Brian Sutherland, 1963-2024

“Can’t stop what’s coming.”

That was the message Brian Sutherland would, for many years, send me at some point in the summer.

The text was usually accompanied by a photo of a tree with a single, chlorophyll-deficient leaf.

The first time Brian sent me that cryptic note, I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. But eventually I caught his drift: summer was on its way out, and winter—and more to the point, the ski season—was on its way in. 

He was reminding me that not long after the first yellowing leaf, Jasper’s campgrounds would close, the sun’s angle would become increasingly more oblique and Ullr, the Norse God of Winter, would soon distribute his bounty. Brian and similarly-obsessed Marmot Basin skiers and riders would, once again, be sliding on snow. Can’t stop what’s coming.

Brian, who passed away on January 30 from complications of long Covid, was a familiar face in Jasper.  Moving here from Montreal in 1983, he started out working in the kitchen at Maligne Lake Tours. Before long he was guiding tours on the lake.

He would go on to shine in his many roles as a Jasper lifer. He was fastidious, exacting and took his pursuits seriously—especially those of the extra-curricular variety. People—especially young people—flocked to him. His friends said he had no dimmer. He was either burning white hot or shut off completely. 

Brian was an incredible skier, a meticulous ski technician, a proud local, a gifted story-teller and a patient mentor. He was also a legendary partier and a risk taker. 

Brian was fiercely intelligent and hilariously funny. He was the self-proclaimed head shaman of ARC, the “Alpine Rasta Coalition”, lord of the leisurely and a bar star who quoted Churchill. Many, including myself, found it impossible to resist this witty raconteur and rabble rouser.

Over and above his charisma, his big heart and his rapier wit, Brian was totemic of mid-week powder days, of aprés-ski beers and of late-night poutines. He knew the most discreet places to spark a doobie and the most secret locals-only beaches. He was ageless and hilarious and his antics symbolized my favourite Chic Scott quote: “Get a life, not a job”. 

As one of a special group of locals who plan their entire lives around winter at the hill, Brian would lay waste to the groomers with his Tyrolian-sharp edges. Nothing called out to him like fresh cord. “Very tasty,” I can hear him say. 

And he knew where credit was due. While he liked to note that ski patrollers are “the most underpaid people up here,” he once wrote—under his not-so-secret alias, Max Din—that snow groomers are “the keystone” on which Jasper’s entire visitor economy depends.

“We may be challenged as far as snow is concerned for the time being,” he penned in the young adult-targeted publication, The Skinny. “But rest assured that whatever does fall, will fall into good hands.” 

Brian was notoriously stubborn and tenacious. Eight months after a terrible ski accident in 2007 that shattered his pelvis and left his shoulder blade in splinters, Brian rehabilitated himself – “Ski-hab” he called it. His body was never the same—he lived with arthritic pain in his hip, knee and shoulder—but as the son of an Olympic downhiller, his friends still couldn’t keep up with him.

Although Brian was reluctant to discuss his struggles with long Covid, the subject would come up. I was used to him complaining, hilariously, about lots of things: about Parks, about tourists, about the corporatization of Jasper, about our messed-up world…about the price of beer. Maybe that’s why I didn’t listen more carefully when he groused about his post-pandemic battles. 

Little did I know that they had taken him to a dark place.

A lasting legacy

In the wake of Brian’s passing, parents and team leaders of the Jasper Ski Team wanted to honour the technician who had a big impact on the results that local skiers put up. Brian’s fastidiousness ensured the junior racers’ edges were sharp and their wax was fast. Additionally, the Jasper Ski Team’s award celebrates the carving capabilities that Brian was best known for.

A celebration of Brian’s life will take place on August 4, 2024. Details to follow.

Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com