Dave Irwin: Still skiing and still a Crazy Canuck
by
Pam Doyle
When God gave Dave Irwin his life, he may have said something forewarning, like, "Hang on Dave, it's going to be a wild ride."
And wild and crazy it has been. Not many people have survived what Irwin has and lived to tell the tale. Once one of the former Crazy Canucks and one of the best skiers in the world, Irwin has come through thick and thin, and he's still smiling.
Now 52, Irwin has been a downhill skier all of his life. At the end of this ski season, he celebrated 50 years of downhill skiing, minus one year spent recuperating from a serious brain injury after a skiing accident that almost killed him and left him in a coma for three days — and rebuilding his life for the next 12 months.
Irwin's parents planted him on a pair of skis when he was one and a half years old. The youngster was raised on a ski mountain, as his parents owned Loch Lomond ski resort, just outside of Thunder Bay, Ontario.
"My dad was a 1948 Olympian in St. Moritz, Switzerland," Irwin says over a bowl of tomato soup at Evia Restaurant on Canmore's Main Street. "I had two brothers and several cousins and uncles who were on the national ski team. At least 10 Irwins were on the ski team."
Irwin lived with his family in the ski lodge right on the mountain and had unlimited access to skiing.
"I skied a lot," Irwin says. "I skied all around the mountain. We had a rope tow at the front and I was all over that. We had a steep t-bar and I would find someone at the front of the line who was single. I'd say, ‘I'm with him'."
With his two brothers, Irwin was steeped in the heritage of skiing.
"I learned how to be an athlete," Irwin said. "We talked about it and that was what the family life was about for me. We had day skiing, night skiing. We knew everyone at the ski hill, everyone in the cafeteria; it was a ski life in a ski industry. I learned to be a skier."
Irwin followed his brother Doug to skiing competitions at Mount Baldy. After regularly winning races, Irwin grew and progressed with his skiing abilities.
"My brothers and other relatives on the ski team gave me inspiration," Irwin said. "They told me stuff. That's how it all started."
Irwin went on to become one of the Crazy Canucks, the most winning Canadian ski team in history who were a force to be reckoned with in the 1970s and 80s. Along with Ken Read, Steve Podborski, Jim Hunter and Dave Murray, the Canadians rose to prominence in the World Cups of alpine skiing, a circuit historically dominated by European ski teams. They were also known worldwide for their spectacular falls and crashes.
"They said, ‘That's it guys, if we want to be the best, to do it we have to concentrate'," Irwin said. "So we concentrated on being good downhillers. That was the start of creating the Crazy Canucks."
Irwin won the downhill at the World Cup in Schladming, Austria in 1975. He spent 12 years on the World Cup circuit.
"I can't remember all of it but there was a lot of it that was good," Irwin said. "Just us working on it, trying to be the best."
Irwin enjoyed a respected career in ski racing. He eventually moved to Canmore and started a business in 1984 called Mountain Image, Crazy Canuck souvenirs.
Irwin still loved to compete and on March 21, 2001, he entered a skier cross race at Sunshine Village. During a training run, Irwin miscalculated his landing from one of the bumps on the course and crashed into the top of the next bump. Although he was wearing a helmet, Irwin suffered a severe brain injury. He was flown by rescue helicopter to hospital, where the prognosis was not good.
Dave Irwin celebrated 50 years of downhill skiing this past season, and has enjoyed the sport since the age of two.
|
Life has been a wild ride for Crazy Canuck downhiller Dave Irwin. After battling a brain injury from a skiing accident in 2001, he’s skiing as much as ever.
"The first time I can remember anything, I was sitting on a hospital bed and there were four doctors in front of me," Irwin said. "I hadn't said anything. They were talking to each other. Then I said to them, ‘Am I going to die?' They said, ‘No, you're not going to die'."
Irwin had to relearn how to do everything. With the help of his devoted girlfriend Lynn Harrison, who never gave up on him, he was back on skis a year later.
Although he drives a car by himself and still skis as fluidly and with the grace only a former World Cup skier like himself can master, Irwin is still putting the pieces of his former self back together.
"Some days I have one-minute memory," Irwin said.
Lynn is still by his side, managing the souvenir business and skiing with him when she has the time. Irwin says he had a short ski year this winter, skiing only 75 days. Last year was his best, when he got in 102 ski days including skiing several days at Banff Mt. Norquay, Lake Louise, Panorama, Kimberley and Vail. But most of his skiing, about 99 percent of it, is done at Sunshine Village, Irwin said.
Besides skiing at Sunshine and hooking up with a variety of people on the chair lifts and giving helpful ski tips to appreciative friends and fans, Irwin spends a lot of time in Canmore.
"I work on the walk behind my house," Irwin said. "And I go to the Bagel Company and the library maybe three times a day. In the ski season, maybe once a day."
Irwin also does some public speaking and with Harrison started the Dave Irwin Foundation for Brain Injury, a charity that raises money for brain injury research.
He has a happy home life with Harrison and their adopted dog Buddy.
"Buddy is very good for Dave," Harrison said. "Dogs are very good for people with disabilities."
Harrison is also good for Irwin. She never gave up on him since day one of the accident and she says she always knew he would walk, and ski again, even though he had to relearn everything from scratch.
"He had to relearn to move his little finger," Harrison said. "Doctors expected he had a 89 percent chance of death and 11 percent chance of recovery."
But Harrison was persistent. When Irwin was in the hospital, she brought him flash cards, plastic pegs on a board, a barrel of monkeys game, rehabilitation toys, anything that would help him to learn.
"We'd be sitting in the cafeteria and I'd dump all the salt packages out," Harrison said. "Then I would ask him to put it all back in."
Irwin has made a lot of progress in the past six years, and he says he has a long way to go.
"Doctors say the most recovery happens in the first year," Harrison said. "But if you talk to someone who works in brain injury, they say you improve more every year. It was like he had Alzheimer's but he's going backwards. He's getting better every day. People who haven't seen Dave for four years have a visualization of where he is in his recovery. They think it's static. They don't understand he's improving every day."
And Irwin knows he is improving too. He has no plans of slowing down, and he hopes to get in more ski days next winter.
"I plan to ski until I'm 100," Irwin said. "I can turn, I can go straight when I want to. Why change? It's just another year of skiing."
Pam Doyle is a Canmore photojournalist. She was at Sunshine Village ski resort the day Dave Irwin crashed, and is not alone amongst Canmore residents in gaining inspiration from how he has beaten the odds to ski — and live life to the fullest — again.
|
)
)
