Franz Haaz

Swiss mountain guide and ski instructor who served as Snow School Director at the Lake Louise ski area from 1955 to 1961. In a period when Lake Louise was a “lonely outpost” of Banff National Park; seasonal workers, railway staff, Park Wardens; Haaz brought European technical expertise that transformed youth skiing and laid the groundwork for Olympic-level athletes.

Technique and teaching. Haaz introduced a refined, relaxed style that contrasted with the heavy “work-horse” skiing common in North America. On training grounds such as Eagle Meadow he was described as “floating gracefully” over the snow, with turns that were precise and efficient. He emphasized working with the mountain rather than against it; weight distribution, edge pressure, economy of motion; and his instruction was remembered as “superlative.” He arrived when the resort had only the Prune Picker tow (1952) and Larch Poma (1954); by the time he left, the Von Roll Sedan gondola (1959) and Eagle Poma (1960) had been added.

Lake Louise Ski & Community Club. In 1957 Hal Shepherd, Assistant Park Warden (and a skier trained in the Laurentians by Jack-Rabbit Smith-Johansson), moved to Lake Louise. He bought quality equipment from Johnny Monod of Monod Sports in Banff and founded the Lake Louise Ski & Community Club, hiring Haaz as coach. Shepherd negotiated a landmark arrangement with the one-room school: every Friday afternoon, phys-ed was satisfied by skiing at the hill. By the second winter, all 21 schoolchildren received free skiing and instruction. The racing team; essentially the three Shepherd brothers (Ian, Keith, Michael) and Dave Sprlak; regularly outperformed the much larger Banff Ski Runners (about 25 athletes) at regional races for three years.

Legacy: Keith Shepherd and Zoë Haaz. Keith Shepherd became the first Lake Louise Ski Club member to make the Canadian National Team. He competed at the 1966 FIS World Championships (Portillo), the 1968 Olympics (Grenoble), and scored three top-10 finishes on the World Cup circuit; in 1970 he placed 10th in the alpine combined at Val Gardena. Haaz returned to Switzerland in the early 1960s. His daughter Zoë Haaz (born 1962) went on to win two World Cup races and nine podiums as a member of the Swiss National Team; a continuation of the technical standard he had brought to Lake Louise.

Haaz helped establish professional ski instruction at the resort during a formative period, bridging the early rope-tow era and the arrival of Mike Wiegele as director in 1965. He was part of the Swiss guides tradition that shaped Canadian ski teaching and mountain culture.