What does it take to be your best? Like really your best? Like world champion / Olympic champion best?  Well there's not doubt it all starts with talent sure,  but after that what does it take?

You can train hard, you can train well and you can clock infinite miles of training, but anyone can do that. Anyone can put in the time required to practice, but does that get you great? Maybe sometimes. Does it get you World Champion great? Unlikely.

Talk to any gold medal winner and without a doubt the first person they will thank for their success will be the person that believed in them, the person that had confidence in them, the person that found what was great about them and helped them do a whole lot more of that. The person they trusted, and who trusted them back, the person that helped them get to a place where their ability to win matched up with their belief that they could. Some people call it a coach, many other legends call him Butch Boutry.

While you may know him purely by the four decare tenure of his ski shop sign on Washington Street in Rossland,  Bouth Boutry is a bit of a big deal in the Canadian ski world. He raced on the national team, was the Western Canadian Champion, and later found his groove as a future hall of fame coach. If you could pinpoint a single patient zero in the epidemic of winning that was the Crazy Canucks for a decade starting in the early 70's that may just be Butch. He was the coach of a young Jungle Jim Hunter (the first Canadian male skier to win a medal at the Olympics),14 time World Cup podium finisher and Olympian Ken Read, overall World Cup champion Steve Podborski and many others.

Butch was also a Rosslander who loved his small City and ski hill more than any others and raised his family along with his wife here for most of his life.

The quiet man shuffling about his ski shop was the seed for a huge amount of winning and success on ski hills across the globe and Butch Boutry most definitely has Roots in the Koots.

We had a few guests join us for this episode. It is amazing how easy it is to get the biggest neames in Canadian skiing history on the phone for a chat when you start throwing Butch's name around. The amount of good will out there for a man who hasnt coached these guys in 50 years was off the charts. I'll be posting some mini-episodes in the near future just on the conversations with Ken, Jim and Steve.

Participation... Getting your hands dirty.... getting involved.... These are the core principles of a functioning community and a democracy. It takes hard work, cooperation and dedication over time to truly build a home, community and province worth living in. Perhaps more importantly it takes people dedicated to that cause to put in the long hours and long effort required to make long lasting positive change

Corky Evans is one of those people, and there are few lives in the West Kootenay that have not been touched or impacted in some fashion either directly from his work or as an offshoot of a legacy that he worked on.

It all started in a scenario seemingly unlikely to produce a leader for the people and communities of the West Kootenay.

From an urban life amid a country in shambles in the late 60's that could sadly be a story right out of todays news, to a pioneering life in rural BC Corky Evans has undergone some significant shifts in his life, and in each instance seems to have built resiliency and resolve to make the world a better place.

From race riots to river rights the main narrative throughout the first seven decades of his life has been one of getting involved, participating , getting his hands dirty and not being afraid to say what is on his mind.

I connected with Corky on the front porch of his home of 50 years in Winlaw for an insightful conversation into the views of a man of the land and a man of the people.

Let's dive in, and hear more about how a man bent on getting involved and making a disturbance when necessary got his start and ended up leaving a significant legacy of community wealth in his wake.

Every town has it's characters and it's legends. The people that help create the culture, the setting, the feel and the soul of a community. Everyone of us do it to an extent and indeed a community can't be a community with out everyone of us playing our roles. Some however stand out. Some have reached mythical proportions. Some are seen and thought to be known by many in town, but often only in a mythical, surface level type way. Gary Camozzi is one of those people that help make up Rossland's fabric. Many know him as the scruffy fellow seen traversing Columbia Ave in his snowsuit regardless of the weather. Many others know him as a storyteller not afraid to spin a tale at a gathering. Many however know Gary as much for the caricature and legend that has been created around him. Gay himself acknowledges that most people know him as the smart kid that dabbled in drugs and ended up living on the backside of Red mountain. There is so much more to the story than that however, and that story itself is not entirely true.

A few weeks back. I stopped down to Gary's trailer just off Columbia Ave's west end to say hello and see if he was interested in doing an interview for a new podcast I was working on. We ended up on a six hour epic journey through his history, all of our history and just about every bit of history you can imagine culminating with how it all ties back to the change that is needed and indeed is happening in present day. To say I was floored would be an understatement. Gary and I had chatted before but this was a whole new level of wow. Over a few bottles of wine we recounted some unbelievable tales and shared a bond over our shared interest and knowledge in the spiritual and mystic. It was perhaps the best unrecorded interview of my life.

A few days later we got together in my studio on Georgia St and sat down for a more structured interview to hear the stories of how Gary came to be, some of the wild tales he's been a part of and what it all means for the rest of us and our future.

All of this is to say that Gary is much much more than the snowsuit clad fellow you have seen around town and perhaps someone that we all should be paying a little more attention too.

Let's dive in, and hear the story of Gary Donald Camozzi and his Roots in the Koots.