public reporting and information exchange system that was built and is run by Avalanche Canada. It’s called the Mountain Information Network. And it’s ‘InfoEx for the people’, basically. And it’s super successful. Super successful.
I just pointed to my iPhone… That’s an info-port for observations then?
Yeah. It’s [the Mountain Information Network] an app and a website. And again, it’s been, as I understand it, and you know, I have not been part of its development at all, but its ‘InfoEx for the people’. It’s an app on your phone—iPhone, Android, it’s a website. And it’s really about empowering the user group, the backcountry user group, no matter if you’re a sledder or snowmobiler or a skier or a snowshoer. If you have a weather, snow, weather or an avalanche observation, you can now submit it. And it’s used by forecasters now. [It] still doesn’t hit InfoEx [the professional network], though…
So, in your tenure there, as the executive director of the two organizations, we still have the Canadian Avalanche Centre, with that name. What happened with the name—the reason we don’t have that name anymore?
No. So, the discussions in 2012, this is right around the time where, my gas tank is operating on empty all the time. I just died, just definitely had worked enough. But the discussions at the time were around brand separation because we’d sort of figured out the governance and the money and bylaw side. It was about brand differentiation. So, brand differentiation discussions at the time were around colour, logo, and font. And it involved the Foundation, the Centre, and the Association. Great. And again, lots of different perspectives to it. But that’s all it was when I was there was discussion. It took Gilles [Valade] and Joe [Obad] to come on board. My job got split into two to really sort out the brand.
So was it 2008 you started in that role? [the separation of the Canadian Avalanche Association and Avalanche Canada]
Yeah. I took a leave in the in the fall October of 2012. Just needed a little bit of break and then I resigned in January 2013.
And then the CAA split jobs into two job descriptions…And who became the executive directors?
We were first to hire Joe. The plan at the time, you know, this sort of change management plan that we had was that I had focused on the professional side, the CAA side, for a decade and that I was really interested in pursuing the public side. And I was doing a pretty good job at the political level. You know, stickhandling some big accidents well—the Harvey Pass accident in December 2008[13], the Boulder Mountain accident in 2012[14], the death review panel in 2009 on snowmobiling. I had stickhandled lots. And it was really interesting and stimulating work. And so the decision with the Boards [CAA and CAC] was, OK, I’m going to focus on the Centre, the public side, and we’re going to hire a new executive director for the CAA. And so that was Joel Obad. Wonderful man, loved him, liked him the first time I met him.
And so we got him up and running and onboard and trained and of sort of got him flying, and I was so looking forward to all the extra time that I would have [laughs], but really the work never slows down, and the funding crises, and it’s the human cost of avalanches I think just got to me. And so after that transition to Joe, I made the decision to leave and Gilles Valade came on shortly after I left.
So that’s the end of your staff relationship with the CAA?
Yeah, the fall of 2012.
Now can you bring us up from 2012 to 2019 in terms of your involvement with CAA?
On the avalanche side and all that stuff, yeah, you look back and you know, again, you sort of got to chuckle at how all the dots connect for today. But so yeah, resigned in January 2013. [I did] lots of work for consultants and guided. I just took a little bit of time and just went and had fun basically, went guiding, again.
You are still a Professional Member [of the CAA]?
Still a professional member. I still am a working guide. I’m a working guide. I am still a Professional Member, all that stuff. So, I basically resigned from the CAA, I then started with Heli-Cat Canada. It was actually three days after I resigned from the CAA, I got a phone call from Heli-Cat saying, we’re looking for an Executive Director. I needed some time, and after a couple months I ended up going through a vetting process there. But then I took over Heli-Cat Canada in September of 2013, which is basically the trade association, the association for businesses in the heli-skiing and snow-cat skiing industry. It’s been around since the late ’70s.
Avalanches continue to be a core part of that portfolio, mainly because it’s the most significant risk facing helicopter and snow-cat skiing operations, the mechanized guiding operations. You know, there’s avalanche issues, there are avalanche fatalities, but it’s a different perspective now. I was representing the businesses, the owners, in front of government and in front of Avalanche Canada and the CAA for that matter. So, its a really interesting transition. And I wouldn’t say overly easy, you know, to go from running two organizations. I had a lot of personal pride and ownership over things, then six months later, or a year later, now working for the corporations, the businesses, and those interests. But all of that expertise and experience gained with the avalanche folks played into really what I needed to do with Heli-Cat and so, [I] spent just shy of five years there and had an opportunity to go consulting again. Lots of avalanche skills used in that consulting work.
And still a member [of the CAA], still a working guide, but working at a much higher level now. More from the, you know, international investment making perspective of going, “OK, you know, we want to invest. So, what are the things we need to think about?” Obviously, the mountains are where we want to invest. And so avalanche safety 101 was even part of that consulting work. And today, I’m going on 10 weeks as President of Eagle Pass Heli-Skiing, which is I think quite possibly I’m the luckiest guy in the industry. I feel quite fortunate and I think it’s all my experiences that have led to this new role. So here we are.
And of course, your current employer is connected with InfoEx?
Oh yeah. They’re a subscriber to InfoEx. They pay their dues for all their senior guides to be members of the CAA. And certainly, what I’m going to be encouraging here is to get our staff involved on the committees in the governance structure of the CAA going forward, because while it’s really important to me and now I’m in a different role and have an ability to contribute back.
So, can I just ask you a crystal ball type question? From your perspective of your many years now and very intimate knowledge of CAA and related organizations, where do you see the CAA as an association going in the future? Any challenges or perspectives?
Lots and lots of challenges, I think as the technological sophistication of society continues to improve and the younger generations that are not just like ‘digital tourists’ like you and me. We had our lives and then technology, you know, sort of grew around us. Whereas with my kids, with the younger generations, technology is in them. Right? They were six months old and on a touch screen. So, I think things like social media and the ease of information sharing, because that’s really the world we’re living in and are going to continue to live in, is about information sharing.
My worry for the CAA and InfoEx in particular is that it’s going to be easier and cheaper to communicate this information using other services down the road. And you see those pressures right now within InfoEx software elements, really expensive. So another $1 million to invest InfoEx and try and bring it to the mobile device. That’s as I understand it. That’s the next stage for folks, trying to bring it to a mobile device.
But there’s also much bigger companies that have spent way more money than the CAA ever could do to develop really effective information-sharing tools like WhatsApp and Facebook. There are businesses in this industry that use WhatsApp to communicate amongst their guiding team for operational day-to-day stuff. It’s raw and it’s rough. It’s not as precise or scientific as in InfoEx. But, you know, going back to this sort of digital citizen concept that the new workforce are coming to—why do we have to work with this clunky home-grown system? I can get this set up in a half an hour on WhatsApp and still empower information sharing. And in degrees to a higher level of sophistication than what the industry can do themselves. Microsoft Word has 10,000 engineers working on it. That’s why it’s good and it still sucks. It’s still buggy. So, when you look at InfoEx, there’s never going to be 10,000 engineers working on InfoEx. There’s going to be one or two. So, it’s an interesting time.
I think it’s just a matter of time before we’ve got ski guides who are really good programmers and understand the modern tools. So, it’s a technological disruption with InfoEx. I think, you know, is where my mind is that a lot of the time when asked this question. And I think there’s more than enough evidence out there to say, yes, these are things we need to think about.
So that is a challenge on the industry’s plate, but CAA’s plate particularly to do with InfoEx and computers systems.
Well, every year here, you’re writing these big cheques. And that’s like, well, WhatsApp is free. And I just take one example. So, I think that’s technological disruption. Really, InfoEx has not changed. The technology has changed, but the way it’s used and read is more or less the same as it has been for a long time. So, that’s where the disruption, I think, is going to occur, when people realize how to start to play with this data in a different way.
So, yeah, so that would be one, you know, lack of community engagement or declining community engagement. And it’s along the same lines as is increasing technological sophistication as associations like the CAA used to be really effective at aggregating knowledge and establishing a standard that was hard to determine any other way. But again, anyone with a phone and a little bit of time can research almost anything that they want. And so the role of the Association is that information aggregator, that leader, that standard-setter. They’re not going to move as fast as a group of individuals in a company. So, I think it’s impacting lots of associations and I think you see it in the engineers, and I think you see it in lots of places in society.
So, the CAA always used to be a little bit more on top of things than the industry, you know, through membership. But, you know, is the industry starting to progress faster and change faster than the association can meet the needs? And that’s, I think, a universal challenge in society right now. So, maybe that’s philosophical enough. [laughs]
And just before we end, if you pause for a second, is there anything else you would like to add that you haven’t? Was there some burning [addition]?
Well, it’s an amazing story. I love talking about it. I mean, I realize this a little bit about my time and my career, but just the story, and I think you share in this feeling too, the story of avalanche safety in Canada, and by luck and by design, where we now sit, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of the CAA, is unbelievable. It’s s truly unbelievable.
However, I think one of the stories in this industry, the avalanche and the guiding industry, that isn’t talked about enough is the human side, the cost. The cost of having guests killed in avalanches, the cost of media scrutiny, you know, when things go wrong. The cost of untreated critical incident stress that leads into post-traumatic stress disorder, substance use, and relationship problems. I think for all the amazing things of this industry, there is a sad story of tragedy.
And I guess maybe we finish where I started, which is talking about the industry as defined by tragedy and shaped by professionalism. I just think that there’s more than a few people in this industry that could have used a little bit more help. We didn’t know how to support some of these people. And so I’m very optimistic for the future. But avalanches and avalanche safety in Canada has come at enormous personal cost to more than a few folks.
I’d like to really thank you for spending this time this morning and taking my numerous extra questions.
Thank you. Thank you, John. My true honour, true pleasure to be involved. So, thank you.
[1] It was with Steve Chambers, using one of the very first version of Bruce Jamieson’s Avalanche Safety book It was photocopied and had green stock cover, stabled binding. I think the U of C print shot produced them. Ian still has it.
[2] Nov 29, 1997: Four backcountry skiing fatalities near Fortress Mountain ski area, west of Calgary.
[3] Mar 12, 1991: Nine heli-skiing fatalities near Bugaboo Creek in the Purcell Mountains west of Invermere, B.C.
[4] U of C = University of Calgary
[5] Ian Tomm: I actually worked a season with CMH before I got hired at the CAA, I failed my first full guides exam the same spring I started working for the CAA.
[6] Two large accidents in 2003 happened near each other in British Columbia a few days apart. On Jan. 20 seven skiers died while backcountry skiing on Tumbledown Mountain north of Revelstoke. On Feb 1 seven high school students died backcountry skiing in Glacier National Park.
[7] Michel Trudeau was the son of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, and brother to current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.
[8] Michel Trudeau died in an avalanche on Nov. 13, 1998 while back-country skiing at Kokanee Lake in Kokanee Glacier Provincial Park, B.C.
[9] Mar. 12, 1991: Nine people died while heli-skiing near Bugaboo Creek in the Purcell Mountains west of Invermere, B.C.
[10] Feb. 14, 1979: Seven people died heli-skiing west of Golden, B.C.
[11] Joe Obad, CAA Executive Director
[12] Stuart Smith, CAA InfoEx Manager
[13] Dec. 28, 2008: Eight snowmobilers died in an avalanche near Harvey Pass south of Fernie; 8 fatalities
[14] Mar. 13, 2010: Two snowmobilers were caught and over 100 involved in an avalanche on Boulder Mountain outside Revelstoke, B.C.
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