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Glen Boles, a founding member of the Calgary Mountain Club and one of the club’s first Honorary Members, died on Thursday, January 13, in Cochrane. Glen was a much loved member of the mountaineering community and a prolific climber, having summited more than 500 peaks and almost reaching the top of all the 11,000ers in the Rocky Mountains and the Columbia Mountains.
Born in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Glen came west to Calgary in the early 1950s. Within a few years he was working as a draftsman for the City of Calgary Waterworks Department and would spend all his professional life with the city, retiring in 1991.
Introduced to climbing by Heinz Kahl in 1957, Glen took to it with a passion. In the early sixties he pioneered several difficult new routes with Brian Greenwood but his finest mountaineering achievement was perhaps the first ascent of Good Neighbour Peak in the St. Elias Mountains of the Yukon with the Alpine Club of Canada, in 1967.
Glen was also a member of ‘The Grizzly Group’ a band of about eight keen mountaineers who climbed together on weekends throughout the summer for several decades. With these companions, Glen explored the Rocky Mountains from end to end and made hundreds of ascents.
Glen was also a fine photographer and artist. He always carried two cameras, one for colour and one for black and white, and amassed an impressive collection of images. Then he turned his hand to art and his finely detailed drawings of peaks and animals have become much prized and can be found in many collections.
With Bill Putnam and Robert Kruszyna, Glen collaborated to create the guidebooks to the Rocky Mountains of Canada and with Putnam and Roger Laurilla to produce a book called Place Names of the Canadian Alps. In 2006, working with Gill Daffern at Rocky Mountain Books, Glen created a beautiful volume of his photographs and art called My Mountain Album.
But the love of Glen’s life was his wife Liz. Glen married Elizabeth Hansma in 1965 and they spent 56 wonderful years together. Liz loved the mountains too and they hiked and skied together and sometimes climbed a peak. The pair volunteered as ski friends at the Lake Louise Ski Resort and spent most of their weekends during the winter months on the ski slopes. For many years they came to the CMC Annual Dinner or the ACC Mountain Guides Ball, where they looked very beautiful and classy, Liz in a fine dress and Glen in his tuxedo.
Glen was much honoured during his life and was an honorary member of the Calgary Mountain Club, the Alpine Club of Canada, and the American Alpine Club. Glen was awarded the Bill March Summit of Excellence Award in 2005.
A fine gentleman, Glen made many friends. He spread sunshine wherever he went and will be greatly missed.
/Chic Scott
