‘Banff has been everything to him’: Local ski legend Eddie Hunter turns 100

BANFF – One hundred ain’t got nothing on Eddie Hunter.

A lifelong skier, cinematographer, photographer and writer, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who has flown down the slopes of Mount Norquay more times than Hunter.

After a horse-drawn carriage ride through the streets of Banff he’s called home the last 92 years, the local legend blew out the candles on his 100th birthday cake on Saturday (May 23) with a crowd of familiar faces gathered at the train station to mark the century-in-the-making celebration.

“Banff has been everything to him,” said Hunter’s daughter, Mystee Maisonet. “He actually sold ice cream on the platform here when he was in his teens.”

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Hunter, who has a chairlift and ski run (EDge Hunter) in his name at Norquay, a hill he shares a birthday with, never looked back after lacing on leather boots and clipping into pine skis at eight years old.

“I do love skiing. To make a run in powder snow and have those little snowflakes follow you down, it’s another romance,” Hunter said during a 2017 interview with Chic Scott as part of The Whyte Museum’s Fireside Chat oral history project.

“I think [skiing] was his true love and his main joy in life,” added Kendall Hunter, Hunter’s youngest daughter, noting the milestone birthday was also recognized with letters from King Charles III and Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Born in Edmonton in 1926, Hunter moved with his family to Banff in 1934 and has called the mountain town home ever since.

After a century of life, some memories are a little fuzzier than others, but it’s the ones spent on the ski hill that Hunter seems to recall effortlessly, whether it was the hours of trekking up to the bowl at Norquay long before a gondola or even a rope tow was in sight or putting his two daughters on skis almost at the same time they learned to walk.

“It seems like I’ve known Eddie forever,” said Chic Scott, legendary mountaineer, author and friend of Hunter’s.

“He means continuity [to Banff] and Eddie can take us, in his stories and just by being who he is, can take us back to an earlier time, which in retrospect always seems more wonderful and, in many ways, it was, but he can take us back to the past.”

Hunter was right in the midst of those pioneering days of skiing in the Rockies, capturing much of it through his photography and film work, including in his 1969 film Ski Spree and How the West was Skied – preserved in The Whyte Museum’s archives alongside many of Hunter’s photographs.

“I remember just being young and him asking me if I were going to take a picture of what was around me, what would I take a picture of, and I think that’s just an example of how dad looks at the world very differently,” said Kendall. “He taught me how to not always look at the world the way everybody does – probably a bit more creatively.”

Hosting his children’s show, Head Hunter, for several years, Hunter also made a couple of his own appearances camera side starting with his comedic role in the Academy Award-nominated 1948 film Snow Capers, and later when he was dubbed the “Wise Man” in Sherpa Cinema’s 2014 Norquay film series, Sculpted in Time, that toured in the Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival.

“Few people have touched the Banff community quite like Eddie Hunter,” The Whyte Museum wrote in a post honouring the Banff character’s birthday.

Hunter would also go on to compete as a ski racer in Europe starting in 1954 and chronicled the history of Mount Norquay in his book The Spirit of Norquay.

Strapping on his skis and ripping down the North American run up until age 99, Hunter has fulfilled his vow of skiing at Norquay every year since the “Big Chair” opened in 1948.

“I know he inspires people. I think we all love to see someone make it to 100,” said Kendall.

“I think that’s kind of the motto he’s lived by,” Maisonet added. “He’s always done what he’s loved to do.”

The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada. This position covers Îyârhe (Stoney) Nakoda First Nation and Kananaskis Country.