Whistler Stories That Need To Be Told
Oral history is important and this podcast captures the confidence and culture that shaped Whistler into a #1 world class resort ... it captures the people and their history from 1969 to now and what it took to develop a unique Western Canadian resort that draws mountain enthusiasts from all over the world for a “quick visit that lasts years”.
“I want a record of what happened here and why it happened in such a short time and how successful we were. I want to interview people that lived here through the development of Whistler.” ~ Bruce Watt, Whistler REALTOR® with RE/MAX Sea to Sky Real Estate
Whistler Stories That Need To Be Told
Everyday is a Bonus!
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Today's guest doesn't just have a ski story — he is ski history. Jim McConkey was born in Barrie, Ontario in 1926, and by the 1960s, Austrian ski legend Ernst Hinterseer was calling him the best all-round skier in the world. Jim became a pioneer of deep-powder, big-mountain skiing decades before "extreme skiing" was even a phrase — famous for hunting out the gnarliest ice, crust, and gullies from Utah's Alta to Snowbird, just to get better.
But skiing was only half the story. Jim taught, directed ski schools, and helped build the sport across North America — from Quebec's Gray Rocks, to Alta with Alf Engen, to Park City, to Sun Peaks — before landing at Whistler in 1968, where he ran the ski school, shops, and heli-skiing operation for nearly two decades and helped put the resort on the map.
He appeared in Warren Miller films, survived a crevasse fall on the Athabasca Glacier, and has a bowl at Alta named after him. He was inducted into the Canadian Ski Hall of Fame in 2001.
In 2026, Jim turns 100 — and he's here to tell us what almost a century on skis actually looked like.
