I caught up with Iola Knight a few days before the 22nd Annual Pioneer Skiers Reunion, held Wednesday, Sept. 17 this year on Hollyburn Mountain.
A photograph from her collection takes us back to the spring of 1946. Here is Iola alongside Frances Vajda on Grouse Mountain, both women in the ski-wear of the day, Frances on skis and Iola wearing her "little white hiking boots."
Iola Musfelt was 23 years old in 1946, a hiker and a mountain climber, soon to take up skiing thanks to her future husband, Gordon Knight, a fellow member of the University of British Columbia's Varsity Outdoors Club.
It's a wonder Iola had time for anything extracurricular. She was studying sciences at UBC, exceptional for women at the time. Even more exceptional, Iola was working towards a master's degree with a PhD on the horizon. Each weekday included an early morning trek from the family home on Dundas Street across the city to the university campus and a full day of study that ended when the library closed. Saturdays, she earned 35 cents an hour working at Spencer's department store. Iola achieved the master's degree but circumstances conspired to prevent the PhD. This continues to provoke a pang of regret, but only momentarily. Iola is a woman who takes life as it comes.
That attitude, helped along by the close bonds forged over time with fellow Hollyburners, saw Iola through the Pioneer Skiers Reunion this year, the first without Gordon by her side. Iola's husband, best friend and companion for 68 years, died in May, two months before his 93rd birthday.
"You've heard how we got involved with Hollyburn, haven't you? Gordon and I had developed an exercise program of cycling, hiking, skiing and swimming." A day of cycling on the mountain in 1992 happened to coincide with the first Pioneer Skiers Reunion. "We noticed a lot of people our age floating around. It turned out Gordon knew some of them from his early days on the mountain."
A memoir by pioneer skier Naomi McInnes is posted with others on the Hollyburn Heritage Society website. She begins, "In the late 1930s we were one big family, we who hiked, skied, chopped wood, built log cabins and escaped each weekend to the marvelous play land fondly referred to as 'up the hill.'" Such memories inspired Naomi and her husband Bud to reunite that family and recall those halcyon days on Hollyburn.
Gordon and Iola participated in the reunion every year after that auspicious day at Hollyburn Lodge. As the seasons rolled on, their connection with the mountain deepened. In 1998, with Bob and Greta Tapp and other cabin owners, they set up the Ski Camp Heritage Project to restore Hollyburn Lodge at First Lake. A few years later, the Knights joined with the Tapps to establish Hollyburn Heritage Society, dedicated to the celebration of mountain life on the North Shore.
"We were always mountain people," says Iola. "A happy day in Gordon's life was the day our son said he'd rather stay home and ski than go to Hawaii."
The Knights raised their children in a house they built in 1964, one of West Vancouver's rare "Alcan" houses, constructed with aluminum window frames and cladding. With Tony and Tami in school at Irwin Park elementary and Hillside secondary, Iola had time to return to the sciences, this time as a volunteer at the Vancouver Aquarium, a commitment that continued into the 1980s. By then, with Gordon retired from his career as a civil engineer, the Knights had added snowshoeing, cycling and cross-country skiing to their rota of outdoor activities. There was time to give back to their community too, through their work with Hollyburn Heritage Society and with the preservation of local heritage in all its forms, including the memoirs that Iola is currently engaged upon.
Iola Knight continues to forge her path through life. Its foundations are love and respect for the natural world, active participation in society, recognition of the importance of the past and the ability to meet what life brings with patience and humour. The example set by Iola and Gordon - two lives well lived - is their greatest legacy.
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. 778-279-2275 [email protected]
