Gabriel Beaudry’s brief appearance at the 1948 Olympic Summer Games as a rower for Canada (where he and partner Fred Graves did not advance to the semi-finals in the double sculls event) belies what would later become his true athletic passion, that of a skier. It was not uncharacteristic of him, however, to undertake numerous athletic pursuits and, indeed, in his youth he was not only a North American and European rowing champion, but also excelled in college football, which helped him pay for his education at the University of Ottawa. He won Canada’s Henley Royal Regatta in 1949, ahead of Bob Williams. It was not until he was nearly 40 that he began to pursue skiing, after a trip to Whistler, British Columbia, years before it became a popular ski venue and he became one of several leading figures of his generation to help develop the site and the sport. For many years he worked as a ski teacher and for a time was the director of the Canadian Ski Association, which later became Alpine Canada. He continued to teach through his sixties, but he was eventually weakened, and killed, by Parkinson’s Disease.
Canada