An Interview with Bob Harris, RTO4 Operator and Board Member and winner of the King Charles III Coronation Medal
Several people in tourism-related work in our region recently won the King Charles III Coronation Medal: Doug Wilson of the Cambridge Butterfly Conservatory, Kenn Norman, one of the co-founders of the Cambridge Fashion History Museum, and our own board member, Bob Harris, GM of Chicopee Tube Park. One of our staff members, Marie, asked Bob a few questions about the Medal and about the work and life that led to it.
Marie: For what is the King Charles III Coronation Medal given?
Bob: To receive an award, you have to contribute to the community in some outstanding way—either locally, provincially, nationally. For instance, the former mayor of Kitchener, Carl Zehr, received the award.
Marie: Why did you receive the distinction?
Bob: Well, I was bewildered at first. It was for my volunteer work, I believe, combined with my work in recreation and tourism. I did not know the medal existed at all. I’d never heard of it before. Elizabeth was crowned before I was born, and my mother loved the monarchy, so if she was alive today to see this medal, she would be doing handstands. Anyway, there are 30,000 medals awarded in Canada. People get nominated. I was one of them.
Marie: Can you tell us more about your community contributions?
For close to 20 years, I was on the Board of Directors of the Ontario Ski Resorts Association [OSRA], where I was Chair for three years. While I was Chair, we reported actual visitation figures, we made the ski-lift mechanic a trade, created the Ski Resorts Operations course at Georgian College, and moved the OSRA office from a strip mall in Barrie to Collingwood. OSRA is based on paid membership, so with other directors, we worked to make it more relevant to members. We offered skills-based courses in risk management to help ski resorts reduce their exposure to liability. We offered a series of lift mechanic courses and built it into a TSSA trade. A whole series of competencies had to be identified and there were exams involved in making it a legitimate trade. OSRA didn’t think of itself as tourism at the time. That has changed. Kevin Nichol got the job as President six months before the pandemic. He oriented it more toward tourism.
I was also on the board of the Waterloo Region Tourism Marketing Corporation [now known as Explore Waterloo] for six years. And I have been on the RTO4 board since its start in 2011 and through Covid. I joined Ski Patrol when I was 17 and then I also volunteered for Track 3 at Glen Eden [a program run by the Ontario Track3 Adaptive Sports Association that teaches children and youth with disabilities how to ski and snowboard] when I was in my teens and beyond.
Marie: Can you explain your life trajectory? Where did you start? Why did you move in certain directions?
I was born into a dairy farming family in the area of Lowville, Ontario in between Rattlesnake Point and Mount Nemo. Five children were born to my parents over a period of 20 years, and I was the middle child. The economic impact of the Depression was felt hard by my parents. If the word “Depression” was ever uttered in our farmhouse, it just sucked the air out of the room.
My Dad had a grade 8 education. He comes from a long line of farmers—Pennsylvania Dutch who came up from the States. My grandmother on my mother’s side was an orphan from Dumfries, Scotland who was sent to Canada through Dr. Barnardo’s Foundation. Her last name was “Jardine,” a Norman name.
From the ages of 13 to 21, I milked cows on our farm. My Dad told me when I turned 13 that I was a “man” now and he expected me to behave—and work—accordingly. As I grew up, I stayed on the farm and the only time I left was to go to church on Sunday. You were given Sunday afternoons off, so friends from another farm family nearby and I would take our bicycles two concessions down to a swimming hole. During the winter on Sundays, our free time was in the bush. My Dad had a bush between Rattlesnake Point and Crawford Lake, which he sold to the Conservation Authority.
Things changed for me through a family I knew at church. They were a family of Quebecers, the Dolbels, whose kids were my age and the mother, Nancy Dolbel, was an exceptional person, a liberal thinker. She gave me used ski equipment and took me downhill skiing at Glen Eden [a ski resort in Milton, Ontario]. I was 12. I loved skiing right away; going downhill was exhilarating. But I wanted to go often and because I couldn’t afford a pass, I’d have to herringbone up the hill. I couldn’t get on the lifts.
But my friends and I would just grab our skis and mess around in the bush around Glen Eden. The quarry had lapsed out there, so we would go and explore the forests and hills. There were old sheds for horses, even slag piles in there, but there was enough snow cover in the bush that you could set up a course through the trees.
That was the start of my love of skiing.
I was given $200 a month at the dairy for milking cows, so I saved that money to buy ski equipment and a season’s pass at Glen Eden. My mother didn’t stand in the way of my love of skiing. I must have been 95 pounds, and I’d get up at 5am—sometimes 2am if I had to deliver calves—and milk cows.
The work was isolating, and I guess from a social point of view, I didn’t have conversations with too many people. My growth in that area was delayed, I think. I was more introverted when I was young. I couldn’t handle small talk. I still can’t. If you want to have a serious, focused discussion where we get into the nuts and bolts of something, then that’s beautiful. But if someone wants to do small talk, all I am thinking is, “what’s this about?”
My mother saw that when I joined Ski Patrol at 17, I got free skiing and a Ski Patrol jacket. I became Ski Patrol leader at 19. And then at 21, I started snowmaking at Glen Eden and got paid for that.
I came out of high school and went to Mohawk College and got an Electrical Systems Technician diploma. I merrily forgot everything I learned, but when I got to be Area Manager at Glen Eden, it came in handy because when we had to go to tender, we needed strong specs and I knew the electrical side of things. I was always trying to cut our electricity bills! This got me two TIAO Awards for Sustainable Tourism—one in 2016 for the Holding Pond at Chicopee Tube Park and one in 2022 for another project.
I had also worked on sustainable snowmaking for Glen Eden before I went to Chicopee.
The management of Glen Eden wasn’t resort based. So, I went to Seneca College for Recreation Facilities Management and when I graduated, I went back to Glen Eden. Every aspect of Glen Eden had been concessioned out. I became the Rental Manager at 24. That’s when I met Cheryl and got married, too.
Marie: What did you contribute to tourism and ski resort management?
I introduced the mountain bike program at Kelso Conservation Area and worked at Glen Eden and built up the visitation base. [Glen Eden is the Ski and Snowboard Centre within Kelso Conservation Area.] When I started there, it had maybe 30,000 visits but it was up to 180,000 by the time I left. We went from maybe making $500,000 a year to making 5 million+ a year. I was there for 30 years.
I went to Humber College when I was about 32 to study Ski Resort Operations.
What I would learn in the morning I would go back to the workplace in the afternoon and apply it. I went from being a student one year to being a teacher the next. I taught at Humber for about 15 years.
I got the idea of doing upgrade technical courses for ski-lift mechanics through Humber.
The industry was moving away from service lifts to chair lifts. As soon as you put people up in the air, the liability goes through the ceiling. All it would take is one big tragic incident in Ontario and then all ski resorts would see their insurance go sky high to compensate.
I introduced the Ski-Lift Mechanic trade to Ontario. I actually have B-Level certification as a ski-lift mechanic. I worked with TSSA to make the trade happen. Before it became a licensed trade, it was self-regulating. There were no exams. I had to form a committee to back me, and a lot of that backing came from private clubs. Some of the commercial areas fought it. They thought it was the government intruding, but I wanted clear standards. I was worried about people getting hurt. And I was worried about liability. So, I developed risk management strategies to avoid injuries.
And I have done a lot of work in sustainability, particularly environmental.
I’m kind of surprised at the medal because I guess I’ve always had a problem with authority. If the smarts are there, no problem. If they’re not there, then I wonder, “how did you get the position?” In any job, you’re there because of merit: what you create, what you do. I had a problem with the war in Viet Nam. Anything to do with the establishment. I had a problem with the Conservative party. When the Reform and Progressive Conservative parties consolidated to become the Conservative Party, I felt women’s rights were going to be challenged. It seemed to be drifting towards culture wars. You do not advance society if you leave a segment of it behind. My suspicion of authority probably stems from having to work so hard. In farm culture, you act and prove yourself through your actions. But there’s also the authority of tradition, and I grew up with an older brother, so I knew the farm would go to him, not me.
At the end of the day, I guess these attitudes served me. As my wife says, “you just did things differently.”