Canada’s Legendary Ski Team
The Crazy Canucks
Winner of the 2009
‘One Book, One Vancouver‘
Award presented by:
The Vancouver Public Library to celebrate Vancouver hosting the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.
Author: Janet Love Morrison
with a foreword by Peter Mansbridge
Released: November 2008
Category: Sports History
ISBN: 978-1-55017-432-8
Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd
P.O. Box 219
Madeira Park, BC
V0N 2H0
CANADA
No one in Europe had even seen anything like it: a handful of young Canadian men fearlessly hurling themselves down the iciest, steepest courses of the World Cup ski racing circuit. In the early 1970s no non-European had ever won a men’s World Cup downhill and nobody expected this to change. Then, in 1975 Canadian Ken Read won at Val d’Isere and the Canadians began appearing on World Cup podiums with increasing regularity. It didn’t take long for journalists to start calling them the ‘Kamikaze Canadians’, but the name that stuck was the ‘Crazy Canucks’.
The courage and high spirits of the young Canadian racers: Dave Murray, Dave Irwin, Ken Read and Steve Podborski made them the favourites across Europe, where Swiss or Austrian or French fans would rather see the Canucks win that their old archrivals. The Crazy Canucks provides a timely look at a distinguished and colourful chapter in Canada’s sporting history.
Janet Love Morrison has written about an important part of our sporting history … For a younger generation, this is like discovering the people who laid the first tracks in fresh powder – the boys of winter who inspired so many who followed.
Peter Mansbridge
CBC Chief Correspondent and Anchor of CBC’s ‘The National’.
In 1997, Love Morrison worked with Summerhill Productions on the CBC’s
Life & Times, Those Crazy Canucks that aired February 1998. The documentary was well received by the network and garnered over one million viewers.
