Dossiê/Processo 17 - Summer 1979 people in camp

Alex Douglas is a retired rentals and retail manager of Mt. Seymour ski area and a former Dave Murray Summer Ski Camps camp director. He moved to British Columbia in 1975 and took a job at Mt. Seymour as a liftie (chairlift operator), rising to the role of rentals and retail manager, a position he maintained until he retired in 2020. He started in 1972 as a camper with the Toni Sailer Summer Ski Camp, and, after it became the Dave Murray Summer Ski Camp on Whistler Mountain (then Blackcomb Glacier), he became the camp director in charge of day to day activities of the camp, a position he held for 22 years. For decades prior to his retirement, Douglas and his wife lived year-round in the two-storey log cabin overlooking the Mt. Seymour beginner ski area that was built by Ole Johansen, Seymour’s first official park ranger, in the early 1940s. Douglas is a self-described collector and history-lover, collecting memorabilia and other souvenirs from the Mt. Seymour's early ski pioneers of the 1930s and 1940s. He ran the North Shor Pioneer Skiers Reunion for decades in tandem with the Hollyburn Heritage Society. In the summers, he worked as a tour guide, first for the Rocky Mountaineer train, running his own tours around Vancouver and the North Shore under the name 'Uncle Al's Cabin Tours'. In the winter of 2019, a documentary movie called “Echo Across Mt Seymour” had its world premiere at the WIMFF, following Alex’s efforts with the Mt. Seymour History Project and Uncle Al’s Cabin Tours to keep the history of early skiers alive. Since retiring, he has continued working as a travel guide in Vancouver in the summers and skiing during the winters. He is a member of the North Vancouver Museum and Archives, the Whistler Museum and Archives, and the Deep Cove Heritage Society.