by Dianne Rinehart
On winter Sunday mornings in the ’60s, anyone travelling down Highway 26 past Georgian Peaks would have been impressed by the sight of Hans Wieland leading a tight line of his entire ski school staff down Rogers’ Run.
“Frankly, on the Rogers’ blue ice, many of us had difficulty staying in the beautiful track set by Hans, but we were inspired to do our best,” Robin Messenger, a.k.a. The Bird, told friends and family at a gathering to celebrate the legendary ski instructor last May.
At a club that is known for its race-winning record, a lot of that success can be credited to Wieland and the culture that he helped start. Wieland, who died December 2021, was the founder and creator of the Georgian Peaks Ski School and led the racing program from 1960 until 1975. He also ran the Slalom Gate Shop in the lodge until he and his wife, Trudy, retired in 1997.
“Hans Wieland was a very good coach,” Ian “Buck” Rogers, one of Georgian Peaks’ co-founders, says in a video recently produced to celebrate the club’s 63rd season.
“He started off with a level of professionalism and it continued on,” says Tomaz Senk, the current head coach and director of alpine programs at Georgian Peaks.
Clearly, Hans set the lift bar high, creating a program in which many Olympic athletes sharpened their edges and skills.
Among them are Jack Crawford, who won bronze in the men’s alpine combined at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, and the Stemmle siblings, Karen and Brian, whose combined Olympic appearances spanned 1984 to 1998.
Nor is The Peaks any slouch when it comes to snowboarding. Michael Ciccarelli is on the Canadian Slopestyle/Big Air team and Calynn Irwin made her Olympic debut at Pyeongchang in 2018.
The key to this success may lie in the coaching that Wieland pioneered—Georgian Peaks now employs 80 ski coaches and 110 instructors. But it takes more than good instruction to churn out top athletes generation after generation.
“And then there is a certain je ne sais quoi. Whether you call it grit, flair, or style, Wieland had it in spades.”
The Peaks’ long, steep terrain helps. Its 250 metres (820 feet) of vertical make it the only ski area in Southern Ontario able to host an F.I.S.-sanctioned giant slalom race.
There’s also the family culture that’s passed down from one generation to the next. Coach Tomaz Senk’s father was once head coach. Wieland’s daughter, Sonja Hamilton, and her husband Matt Hamilton, are keeping their family tradition alive by heading up the adult house league racing program. And Sonja’s brother-in-law is the club’s current president, Nick Hamilton.
Parents, too, are key, says Senk. Be it cheering from the sidelines, or following their kids across the globe—like the late Andrea and Wilf Stemmle, who retired from teaching at Wieland’s ski school in 1972 to travel to races with their children Karen and Brian.
And then there is a certain je ne sais quoi. Whether you call it grit, flair, or style, Wieland had it in spades.
In addition to being an instructor, Wieland was a skilled promoter of the ski equipment manufacturers he represented, one of which was Tyrolia bindings.
Former instructor Fred Holmes recalls a day when “the unthinkable happened.”
“Hans caught a tip and crashed—face first—and slid to a stop. Every one of us were stunned. We had never seen Hans fall.
“After a number of painful seconds with our stomachs churning, Hans looked up from his prone position and said, ‘What a smooth release’.”
