Conquistadors of the Useless (32 page)

With clients it is all very different. They are there for their own pleasure and seek in many little ways to share it with you. They have chosen you because they like you, and there is a real feeling of human warmth. The client knows quite well that he depends utterly on his leader and would be lost without him, that he must trust himself without reserve to the guide's skill and devotion to duty. In such circumstances feelings of friendship and team spirit grow quickly, and the amateur usually remains faithful to his original choice. Quite a lot of my clients have developed into real friends, and I am still guiding some whom I first met in 1947.

The following season was detestable. It never seemed to stop raining, and the quantity of snow which fell on the mountains made difficult climbing out of the question. Lachenal and I did not succeed in carrying out a single one of our projects. But even in the most treacherous weather a guide who really knows his area backwards can snatch smaller brands from burning. He will seize a chance between two bad spells, set out in doubtful conditions, and get back down in the rain. Since the big stuff was ruled out I devoted my time to doing small routes with my clients. After a terrible summer, October was fine enough to continue climbing, and despite the shortness of the days and the increasing cold I did the south ridge of the Aiguille Noire with a Dutch lady. By the end of the season I realised clearly that I preferred guiding to instructing. I already had the nucleus of a clientèle, and taking into account the number of people I had been forced to turn down it appeared that I could launch out on a guiding career with reasonable certainty of success.

I now began to think seriously about leaving the Ecole Nationale, where the work had become a good deal less thrilling. It had recently merged with the old College d'Alpinisme, thereby becoming an institution of some size, and due to this enlargement and a natural process of ageing the healthy empiricism of its early years had given place to rigid organisation. Routine had taken the place of enthusiasm and faith in the future, and dignity the ideal of duty. On each course the number of days spent on more or less useless activities had increased considerably, and by the same token the actual climbs had diminished both in number and standard. The instructors carried less responsibility and the old friendliness had given way to a more official atmosphere. I therefore began to lose interest in the work, and it seemed probable that matters would only get worse. Furthermore there were no hopes of promotion unless I adopted the drastic method of murdering the chief instructor and two or three of my colleagues.

To talk about leaving the Ecole Nationale was, however, a good deal easier than to do so in earnest. The regular salary gave a stability to my way of life which I particularly appreciated after the difficult times at Les Houches, a feeling fully shared by my wife. My winter work at the Ecole was also much more interesting than any I could hope for as an ordinary skiing instructor, which was all I could expect to become if I plumped for independence. At the Ecole I taught nobody but future instructors and young racing skiers who wanted to polish their technique, and this was infinitely more fun than the sort of thing one normally does with clients, who are usually either beginners or mediocre performers.

All this instructing had brought me back to my old form, and as my weekends were always free I had taken up competition work again. Without being a great maestro, I became a reserve for the national team, and pulled off successes in regional and even national events. Among these I came in first by a long way in the slalom in the Mont Blanc area championships, always a very difficult race. I also did quite well at international trials such as the Kandahar, the most important after the world championships, where I gained 11th place in the slalom. After these successes the director of the Ecole, by agreement with the governing authorities of French skiing, entrusted me with the instruction of all the courses in racing skiing, including those for the reserves of the national team. The whole business was enthralling, and I was extremely loth to risk losing it: yet it seemed difficult, if not impossible, to resign from E.N.S.A. in summer but not in winter.

I was still hesitating when an unforeseen occurrence changed everything. One evening I received a telephone call from Gaston Cathiard, president of the Syndicat National des Moniteurs de Ski. He had just had a letter from Canada asking him to recommend a coach-instructor to succeed Emile Allais. It was a most interesting proposition, involving the direction of a ski-school and the training of a strong competitive team. All expenses were to be paid and the salary, while not princely, was at any rate double what I earned in France. All my problems seemed to be solved, and the gates opened on a prospect of freedom, travel and adventure. Images from Jack London and Fenimore Cooper flashed before my eyes, and already I could sense the romance of the great plains with their herds of caribou and famished wolf-packs. I could almost see the tall forests where the snow-shoed trappers plodded from snare to snare. And then there were the Indians, the Eskimos, the huskies, the saloons … even Maria Chapdelaine!
[4]
I took the decision without a second thought.

I embarked early in November at Liverpool. My excitement at this first voyage overseas was quickly quelled by chronic sea-sickness, and after six stormy days I tottered off the ship at Halifax more dead than alive. My ideas about Canada were of the haziest and most romantic kind. I knew that part of the population spoke a kind of old-fangled but just about intelligible French, so I wasn't expecting any language problem. But no sooner had I disembarked than I came up against the manifold difficulties which confront any poor and lonely traveller in a foreign land. The language barrier cuts him off from his fellow men. Surrounded by an ocean of indifference and even hostility, he feels tiny and utterly helpless.

It seemed as though there wasn't a single man in the whole of Halifax who understood a word of French, and the few phrases I tried to concoct out of memories of schoolboy English did not get me any further. Everyone appeared impatient and in a hurry, with a kind of brutality I had never encountered in Europe. The simplest actions became problems: I could not even find out the time and place to catch my train. The customs wanted me to pay fantastic duties on my four pair of skis. I argued and shouted, demanding the presence of an interpreter, but the customs officers were as indifferent to my plight as to the raw November fog.

I was so determined and vehement in my protests that eventually a French-Canadian docker was sent for. I more than half expected him to address me in some ancient dialect, and mentally congratulated myself on having spent so many hours in my youth poring over the works of Rabelais, Montaigne, Ronsard and others. It came as a considerable surprise to find that, apart from a strong rustic accent and a few odd expressions, he spoke exactly the same language as myself.

Actually French is spoken as their normal and sometimes only language by some thirty per cent of Canada's eighteen million inhabitants. These are not scattered evenly among the others, but are concentrated almost entirely in the Province of Quebec, where they constitute over three-quarters of the population. In Montreal, for example, the proportion is around sixty per cent of a million and a half: in Quebec, the ancient capital of Nouvelle-France, ninety per cent of two hundred thousand.

Anyway, thanks to the timely arrival of this docker, my difficulties with the customs were soon solved, and by eleven o'clock I was on the Montreal train. A glance at the map had given me the impression that it was not all that far from Halifax, and after a complicated discussion in English one of the stewards succeeded in explaining that we were due in around 5 p.m. The train now entered a scattered forest of small deciduous trees. At 4.45 I began to collect my things, though outside in the forest there were still no signs of the outskirts of a big city. A quarter of an hour later nothing had changed and I sat down again, presuming we were running late. By 6 p.m. there was still nothing to be seen but trees rushing past, and I got up to ask the steward if I hadn't misunderstood him. Either my English was too poor or his skull too thick for us to communicate, but he kindly went to look for a French-speaking colleague in the next wagon. This worthy seemed rather astonished by my question, and replied:

‘Oui, Monsieur, you are quite right. We are due at Montreal at 5 p.m. – but tomorrow.'

I was beginning to discover the true scale of the world: that France is a mere dot on the surface of the globe, that Canada alone is as big as Europe including Russia, and that four days and five nights are required to get from Halifax to Vancouver.

My ultimate destination was Quebec, where I was to be put up in the Chateau Frontenac, a vast pseudo-mediaeval hotel in the heart of town, boasting seven hundred rooms and almost as many employees. I had two distinct jobs: to run the hotel's ski school on the one hand, and on the other to train the city's racing team.

Quebec is one of the most European towns in North America. Built on a hill with ancient ramparts and narrow, twisting streets, it has an old-world picturesqueness rare in a continent where most towns are built on flat ground and planned in rectangles. During the summer tens of thousands of tourists flock to it from the United States, but in winter, when snow covers the country from coast to coast and temperatures sink to minus-thirty and even minus-forty Centigrade, the Chateau is three-quarters empty. In order to attract more clientèle the management of the hotel had conceived the idea of starting a ski school, and this had already been in some sort of action for several years.

Now at this time the French national team had been carrying off most of the glory in the international skiing competitions, and as a result the ‘French style' was all the fashion. In order to promote his ski school the manager of the Chateau had even gone so far as to employ the actual inventor of the style, Emile Allais; but apparently the results, while appreciable, did not quite match up to the champion's financial terms, and the arrangement only lasted one year. However, the movement was under way, and I had been engaged as Emile's successor.

My work was to teach the French style not to the public, but to the instructors; to supervise their teaching; and also to give displays and demonstrations. As this did not occupy all my time I was also given the job of coaching the city's racing team, which involved accompanying them at weekends. At first sight it all seemed too good to be true, but after a while, mainly for topographical reasons, I began to find it a little disappointing.

Every morning a group of students with three or four instructors would set out by coach for Lac Beauport or Valcartier, where they would spend the day. These were small resorts, mainly deserted except at weekends, each consisting of one fair-sized hotel and a few ski lifts. Unfortunately the slopes were easy-angled and no more than six or seven hundred feet high, good enough for beginners but rather boring even for an average skier.

To make matters worse my instructors were a crude lot who took little pride in their work, and the clients were not very exciting either. The latter consisted mainly of extremely rich men with whom I had nothing whatever in common. However, I was forced to learn English in order to converse with them, and this was to be very useful to me later both in my work as a guide and on Himalayan expeditions.

But if my work for the Chateau Frontenac Ski School was uninspiring, it was fully compensated by the racing team. Despite the lack of really good training-grounds several of its members, students for the most part, were excellent skiers with a particular talent for the slalom. They were a likeable and enthusiastic crowd, and it was a pleasure to work with them. In spite of the lack of adequately steep or long slopes we managed to carry our training to an advanced level, especially in the acrobatic technique of the slalom, and some of the boys made considerable progress. One of them ended by surpassing me, and I had the pleasure of helping him to carry off first prize in the Canadian International Championships against the competition not only of his compatriots, but also a number of well-known Austrians including the famous Egon Schöpp.

A noisy bunch of us would set off almost every weekend to take part in competitions here or there, sometimes even hundreds of miles away. Apart from the fact that they were interesting for their own sake, these trips would often take us to resorts where there were better skiing conditions, so that from time to time I could once again savour the thrills of a great descent taken at high speed. Before long I was allowed to take part in competitions myself, which put me in my seventh heaven, and I was thus enabled to carry off several prizes and a Canadian championship.

My transatlantic journey was less wonderful than I had imagined it, but by and large I had an excellent time: so much so, in fact, that I went back the following year with my wife and another French instructor. After two winters in the country, amounting to a total of some nine months, I had grown quite used to the way of life, and if the mountaineering possibilities had been better I might well have stayed for good. The advantages seemed to me to outweigh the drawbacks.

Canada, especially French Canada, is a country where most French people seem to have trouble in settling down. A good many emigrants come home in disgust after only a few months. All this is quite understandable, but in my view the fault is far more on our side than on that of the Canadians. Paradoxical as it may seem, I find the common tongue more of a hindrance than a help. French Canadian, especially in the big cities, is not so very different from the language as we speak it. Books from France are used at all stages of education, so that the divergence could hardly become very wide. Certainly there is no more difference than between English and American, or Portuguese and Brazilian.

One often hears that Canadian resembles old French. In fact this is far from the truth, archaisms being on the whole rare. One of the most frequently heard is the use of the word ‘malin' in its original sense. For example, people will say ‘un malin temps' instead of ‘un mauvais temps' for bad weather. The main difference between the two dialects is really one of accent. The Canadians speak the language with something like a Norman accent, only stronger. It sounds ugly, and does take a little getting used to. The next most important difference is the number of Gallicised English words. It is quite usual to say ‘crosser la rue' for ‘traverser la rue'. Often the English word will be unchanged, so that I once heard someone ask: