Jack Bennetto began his avalanche career working at Rogers Pass in the mid-70s, followed by guiding heli-skiing with CMH and Alpine Guides, New Zealand in the early-80s. Jack started working for the BC Highways avalanche programs in 1984, leading the avalanche program during the construction of the Coquihalla highway. He then managed the provincial avalanche program for BC Highways, overseeing its growth until 2002.
Jack has been a proud member of the CAA since the mid-80s and was President from 1995 to 1997. He was also a founding member and Vice President of the Canadian Avalanche Foundation until retiring in the fall of 2015, and the Chair of ISSW 2002. Jack’s accomplishments as President of the CAA include the development of the CAA’s Continuing Professional Development program, the Avalanche Mapping courses for professionals, and the introduction and adoption of the five-level avalanche hazard scale.
In the early-2000s, Jack took his career in another direction, focusing primarily on the management of the transportation network in the Rocky Mountain District, responsible for all highway related responsibilities in southeastern British Columbia.
Here is the transcript of our interview with Jack Bennetto:
Note: This transcript has been edited slightly for clarity. Some added context has been added in parentheses at the request of the interviewee.
Alex Cooper: Hello this is Alex Cooper on behalf of the Canadian Avalanche Association’s Oral History Project. For the CAA’s 40th birthday we are speaking with the former Association Board Members, staff and Presidents, to help preserve the CAA’s rich history through the eyes of those who worked to make the CAA a world leader in avalanche safety and professionalism today.
Today, December 1, 2022, I’m joined by Jack Bennetto. Thanks so much for joining us Jack.
Jack Bennetto: Thanks for asking me Alex. I’m pleased to meet you. I’d heard you were doing this for a few years. Thanks for calling me.
I think I took it on in the summer or early fall, so getting through people while working on The Avalanche Journal as well.
The question I like to open up with for everybody is: when did you first become aware of the phenomenon of avalanches?
I saw your question and it’s a bit of a trick question for me. I thought about it for a moment. I guess the best thing I can say is I always loved winter and I always loved snow. I liked skiing a lot. I remember as a kid, maybe 10 or 11, my parents drove me through Rogers Pass, I was a Saskatchewan boy, and I got out of the car in Rogers Pass and thought, “Wow, was that ever a cool place!”
I didn’t think about that until many years later and I ended up getting a job there in the mid-70s. That’s probably the best link I’ve got. I was a young guy skiing at Silver Star when my family moved from the north to Vernon, and when I was there, there was a young fellow that got killed. Actually, the son of one of the shareholders at Silver Star got killed in an avalanche in a gully underneath a small cornice. So that’s when my interest was piqued and away it went from there.
Where are you from originally?
My family moved a lot, but I was a southern Saskatchewan farmer. My family moved to Prince George when I was probably 10, and then I’ve been in B.C. ever since and loved the mountains ever since.
Where did you first learn to ski?
Prince George at 100 Steps. I think it was a hill, something they did during the war, 100 Steps, and I think they had some military storage there. They turned that slope into a ski hill with a rope tow and that was my beginning.
And then it just went from there.
Yes.
What was the pathway that brought you from those first 100 Steps, we’ll say, to becoming an avalanche professional? Where did you go learning to ski, you mentioned Silver Star. You moved to Silver Star at some point and started skiing there?
I skied a lot up at Tabor and then Prince George (at Purden Village). No real avalanche knowledge at all or any real link there. Went to Silver Star and started skiing there and I’d walk without even skins on. I didn’t even know what those things were. I did a little bit of really crude hill climbing just to get up the hill to go skiing. That was probably the beginning.
Then I was seeking work out in the Bella Coola area, sort of logging, and I called my mother and she said, “This application put into Rogers Pass, they are looking for somebody.” That was the key start. So, I went to an interview and managed to get through the second time, not the first time but the second time.
What was the job in Rogers Pass?
With SRAWS—Snow Avalanche Research and Forecasting group. I called myself the assistant data collector. I think it was a different title. I think they had about 11 staff and they had a few of us junior people were the data collection people. I recall some of the start, carrying dataloggers up the mountain, and they were a metre wide and three-quarters of a meter high, and put them on a trapper Nelson pack board, and go up there with your knickerbockers on. So, a long time ago obviously.
What year was this?
I’m guessing ’76, ’77, something like that. It was in the late-70s.
What was the training that got you that position?
Really nothing. I liked technical stuff, a little bit science focused in high school and that probably was a good start. That’s probably why I failed my first interview. I did a little more research after that on avalanche and avalanche phenomena, as well as layering in snowpack, those kinds of things, so by the time I got to the second interview I could make it. I think even then I may have done alright because I was a pretty good skier, and they had a skiing test. I understood that came from some people that had gotten a job before me who couldn’t ski in the backcountry. Fred Schleiss didn’t like that incompetent approach, so they wanted someone who could ski, and I was one of those, so that probably helped me.
What was your educational background at the time? Was this after high school or had you gone to university?
I’d gone to university in sciences, and then was a target of engineering. And then I thought mountains and mountain guiding was a lot more fun than being an engineer. I got three years of engineering under my belt, and I was probably part way through that when I was lucky enough to get a call from the Schleiss brothers and I got a job with them.
Nice, that’s great. So, your goal was to be a guide or just work in the avalanche industry?
I just loved the avalanche work, and loved avalanches. And then I was exposed there and met people that did a lot more mountain touring and mountain climbing, and I took an assistant winter guides course, thinking that would be a great thing to do. And then I thought it would be a lot more fun to heli-ski guide. So, I applied there and I ended up with Canadian Mountain Holidays.
You mentioned you loved avalanches. What did you find so interesting? What did you love about avalanches?
I guess how sensational they were, the phenomena. When I was working for SRAWS, right next door was Peter Schaerer and the research group doing a lot of research on impact pressures for industry and housing, and they had sensors on top of the snowsheds and measuring speeds. I thought that was pretty cool stuff, how destructive they were. And I was interested in the math part too and I just loved being outside.
Did you get to work with Peter at all on the research he was doing?
Not really, but he’d come in from Vancouver and oversee what the guys were doing on site. We’d go out with him, and he’d have his little toque on with the tassel, pompom, on the end. I thought he was an old, little bit weird Swiss guy, when he first came, but then I thought, “Wow, he can ski pretty darned well, that guy!”
He would help us and guide us when we were digging snow profiles, and then give us some guidance, so we would learn a little more than maybe we were getting from the Schleiss brothers, because there’s was a much more militaristic approach—just get the job done and give me the data. Peter Schaerer was a great teacher, and he was the guy who taught anybody in the avalanche industry, of my vintage. We all learned everything we had from him.
Did you take courses, like the Level 1 and I think there was the Level 2? Did you take those or just learn on the job?
I cheated on the Level 1, because I worked in Rogers Pass. Peter Schaerer was the senior person on the courses and he… I think I applied for a job heli-skiing at Canadian Mountain Holidays, and that was a requirement to have something like that on my resume. And so I got into the Level 2 based on the fact that I did a whole bunch of work at Rogers Pass, so Peter Schaerer let me in there without me taking the course. Then I got my Level 2, so things went well from there[JB1] .
How many years did you spend at Rogers Pass before you went into guiding?
Not a long time. Three years, I think. Guiding was right around the corner and getting paid to go skiing and telling the helicopter pilot where you’d like to land, that was too great. I remember sending a letter to my girlfriend at the time and saying, “I’m amazed they pay me for this.”
What lodge were you at?
Probably at the beginning part I hopped around quite a bit. I worked many, many weeks when maybe someone was hurt, or somebody needed someone somewhere. I filled gaps, and I think my longest stint was 11 weeks straight, but I didn’t mind it because I was in different places. I ended up in Bobbie Burns for most of my career there. Bobbie Burns working for Colani Bezzola. That was a great experience.
I spoke to Colani back in September, and he was a character, an interesting interview.
So, you were at CMH for how many years?
I think it was four, and then I went (to the highways program). As much as I loved it and loved the mountains, I got a little bit tired of caring for people that were always wanting something, it never stopped. I thought, well, I’d try something new and there were some guys that came for some courses from government programs, avalanche programs for the highways, and they were actually kind of auditing and inspecting heli-ski companies just to see if they had the basics for avalanche safety. What data do you use to forecast? What data do you record? Do you take snow profiles? Do you all know the terrain? Do you have maps of the terrain? Those kinds of basics. Meeting them, having a beer later, they said they had some openings if I was interested in applying, so I landed something in Victoria for a little while.
How much of that stuff they were looking at? The data collection, the runs, the terrain atlases— how much of that existed at CMH when you were there? How formalized everything was?
It wasn’t that formal. They had very good daily guide meetings and there was a lot of dialogue about, is this safe or that safe, where you would ski. They were mostly Europeans. In fact, I think I was one of the original Canadian hires as a guide and that was driven by the government saying, “You can’t keep bringing these Europeans over here, and giving them work, and if you’ve got a company here, you better hire some Canadians.”
That’s what drove the ACMG to put (winter) courses on. I got on one of those, so they expanded that delivery so there could be some trained and educated people in guiding so that they could have some half-decent guides in their industry. That’s where it started, and I think for CMH I was one of the maybe even the first year of hires, British Columbia people, Canadians. There was Scott Flavelle, and Cam Cairns, and Phil Hein—a small group of us (also some others). We were always in guides meetings with Europeans, who were spectacular guides but weren’t analytical in the snowpack. I did my best to help them and vice versa. I think it was a good partnership. I’m not so sure they trusted my guiding so much because they did that on 100% terrain basis and what they could see visually. A lot of mine was data work, and so I’d be the guy that got sent out to dig snow profiles, and then the data started being collected more.
Some people were having accidents and close calls and a death or two. Hans Gmoser really started getting involved in that data part and expanding it. When he’d be out checking us out and seeing how we’re doing, and seeing how his lodges were doing, he’d have a little Pentax ocular and he’d be looking at snow crystals, things he learned from Peter Schaerer to start the program, to build it into something much more technical than it ever was at the start.
Interesting. Were you working there when the Valentines Day accident[i] happened? It was a pretty influential or impactful one through the industry and I think it sort of spurred the initial talk of InfoEx, I heard came out of that. That’s why I’m interested. It would have been 1979 I believe.
I remember the Valentine’s Day, but I don’t remember the details. I’ll tell you a little bit of a story though and it may be the same (cycle). I was guiding in the Cariboos, and this was a landmark personal education. It was my first year and I was skiing with (Reinhold Plankensteiner, Daniel Audibert and Ernst Buehler). I was really junior and it had snowed a huge amount. We went out skiing and we were skiing in burned forests, because we didn’t want to ski in anything that was more exposed to avalanches.
I remember skiing and there would be big settlements, and I had a group of 12 people, and I was filling my pants being there, thinking “We should not be out here.” And also, we had lunch in a runout zone, in a big flat area, maybe it was a lake at the bottom of one of these long slopes with the black forest. I think the run is even called Black Forest. It was a lovely lunch, but I thought “This is kind of exposed. Maybe this is not the greatest idea to be here.” But everybody thought it was always fine.
We had a great day skiing in the trees and then we flew back and had lunch; there was 44 guests. When we flew back, our whole lunch spot was buried fully. That would have done half of us, I’m sure. That was a natural occurrence in the afternoon while we were out skiing after lunch. There was no big temperature change, it was just that much snow on a weak layer.
We went out heli-skiing—not heliskiing—we went out helicopter bombing because we thought, “Wow, we better clean some of this stuff up.” That was the early days when it was a cool thing to do. There were no real cowboys. It was done safely, but not with a formal process.
(Brief phone interruption)
So, we went out bombing—so this is my lead to maybe to the Valentine’s. We went out bombing and got monster avalanches, you know four and a halves, big beauties coming down one side of the valley, all the way up the other side, two-thirds of the way up the other mountains on the other side of the valley with huge powder clouds. We just went back to the lodge and had a beer and said, “Wow, was that ever great!” and didn’t tell anybody, and didn’t call the other lodges and say, “That’s the stuff we saw.”
There was kind of an exchange every night as part of a meeting protocol, but it was more talking about how many feet did you ski and was it good skiing. It wasn’t about safety directly. So, we didn’t even say anything to the other guides in the other lodges (about the massive avalanches we initiated). The next day there was a huge avalanche, I think was in the Bugaboos? I can’t remember (exactly where).
Yes, I think so.
So that was the early days, and then there were some others, some big ones in those big ‘70s years that drove the demand and the fear, and I think that changed the industry. But that was my first year guiding and that was one of my first days, and that was a big learning experience for me and for Canadian Mountain Holidays. Right after that we started talking to each other about avalanche phenomena and what we were seeing.
Interesting. That must have been such an eye opener and I can imagine how that would stick with you for the rest of your career.
Those guys were great guides for sure and so you just followed their lead, but obviously we should have thought about things differently, like we do now.
So, we are talking about this late-70s period and a couple of years later, 1981, is when Peter Schaerer called together a bunch of avalanche professionals and started the CAA. Were you there, were you involved with that?
No. ‘84 was the first time I was in one of those. I think it was maybe in a Sandman Hotel (in Revelstoke). I think I made a note that I sent to you that it was, I wouldn’t have called it a formal meeting, but the CAA was really being formed then and it was a good meeting that Peter Schaerer led, I think.
I remember one of the biggest parts of the meeting was having a pretty heated battle about what the logo of the CAA would be and where would you wear it. I even remember Alan Dennis standing up and being quite pissed off at everybody’s focus on minute detail and he said something like, “Who gives a shit? Just hurry up and make a decision. Do you want to put it on your hat, put it on your shirt, put it on your sweater, put it on your ass, I don’t care. Let’s move on.” So that was one of the most important parts in the meeting, was what the logo would look like. It ended up as a good start. I joined then.
I think I Ianded myself as a member in ‘85. With your prompt, I started digging some stuff and I found a letter from Peter Schaerer that said I could become a member, but the hard part of that was you had to pay 30 bucks a year, so send me the money.
What were the qualifications required to be a member?
You know, I can’t remember. I think they were related to having to be in the business. I can’t remember anything more than that. It was related to the amount of time you spent working in the business, and there was a minimum amount of time, and that’s all I can remember as the piece.
So, no application process that exists now?
No. I had to send a short resume to say this is what I’ve been doing, and I did this stuff in Rogers Pass, and I’m working for BC Highways now in their avalanche program. Because I was a full-time employee, full winters in Rogers Pass, and full-time, meaning year-round in the BC Highway program, that’s about all I had to say.
What was the job you took with BC Highways? Where was it?
It was Victoria, so paper avalanches. They had started in the mid-70s because of a death in the North Route Café, up by Prince Rupert, Terrace, and so their program was taking avalanche path inventory throughout B.C. It was started really with Peter Schaerer. He was asked to lead a task force to work with some people. He hired a fellow named Geoff Freer, who ran the program, who hired me. They did a whole bunch of data collection—avalanche paths, photos, and—I can’t remember what they’re called—avalanche log books (note: he was referring to avalanche atlases). They are still around and still used from their recording.
Our job was to go around the province and identify these avalanche paths that would affect infrastructure and highways, so that’s what started the avalanche program for highways. So, I started there maybe six or eight years after that program started and I was a technician and data manager for the program. But also, they were hard at developing an avalanche program for the Coquihalla, so that was many of our focuses, was going to the Coquihalla to help develop the program.
Later, I wasn’t there in Victoria that long, I think I was there one year and then I became the avalanche technician to look after the Coquihalla. They posted a position, and I went there and did the active part of developing that program. I had 11 staff and collecting data, and getting all set to put in ropeways and gun towers and buying 105 howitzers—not howitzers, recoilless rifles—so putting the program together, and I stayed there for a few years.
Was this after the highway was opened or were you involved with the construction phase?
With the construction phase. We were forecasting avalanches in there while they were building the snowshed in the middle of the winter. I remember an event when it had been pretty cold, a little bit of surface hoar on a hard surface, and then warmed up, like the Coast does.
Then it got cold, surface hoar there, and it snowed on it. It hadn’t snowed a lot, so I thought we should go look after that slab. I’m guessing it was 20 cm thick, not that huge but they were building the snowshed, and the snowshed was three-quarters finished. And they had blasted out a vertical wall in the rock where the shed exists now, and then they were attaching that to the snowshed, so they would drill holes in the rock for steel rods, then steel rods into the shed, so the shed wouldn’t get pushed off the mountain.
Then there was a two-to-three-metre wide slot in there, probably three-to-four metres deep where all the workers were inside and the slope was above. So, we said they better get out of there and in the process of (evacuation)—we were just doing ski cutting, we weren’t doing major exercises. We did heli-bomb etc, but this was just a small situation.
The avalanches ran naturally before we got (to the trigger location), by 10 minutes because we hadn’t quite made it up there. We had guys running back and forth in that slot between the rock and the wall and nobody got buried. They paid attention to us a lot more after that. When we had told them that there was an avalanche problem, then they got out of there.
Pretty interesting days. There were three man camps in there—people camps, 95% or 99% men in those days—and they put them all in runout zones because they didn’t have to clear any trees. “Good placement,” and they were building in winter, and so I had the pleasure of being the forecaster for that, and I know I shut them down three times. But Mother Nature treated me well because the three times I shut them down, they were Fridays about noon, because that’s when the cycles were. But they were so happy with me that they got to go out and go drinking early for the weekend, so it worked out.
And you got to go enjoy some powder and make some avalanches.
Yes, that was the most interesting time actually because the snow avalanche program had been so involved in the design of the highway, which really had never happened before. The highways were usually built somewhere and then the avalanche challenge was they had to do something with it (build an avalanche program). In this case, the avalanche program with Geoff Freer was a huge part of that design and development, and so they designed it so well it was what I deemed boring from the avalanche forecasting perspective. I actually quit because of that, because I just thought that wasn’t any fun. But it sure was challenging while they were building it.
So, you were there for the construction, but you didn’t stay for the operations after?
I did a couple of years. I can’t remember the math there, but they opened the Coquihalla in ‘86 and I probably started there in ‘85 and I started in Victoria in ‘84. ‘85 I was in the Coquihalla for the program to develop it while they were building, and then I stayed there until ‘89. Then Geoff Freer took a different job, so they posted his, so I competed for that and became the manager for the province in ‘89. I remember those days, those years.
I’ve talked to Paul Harwood a bit who runs the program there now, and they manage Allison Pass, and the Fraser Canyon, and the Coquihalla. It sounds like they get hit by some of the biggest storms. They seem to be right in the bullseye when the big storms come through. Was it like that then for you in terms of the storms that came in when you were there?
Yes. The frequency, they’re huge, and hugely demanding looking after all that. I guess the Coquihalla part, they had those big storms, but the avalanches really, because they were almost always triggered by warming, the avalanches, you rarely had them run a long way. Then what your deal was, me as a forecaster, you were measuring the threat, which wasn’t that huge because they’d grind to a halt (above the highway) in the good design, and there wasn’t the huge threat to the highway (in most cycles; the large, hazardous cycles are infrequent but very demanding to manage when they occur). That’s why we ended up closing down the explosive part of the program, because there were so many logistics in the process. It closed the road longer for us to do avalanche control than if we just let Mother Nature do that.
I remember being there. You’d open the highway and people would Lemans start. They’d be coming through the snowsheds trying to pass everybody, banging off the guard rails and spinning around. You’re going to die more there (from highway accidents) than you are in avalanches. When the (avalanche) activity is there, it’s extreme, but it’s infrequent, related to the highway, hitting the highway.
In my day, we built that wall there (just downhill from the snowshed). If you remember going by, just below the shed, there’s a wall with snowflakes on it. I asked and worked with engineers to get that built. What would happen is the truckers would not like the road maintenance and then drive into the snowsheds so they could put chains on where the weather was better. That would plug up the highway and all the cars would get backed up down the hill.
People would be at the bottom of the hill under a small avalanche path, standing outside of their car having a smoke waiting to get buried. So that wall was for that purpose, so we didn’t have people that would die in an avalanche while they were waiting for road maintenance to open the highway.
So, you were there, you mentioned that you eventually became Manager of the Provincial program. Was that right after you finished up with the Coquihalla or was there something else in between?
No. That was finishing up with the Coquihalla. I said I quit, but I didn’t quit, I went guiding in New Zealand in their winter, as I was not going to go back to the Coquihalla, I just thought that became a little bit too boring. Then, while I was in New Zealand that’s the period when Geoff Freer quit (he took on other responsibilities) and they were looking for somebody to fill the position. Somewhere in there I applied and jumped into what I called paper avalanches in Victoria.
I’ll jump back to the CAA a bit here, talking about the period in the mid to late ‘80s. What was your involvement in the CAA in that time?
Minimal. Just joining up. I was really not even aware that thing existed until that meeting where I told you about that important logo discussion. I noticed I joined in ’85, or got accepted into the Association in ’85, and I wrote down with your call, I looked at some dates. So, four years later, I became the Manager of the Snow Avalanche Program in Victoria, and then five years after that I think I became the President of the CAA. You’ve got the math down probably? Was I President in ‘95 to ‘98 or something like that?
I have ‘95 to ‘97. It’s not always clear. We don’t have good records ourselves, or the best records. The Avalanche News often reported who was President but not always. It’s not perfect but roughly that’s about right. You took over from Bruce Jamieson.
I remember that, if I can jump to that, I think Bruce was working on his Masters or his PhD.
His PhD.
That was becoming quite demanding to be the President of the Avalanche Association and do that when you are near the end of your PhD target. I was his Vice-president in that period and so yes, my tenure, I think I was a director for five years, and I think the math was you could be a director for five years, and so I was some kind of a director (I was in the CAA Executive for five years). I was the Vice-president, and then Bruce moved on and I became the President until my five-year window was up. That’s why I lasted that two years. That’s how that math worked then.
What brought you to get more involved with the CAA? We’re looking at the early ‘90s here.
Hmmm… You know, I guess I just wanted another challenge. And I don’t think that happened immediately, but I always… After I was into it that much, I really enjoyed the… how dynamic and open and private-sector focused the Avalanche Association was. I was not so thrilled with how staid the Provincial government is to work for, so I found a lot more stimulation with a dynamic group of people of the CAA that I didn’t get working for the Province of B.C.
So, that was probably as just as much as plain loving avalanches, loving snow, and just wanting to be involved. It was very different (than government), and I really enjoyed how dynamic (the CAA team was), and all the decisions and things we did, and what we did to make things change. I thought that was great. Government is so huge, it’s probably that’s its problem in that, it’s simply hard to move things there, and it was the opposite in the avalanche association.
It’s interesting doing these interviews, especially looking at this period. The CAA in the ‘90s was 10 or 15 years old, still a pretty young Association, I imagine, trying to figure things out, what it means to be an Association and be avalanche professionals. Did you find that at all?
For me, it was what does it mean for the Association, learning a bunch of protocol and legal rule sets. And I think you mentioned that my tenure, there was the Art Twomey helicopter crash and so you learn a lot about legal stuff in a big hurry there because some of the people, or all of the people who were students were American and the American legal system was presented to me in a big hurry right after that.
It was growth and an education for I think all of us. You bringing it up, well I think that it was junior for sure and in my tenure there, there was also some challenges from the Association and Professional Engineers at that time, and I deemed that a threat to our version of who professionals were for the snow avalanche industry, and so I thought we needed to pull up our socks as well as defend our position on the way it worked, and everybody did. That was a growth period for policy and legal positioning.
I find that an interesting aspect that you had that Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists BC poking their fingers into avalanche work and saying that you need to be an engineer to do avalanche work or to supervise avalanche work. It sounds like that was a pretty big—maybe not fight is the right word—but something you guys had to deal with, to defend, the skills of avalanche professionals, become independent. What was that like dealing with those outside pressures?
Another education for me. I learned a lot about professional engineers. They were, I believe, opening up limited licensing, so they were putting up new territory for themselves. I also understand that was a period where they were doing the geoscientist part of that, so they were expanding. Their push from their Board was to expand their territory. That opened the dialogue where they were going to expand all that and some of that had the word “avalanche” on that. Some of the comments were that you needed to be a member of the engineer’s association because avalanches were a natural hazard and they should be engaged of that piece. (Tape 42:50)
So, there was a lot of background dialogue anyways—I don’t know about hard written threats—about that they should have that responsibility and territory, and they were the ones that had the education and skillset for that, and that maybe all the avalanche people needed to be overseen by some kind of engineer to sign off and forecast. Certainly, most of the people took exception to that in the CAA. I certainly did, because I thought people did a pretty darned good job.
And that’s what rolled out with that Continuing Professional Development program. I thought, and the Board thought, we needed to have that. Not all of them thought that; that was part of my politics in that (this adjustment). We needed for that piece to be more professional than we had represented ourselves before to make sure we were worthy of doing avalanche professional work. That didn’t mean taking over impact pressures on homes and buildings, and what I deemed true engineering, but it did mean we should do a lot better job of understanding what we can deliver and what we can’t. So that was where the professional development program came from, and I feel pretty darned good that I managed to pull that off with the membership and adopted it before I moved on.
Now that’s a key part of being a member, maintaining a certain level of continuing professional development to maintain your membership in the CAA, and that started in the mid ‘90s.
It was wide-ranging. Some people didn’t like it but some of the management of some of the bigger businesses that were avalanche related, some heli-ski ones, were very supportive and I think they were going to happily implement that for anybody they hired. And I think it became a huge tool for safety in the industry and it especially helped all of us with WorkSafeBC. They used that as a tool to measure our performance, and I liked what we did there because it’s very defining what the performance piece is, and that’s our target to measure, and the outside world needs that.
I know it’s changed but it hasn’t changed a massive amount, so it’s getting better and better, but what I’ve seen from that, I really like it, and pretty proud of pulling that off.
I want to get back to—It’s such a great thing as I’ve said—I want to get back to your conversation with the engineers. I read an article from the summer of 1995, which would have been when you became President, there’s an article talking about your discussion with those professional engineers and coming up with three categories of avalanche work: one was designing structures for avalanche protection, and there was planning avalanche safety program, and then the actual carrying out of avalanche programs.
So, those were deemed three categories of avalanche work and I think I read was only that the first one and maybe the second would involve an engineer, but avalanche professionals could go ahead and drop bombs, and do avalanche control, and day-to-day forecasting on their own without an engineer around. Do you remember how that came about?
I just think the engineers association had that position, and that would have been members of their association that took that opinion, and they carried that. So, then we played back, well, most of those categories should be the practitioners. And I had quite a few meetings with their (membership chair)—his name was Bob I think, I’m not sure his position there, they were representatives of professional practice within APEG(BC). There was a gal (representing APEGBC) in membership and her name was Jenny (I am not certain of her name) and I had many meetings with them, to understand what their target was, and to present what I thought—and we thought—the avalanche industry could deliver and should deliver. I used examples like in Europe, it’s the meteorologists and the professionals in weather that do the forecasting, not engineers. And so there was a lot of dialogue around, is this a structural engineering, natural hazard protection, or is this a weather protection, and, really, it’s kind of both.
But our avalanche forecasting practitioners, which was the way we all grew up under Peter Schaerer and others, we are really more weather focused. Engineering, I would still see that as longer-term hazards like geo hazards with serious impact pressures in engineering. So that was the constant dialogue, and I think, all I can think of, is there was never a final decision that we made, or they made, but I think that we (collectively) made ourselves more professional by our programs and we could define them.
One of the defining things is the continuing professional development program of a professional association of any sort. So that (development) put us in a better place to represent ourselves to be able to do what our skills are. I think it was a multi-year saga of continuing dialogue and I noticed Clair Israelson and others that worked on that (further clarifying responsibilities) after I was no longer President, further clarified that. I think we understand our territories and we work well with the engineers which was in those days, in the ’95 to ‘97 era, felt a lot more like threats from my understanding. They weren’t comfortable meetings most of the time.
As I think I mentioned earlier, the CAA is 15 years old, or not even at this point, so I imagine there’s a bit of an unknown. When I talked to Bruce Jamieson, one of the comments he made was, “Who are these guys and how skilled are they?” So, enhancing the professionalism and skill set of avalanche workers must have been a fairly big focus.
Yes, some people weren’t very happy being asked to meet those criteria on the continuing development piece. Then Bruce Jamieson, I have huge respect for him, he has his foot in both camps, teaching engineering until recently, so he was part of helping define that breakdown on what the practitioners’ piece is and what the engineers’ piece is. And I notice now, and at times I’d hire those people (avalanche engineers) for hazard works when I became a Director of Emergency Programs for Earthquake (Preparedness), and my staff as a highway manager would sign off subdivisions, and those need engineering. There’s no question. Would that house get blown apart or not? So, we would hire people like Bruce Jamieson and others to make those decisions, but they also worked with the practitioners. I think it was a long grind, but I think the process and definition ended up working pretty well for public safety and avalanche understanding.
I’m thinking professionally you’re the manager of the highway avalanche program at this period, so I imagine you must have been working with engineers and avalanche technicians in your own professional life. So, could you see both sides? I guess a better question: how much did you actually work with engineers when you were managing that program?
Not a lot, and I think it’s just because we were more focused really on highways and highway construction and civil and concrete and designs more than the natural hazard piece. That’s a good point.
I think a fallout that I also am somewhat proud of was the Advanced Avalanche Terrain course that came out of that, so that technicians, primarily our avalanche association Professional Members, could be part of that process and work with engineers who would make the ultimate call on is that going to be a hazard there to people and infrastructure from impacts really. And that process defined—like Europeans, the European models—criteria for zoning, which we really didn’t have before. Peter Schaerer did, and people did, but we as an industry, and all of Canadian subdivision approval jurisdictions, which are usually government, mostly government. So, Clair Israelson helped us get (grant) funding for building those courses and defining those criteria, and Bruce Jamieson and others participated in writing those criteria for zoning.
Then I distributed them—or we did from the Avalanche Association—to all the governments and jurisdictions (throughout Canada) that do Natural Hazards. And we did that for British Columbia also, so the vast majority of those approving bodies and regional districts use those criteria for helping guide their decision-making for zoning for subdivisions primarily. So, we did that in that era, and I think that’s pretty great that that was done with our association members who are engineers and practitioners.
I didn’t know that all. You also mentioned an avalanche terrain mapping course?
That was kind of one-in-the-same, part of the same package. A document that we built with funding that Clair got through the Federal government. This was all done by members and done by the Association. I happened to work for the Ministry of Transportation, but they actually didn’t support that initiative, so we as the Association did it on our own, and then sent them the gift back so they could use it (in hazard management decisions). So, with my job as a District Manager, and if there was a subdivision approval through my staff, I could use the criteria written by the Association to go out and hire somebody (an engineer) like a Bruce Jamieson to write a report. We would use those criteria, so those specs, that the Avalanche Association wrote that defined the requirements for that. It was peer reviewed internationally, so we did a pretty good job I think of getting a professional product that still stands as a tool that’s used for more than just…
What was the course you created? Like how to go about mapping avalanches?
Yes. I think it’s just called an Advanced Avalanche Terrain Mapping course (the CAA created this, under my suggestion). A few people took it. I think the challenge was it was difficult to get that many people to come and take that course because I’m not sure how many had interest in that. (Most avalanche practitioners do not become involved in these long-term hazard decisions.) Certainly, I don’t know how many times it’s been given; I know of at least four, but I don’t know beyond that. You can go blow dust off those documents and run another course, I’m not sure? There were quite a few manuals made and distributed.
And I don’t remember the follow-up from there, but I do know it got application by learning by me as a government employee and a senior government manager, and that it was used in many of the jurisdictions throughout B.C. when people had concerns about avalanche hazards. Government would always make some mistakes, like anybody makes mistakes, when you approve a subdivision, and then go, “Oh oh! It looks like there’s an avalanche path in somebody’s yard, so you better get someone to look at what we’ve done.” There’s not many of those, but (we now have consistent) criteria to define legally what should and shouldn’t be done.
I want to jump in with the Canadian Avalanche Centre which would have been four or five years old, but I guess you were on the Board before so you would have been involved with the growing pains, or the startup pains of the Canadian Avalanche Centre, and InfoEx and the public bulletins that came out of that. So maybe we can start, and I’ll ask if there’s any thoughts on getting InfoEx up and going and getting operations participating. What was that like?
I think that was a group thing. And you know when I said my first real learning in the Cariboo with monster avalanches and no one told anybody—we didn’t even think about it, so that was firsthand for me. There were a few Coroner’s Reports that said, “People are dying here, and people know something about the avalanche hazard, and they should talk to each other so that there’s less people dying.” Those were some things that came out of some coroner’s reports.
So, we in Board meetings were talking about that, and can we do something about it? And I think the whole thing became—it was the whole Association—the members thought that was a good idea, but everybody was worried about the liability piece. What if they say something and it goes to somebody else, who then makes the decision? On the liability piece, who said it was a high hazard or a low hazard? So, that was really the tough part. And then I think we all did our best to influence each other, because we knew this should be done. And we ended up building that exchange with the Canadian Avalanche Centre being the conduit to having no liability and so that information would go back out with mountain ranges on it, but not really say who sent that data in.
I think we started where it was 800 bucks per agency, so me looking after snow avalanche programs for highways I think we had nine programs, so nine programs paid 800 bucks, and ski hills paid 800 bucks, and the heli-ski companies paid 800 bucks. And then that became the money that would build the data distribution system, and everybody signed off on that.
Once we finally got there, I think it worked excellently. So, that’s probably the beginning of the Centre. There was a little bit of money to pay a data expert and we got an Executive Director to manage the whole thing, and I guess that was really the beginning. I think everybody saw that need there, everybody was nervous, but everybody realized we should. There was some good leadership. I’m not speaking about me, I’m speaking about everybody making that happen. That was fun times, but it was always big challenges. And maybe it’s always a challenge, but “Where is the money coming from?”
Yes and the data thing. Who owns the data and how is it shared and how is it presented? Does the public get to see it? How do we keep it private so we can share it freely? And back then it was all done on fax mostly.
Yes. And a lot of problem with the software, if you wanted to call it that, and the systems, and there was hard communications in the middle of nowhere, where it’s not so hard anymore. The world is different now. I’m renting a little shack in the middle of Highway 8 (where cell service was destroyed in the ‘atmospheric river’ floods of 2021). The guy I’m renting it from is a bit of a techy and he’s got Starlink out the door, so Elon Musks’ system, so I can download a 100 mb AutoCAD file in a couple of seconds in the middle of nowhere, which I find pretty bizarre after talking on radios (with repeaters) at Canadian Mountain Holidays to see if we can talk to other lodges. We had some of those challenges just to get the machine to run, so to speak.
I remember, and this was with Clair Israelson, having chats, about—this is a shift from the InfoEx but it’s all part of it—when we took the InfoEx and made it to the public. Then someone had to pay for it. But we thought we could get that, and then we’d be putting out hazard forecasts for the public from this InfoEx. And then we also had a big legal challenge to make sure that that was going to be safe for all our industry and make sure they were comfortable feeding that (a public system) without being defined as one of the groups putting the hazard forecast out. So that was a great legal challenge.
I remember one of Clair’s things, we were probably having a beer, maybe a scotch—that became something that was required at the Board meeting, Alan Dennis started that for us, to finish our Board meetings in my era. I remember Clair saying, “We know we’ve made it if we can ever get an avalanche forecast on the radio, like CBC, where they would say, ‘’These mountains have this hazard, behave yourselves.’” We thought, “Boy we’d have kicked ass if we got there!” Super great. I remember Clair saying that, and it’s super great right now when you see it on TV all the time. Boy, we exceeded any of our own expectations by far. So, well done everybody. That’s when the vision went huge.
In the mid ‘90s, those forecasts that Alan Dennis and his team were putting out weren’t broadcast as prominently on TV or radio?
No, they were not there. And this is more my Avalanche Foundation hat, where all of Alberta’s politicians really were not interested in helping fund anything because that was not needed (as the vast majority of avalanche deaths occurred in BC, not Alberta), and that was not warranted. So, we had a long way to go with the public too, not just the media or anybody else involved.
From my understanding, members didn’t want to pay for the costs associated with the bulletins, or have membership fees go to pay for the bulletin. Was that always the case when you were President?
Yes, it certainly was. The Association never really had any extra money. This was in the Alan Dennis era, where the membership dues were often helping out the funding of, not so much InfoEx—I think the InfoEx paid for itself—but any of those add-on pieces ended up making it tougher for the membership. We didn’t really raise the membership for the public purpose, for the public safety. But I was part of raising that, the professionalism aspect if you will, we needed more administration to manage ourselves. That was a constant challenge and a constant battle, and that’s kind of where the Avalanche Foundation came from. Many people thought we needed to have a fundraising place. Alan Dennis did a lot of stuff spawning that thing. He said something like, “We need a bunch of movie stars to go out and make us a bunch of money so we can do this good stuff for the public.” We kind of got there too.[ii]
I know the tragedy behind that—getting the Trudeaus involved—Michel Trudeau losing his life.
Yes, that was a big piece of that. I remember we had a discussion about trying to get a hold of that guy named Justin (well before the loss of Michel), and he was a school teacher in a private school in Point Grey in Vancouver, and he was a snowboard instructor. So, we thought he would be one hell of a good mascot to send a message. I remember working him over to offer him a free avalanche course in Whistler if he could help us out with fundraising once in a while. That was a piece of where that all started. We gave him a free course so he was qualified and could speak the lingo, and that started that dialogue.
So we created that Foundation with some ideas. Alan Dennis made a bunch of suggestions, but a whole bunch of people did. We started, I think it was in May of ’98 maybe, I wrote it down. Yes, I think it was May of ‘98 we started the Foundation. We gave Thompson (Dave Thompson LLP), my brother-in-law, who wrote up the whole Constitution and registered us as a nonprofit with the Federal Government, or as a charity, in May ’98, and that same year was when Michel Trudeau died in the lake in Kokanee Park (this was coincidental timing; we had been in process of starting the CAF for many months). That drove and allowed the Trudeaus to participate in our Foundation. That was a tragic thing, but also but aligned us (further) with Justin, so it was easier to talk to him and see if he could participate (further than he had already done with us). And then he did, and really helped.
He and I went around (to media events), and I would be his taxi driver and basically tell him what to say when we were driving around going to media locations. To say, “This is what our avalanche industry has done this year.” So, that was a way we started, and then Michel died in that avalanche. Margaret Trudeau participated. In some way in her history, she knew Bryan Adams, and he put on a concert in Cranbrook and he gave us $50,000, so that was the beginning of us finding that money we needed so we could go back to the membership and say, “See we’re getting some money to look after this public stuff.”
I’ve heard about the Bryan Adams fundraiser and saw the pictures on one of The Avalanche News and I wondered, “Why is Bryan Adams in the Avalanche News?” And then I looked inside.
You mentioned getting Justin Trudeau an avalanche course, and I was going to ask if this was around the time when recreational avalanche courses, now the Avalanche Skills Training, in this mid ‘90s period. Were you involved much with that?
Well, that was probably part of our draw, saying, “Hey! Can we get that school teacher guy to help us out?” I wasn’t really involved in that so much. Maybe go back to Bruce Jamieson. I think that was a good idea that he was trying to promote, and I’ll spin it a little bit further. He was thinking, we all were all thinking, we needed to go further in this public (safety) stuff. The public stuff and the snowmobile world, because snowmobilers were starting to die in avalanches in big numbers.
Then we were such, so business, avalanche business focused, that we were a bit of a tight club which we needed to open up. So let’s get some more of the—I don’t know what we’d call them—non-professional frontline, avalanche-related people. Like people who got out to the backcountry and don’t know a lot (about avalanche safety practice), or run backcountry lodges, but they’re not really exposed, so we needed to have a broader exposure for safety for all those people.
That drove a few things, and I think Bruce Jamieson had a pretty great idea to talk to some guy he’d met named Gord Ritchie from the Canadian Ski Patrol Association. He became a big supporter throughout our industry, if we call it that, and so we were expanding that as a group. It wasn’t me directly, that’s for sure. Other people built that; I was just part of what’s called the political campaign.
I knew some people in the snowmobile industry. They were pretty good at helping sponsor. I know Yamaha, I knew someone in Yamaha. He said something like, “Sorry, way more people die driving in their snowmobiles in Quebec when they go too fast and slam into each other than you guys do in avalanches, so we can’t give you much money because you don’t (have as many people die in avalanches enough there).” But he offered, if you bought a Yamaha sled you got a probe and a beacon and a shovel as a free gift for buying a Yamaha sled. We did pretty well there, and they also gave us sleds so we could run snowmobile courses. We were terrible at that because we were all skiers not snowmobilers, so students had a good time with us.
I read that, the first Level 1 course for snowmobilers, Avalanche Operations Level 1 for snowmobilers was taught around this time in the mid ‘90s. I guess that was a response? And I saw there was a year when a lot of snowmobilers died in avalanches in the mid ‘90s as well.
That was a huge driver. And a lot of the snowmobilers that came, they were almost all men, and you know most of them in the beginning were only there because their wife told them, “You’re going to the course or you’re not going sledding again, because you’re not going to make my kid’s dad-less.” So, they were there under duress and not all that thrilled about having to learn about avalanches. So, I would say that was a pretty tough start, but it was humbling for us as non-snowmobile people, struggling our way through. So, I think both groups, let’s call them us and them, sledders and skiers, learned a healthy respect for each other through the whole process.
That was a roll out of RACs (recreational avalanche course), but again, it wasn’t me, I was just one small piece in that. But I see many, many young people now that are so proud that they went and had a RAC course. They’re feeling really good about it, and behave appropriately, and use the products that the avalanche association puts out to help them stay safe. So, we got some place. That’s great when you hear some young guys and gals talk about it like that.
I want to hear a little of explosive issues, hopefully not too long. I know around this time the CAA hired somebody from the Federal Government—I’m forgetting the exact name, or the organization that does studies on explosives. But there were lots of questions around when you could set up the fuses. Do you have to set them up in the field or could you set up the fuses, put them in your backpack and go out? From what I was told the CAA actually funded a study to see what’s the risk if somebody falls with a bunch of explosives in their backpack, of them actually going off. To make sure that CAA workers could go out. Were you involved with that at all?
I wasn’t, but I was fully aware. We had a committee to do their best to manage that. I think Mike Boissonneault was one as a Chair on that, as well as some other people worked on that. I think we, the Association, and Professional Members (were affected), most of those were actually ski hill people, like Whistler, because they were the ones that carried all those bombs so much. They carried that negotiation and that proof piece. At highways we did an awful lot with throwing the bombs out of helicopters with WorkSafe, and I was involved in some of that. I remember flying with some WorkSafe guys who thought they were tough guys and didn’t need to put on a real warm jacket when you take the door off the helicopter. We worked with them a long time to prove it was safe, the best we could, because we had a safe procedure (and made adjustments to our procedures where they had concerns). When they came out—because they were comfortable with what we were doing—when they came out for the final test, they didn’t last that long because they were hypothermic. So, they said that’s good and they went home, and it was good after that.
All I really remember was there were years of that process that was ongoing. We never really got shut down but were constantly under pressure to make sure we did it as appropriately as possible. So, I think our members and our committees did diligence for their own well-being, because that was their business. They did a really good job of working their jurisdictions to make sure we did things safely but also got to continue doing work the way we do it.
One of the big ones there were the fuses—the blasting industry doesn’t use safety fuses— avalanche is the only one now, because they’re all electric, and so there was a long period there of real poor quality fuses and high dud rates. So we in Industry had to swallow the pill on working to make sure we got a good product. That cost a lot of money, meaning per fuse.
The avalanche industry is so small that it was a tough thing to make happen, so it was really well done by members and those people on the committees, and nice to see the industry step up and help us out.
You mentioned earlier the helicopter crash, and I just want to ask a bit more about that. It’s January 11, 1997, when a helicopter on the way to a (CAA) training course crashed and four people died including Art Twomey, who was a long-time avalanche instructor for the CAA. What kind of impact did that have on, maybe on you personally but also on the CAA?
I lost a good friend, Art Twomey. For me, I wasn’t there but I think Phil Hein, Robin Siggers and Gord Burns were on the front line of the response. They all did a great job. Actually, Gord Burns, ex RCMP dog master—I think he lives in the Cranbrook area still—he and Art Twomey were really good buddies. They were Mutt and Jeff. They were very, very different; an old PhD hippie, Art Twomey, and Gord Burns, the cop. They were really good pals, and so that certainly impacted Gord. And I know I would suggest Robin Siggers, who was part of managing the response on the front line, was really impacted. And who wouldn’t be? Phil Hein, Vice-president with me, managed that, and he and I were on the phone a lot. That was a terrible thing.
I personally didn’t feel all that impact. Maybe I was just a little too far away from it. My part was more administration, getting involved with lawyers that would help us and not help us, and dealing with trying to manage all that legal aspect, which was a pretty significant threat from the American families. People died there, so we learned a lot to improve our legal responsibilities and manage things a lot better in a cleaner way. We could say that was the pilot’s error—and that’s where the issue was—but obviously it’s broader than that because we sponsored the course, and then the course was done in private facilities in this case.
Art Twomey and his significant—why can’t I remember her name? I knew her quite well (Margie Jamieson, they were quite well know in the outdoor community). I think it was a really big personal impact to certainly that East Kootenay community. I think the rest of it, I felt like it was more—the impacts were more administratively and legally, and boy, we all have to do our best to manage ourselves as best (we could), so we never have any accidents like that, and we need to be safer. So, it made everybody behave a little bit differently related to how you run courses and how you participate in courses.
I want to ask a bit more about managing the highway avalanche program. You got started there in the late-80s. I just want to briefly talk about what that program looked like when you started and how it evolved. I think you mentioned you were in charge for 13 years.
I always thought Geoff Freer started it all and I thought I grew it. So I took what he made as a base and grew it. So, we, in my tenure, we built a lot bigger weather network, which in Geoff Freer’s days, probably the electronics weren’t that great, so putting a weather station in was an expensive venture and they were not so reliable. In my era they grew. Not like nowadays. It’s easy, you get a camera which costs almost nothing, and can put something up (with all the other more standard electronics and communication options). We built that network.
And that five-level hazard, that was a big piece of my tenure with the CAA and the Ministry of Transportation. So, I think our program became a little more structured and more formal in my era over time. We had some regional programs that we grew, and we expanded to some specific programs that didn’t really exist.
I know in my beginning days, we were just starting a program in Bear Pass, and so all of those got expanded to a more structured delivery of services province-wide for the high hazard areas and the not-so-high ones. We entered some of the avalanche control era that wasn’t just heli-bombing. So that was Gazex and some other technology that Europe had. So we grew in a big way in that territory (to provide more reliable services for the highway network), and I think we’ve done pretty well meeting those targets of keeping the service available to the public and keeping everybody safe. So far, I think there’s zero (avalanche-related) deaths (on the highway network since 1976, in Kootenay Pass prior to an avalanche safety program being in place there).
We’ve had a few incidents.
My favourite was probably in Kootenay Pass, where a couple of windows got blown out of a Kiwi’s car. We were sure happy it was Kiwis, because they were happy they got new windows and we gave them a case of beer and they were OK just to keep on going.
The incidents, since the program was formally built, there really hasn’t been any so, so far so good.
As the manager what did your job entail?
Oh, a bit of bureaucracy in Victoria. The staff all work in different regions, so around the province there’s a bunch of management structures, 11 of them, I think, and senior ones. And those people in that case work for that management group to look after local avalanche programs, or whatever they might be (electronic weather networks, etc.).
A big part of it (my role) was doing the best to communicate and deliver a consistent program with eight different jurisdictions of management and people. So, a lot of time in the field, which I really loved, and that was probably a big piece. And then just collectively with all those teams, doing my best to get consensus and direction, and do the same thing in a consistent fashion to meet a safety bar, and forecast in similar fashion.
I would say one of the tougher ones was that five-level scale. People don’t like change much.
You’re referring to the danger scale?
Yes, the danger scale. That came right back home. That was an international CAA initiative, driven by, I understand, two European fellows who came to ski (in North America), and they interpreted a moderate hazard as something different than what we interpreted it was. And they got themselves in trouble and one or both of them died in the exercise. I don’t remember the details but that’s what started it.
At the time I think we had a four-level scale, I can’t even remember exactly. Americans had a three-level scale, the Italians had a 12-level scale, not a surprise there. The Swiss had a different one, and so you could see the confusion on how it would cause some huge problems (with consistency). With the International Snow Science Workshops, we’d get together and have a chat to see if we could sort something out. I don’t think our guys really wanted to change much to make it a five-level scale, but that was the driven consensus by the international community. So ultimately, we got there, and I think it works.
Well, four of the five levels. I think considerable, and I think Bruce mentioned that “considerable” was what was debated the most, or what to call that middle one. And that name has stuck for 25 years now.
Oh, there was a big battle on which word it was going to be. I liked considerable, but there were other viable ones, and it was a pretty good war. I think some of the war was because people, didn’t want it, period. And even directly (in our programs) I think it made for our guys and gals forecasting (a requirement to refine the forecast further)—moderate was so broad, it was pretty easy to forecast and say, “It’s going to be a moderate.” So, there’s a high end of moderate or a low end of moderate. Which one is it? And when do you do control?? Do you close the road in the middle of that or you don’t close the road? You close the road on a high moderate and not in a low moderate?
So that (the five-level danger scale) became operationally, a solid operational discussion on how you behave yourself for closing the road, and I know it did for the backcountry. As an industry, we did a pretty good job, I think, coming up with that (a consensus of the five-level scale, that also drove operational activities), even though we were just winging it in the beginning. That stuck around for a while too didn’t it. So far so good.
Were you still in charge of the Avalanche program when the two Arts died in the early 2000s? Not Arts, Als (Al Munro and Al Evenchick).
Yes, the two Als, and I think it was January ‘99. I think that was, when you say the Art Twomey accident, I think this one impacted everybody in the Association far more than Art Twomey. Certainly, from my perspective, I think it did. Certainly, it did to the Ministry of Transportation experts. I know in their minds… I invited them all up there to see where the incident was and one of the comments was, “Hey! If those two guys, Al and Al, can do this, could this happen to me?” Am I doing everything right? Is my program right?” They’re looking at a couple of professional guys who died doing this and so could that happen to me too?
Certainly highway staff, avalanche staff, were seriously impacted. I think there was a major change in the industry for the good because of that. I made it up there the next morning, really early. I had to meet WorkSafeBC from Terrace there, so I came from Victoria. It was a long, fast trip; I remember it well.
It delivered the Level 3 course. We changed the approach because…
I’ll step back a little bit. I didn’t want that kind of thing to happen again, so we got a consultant, Clair Israelson, to write a report for us, and I asked him to figure it out, tell me what happened and tell me in the report what we need to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Usually, (after an accident investigation), you would get an engineering or technical report that just defines all the technical stuff and then you put it to file or have a legal battle or whatever it might be in expert findings for that.
He wrote a report that said, “I think these things happened and I might recommend to do those things to fix it.”
(Note: The following paragraph was edited by the interviewee due to the sensitivity of the topic and differs from the recording.)
Really it was a human mistake, they had been working in this northern area for almost a week, they did a spectacular job forecasting, doing avalanche control, making everybody safe. They made a personal decision to ski in a place which was not a safe location, right after all that well managed safety program. It was tough for us to comprehend. That was emotionally impacting in a serious way to those very close to the Al’s. These people made an error in judgement, we can all make mistakes! [JB2] Anyway, out of that, we, the industry, learned that this avalanche safety management process is far more than knowledge about snowflakes and layers in the snowpack, this is about decision-making.
I’ll go sideways there. Heli-ski companies and helicopter companies were piling up quite a few helicopters. Not having deaths, but the insurance industry was saying, “Well, we aren’t going to give you insurance for the machines anymore because you’re wild ass crazy.”
So, one of the fallouts of these deaths was industry got together—heli-ski industry, and highways primarily, but also ski hill industry got together. And I remember being in a course that the insurance industry with Canadian Mountain Holidays, brought in the first female jet fighter pilot for the US Air Force, who was retired, and she was some sort of a psychologist also. She came to talk about how pilots should behave, and you’re a wild-ass crazy pilot or you’re cautious, and (recommended a comprehensive) approach. You have to know who you are. She gave a session to us all that was pretty spectacular.
That’s what that industry did, but we also did that. DOT (experts from Transportation Safety Board of Canada), came, being the Feds, and I think they’re called psychologists. They’re the guys that check in with pilots, for pilot error when you pile up your airplane and maybe a lot of people die. So, they’re about psychology of the pilots (and decision-making processes). And so they would worked with us and the avalanche industry to help teach that mental aspect of decision-making. So that was the beginning of the follow up, right after Al and Al, and at the same time the insurance companies and the heli-ski companies got on board. And that drove us. Clair Israelson helped get some funding from the Federal government. So we put these packages together for the Level 3 course, which now have all the decision-making protocol in them.
That all came out of the Al and Al, a very sad scene in early ‘99. I think there was significant changes that helped us all and did courses the way we see them now.
I talked to Bruce Allen as well, who was the President I think around that time, and yes, I think it was a really tough one for the industry, that tragedy, those deaths.
To move on, we’re getting close to two hours now, so I’m starting to move to wrap things up. You did mention you did 13 years as manager of the avalanche program. Where did you go from there, quickly? You mentioned earthquakes.
I went, I call it “pavement politician.” I went to Cranbrook and looked after highways, everything east of Sicamous. My wife and I never really liked living in Victoria. It’s a beautiful place to visit but we both missed winter so much that that was a place to leave. I thought a change might be nice, but I didn’t know what I wanted. I loved snow avalanche stuff, but I might say, I thought I did most stuff (in snow avalanche management). I was the Chair of the International Snow Science Workshop, I was the manager of the highways stuff (avalanche programs), and I heli-ski guided, and I thought, well? Then the highway group offered me something else, and it happened to have an avalanche program in the middle of that Revelstoke area that would be part of my jurisdiction or responsibility, so I thought “Heck, might as was well try it.”
So, it was just maybe timing. Chris Stethem helped me. I talked to a few people, you know. “What do you think? I’ve only done avalanches my whole life and I love them and why would I do something else?” He was one of the guys that said, “A change is a good thing.” I liked a lot of it. I just called it “pavement and politicians,” that’s what the job was.
I also had some staff rules that no one ever abided by. I had a few offices there—Golden, Revelstoke, Cranbrook, and there was one in Invermere at one point. I said, “In winter, every single meeting we have would be in Revelstoke on a Friday or a Monday. Get used to it.” I didn’t really pull it off, but we did have many in Revelstoke because I loved the mountains there. I worked with Parks Canada because we had a joint highway, their piece was in the middle of my pieces (of the Trans-Canada) if you wanted to call it that. So, I still got to enjoy the mountains and avalanche stuff while I did that, so that was my change piece there.
Then at the end, in the last couple of years, because I’d done various portfolios that they asked me to do, and in places like Vancouver and on the Island, and mostly I’d done sort of hazard management stuff for the last year, they gave me an assignment to do all the earthquake management program for provincial highway response, because this would be a huge part of when the big one comes. So, it was entertaining for a year to do that.
That sounds fascinating, but I feel that’s beyond the scope of this interview. I’d love to talk to you more but, let’s move on to the last two questions which we kind of conclude every interview with. First one: from your perspective what are the most significant achievements of the Canadian Avalanche Association over the years?
I think the professionalism piece, not because you have to be “professional,” but we represent ourselves in a more professional fashion than we did (in the early days), as just people who loved skiing and throwing bombs. I think that’s a really big piece. The professionalism, and, I think, the public safety.
Let’s go professionalism, with proof in our training. We have guided some of the world—Japan for sure, New Zealand for sure—in avalanche training and our style of forecasting avalanches as practitioners on the front line. The rest of the world has meteorologists or scientists or engineers doing that, where we are middle-ground delivery. I think we’ve done a great job. We’ve been ahead of the Americans for almost all of this. They’d shoot first and ask questions later, surprise, surprise. We try hard to forecast first.
I think the professionalism is it, and I think public safety. Back to that story, about the radio (having avalanche forecasts broadcast on radio and TV). We far exceeded that by an agency that’s not direct funded by a government to say, “Go do this safe stuff.” That’s something that the CAA and the industry in Canada has to be super proud of. That’s the two I’d pick.
Looking to the future, what challenges do you see the CAA will face and how do you think the CAA will meet those challenges?
I think the same thing. Professionalism is always going to be the need for, the public demand for superb work. Avalanche workers and avalanche safety, and I think still public safety programs and the relation to the public safety programs is to maintain funding. I haven’t been involved much in the last while, but it is sure great to see. It looks like some solid funding that hasn’t been there for 30 years appears to be there to help properly.
So, I think it’s professionalism, the same thing, same, same. I actually thought, what was going to change, what is going to drop on us? I think the Association, and kind of tying themselves to the Foundation, has made things far better, and I think just keep moving forward to the same challenges that, what have we had, for what is it now, 40 years? We’ve come a long way.
Yes, 40 years.
Thanks so much Jack. I don’t know if there is anything else you want to say but I think we’ve covered a lot of ground here. I’ve really enjoyed this, so thank you so much for your time.
I’ve enjoyed this too. You made me a bit nervous, thinking I’m going to have to remember something, but this has been fun. I heard you were doing this quite a while ago, and I’m really pleased, and thank you for coming for this. It’s been a lot of fun and I’d be pleased to meet you face to face, maybe in Revelstoke.
Transcribed by Susan Hairsine, August 12, 2023
Edited by Jack Bennetto, for clarity and context, November 24, 2023
[i] The Valentine’s Day accident happened on Feb. 14, 1979, at Purcell Heliskiing (not CMH, as the interviewer inadvertently implied). Seven skiers died in a large avalanche in the Purcell Mountains.
[ii] The founding directors of the Canadian Avalanche Foundation were Hans Gmoser, Peter Schaerer, Peter Fuhrmann, Margaret Trudeau, Chris Stethem (President), Jack Bennetto (Vice-president) and Gordon Ritchie (Secretary/Treasurer).