Time runs out on landmark
Gray Rocks Inn helped open up the Laurentians as a ski centre and then a year-round destination, but in the era of glossy corporate resorts, the family-founded hotel is counting down its final days
By CHERYL CORNACCHIA, The Gazette, March 23, 2009
There are some names in modern Quebec history that instantly light up the nostalgia gene. Belmont Park, the Montreal Forum and Rockhead's Paradise are just three in Montreal.
Now from outside the city, Gray Rocks is poised to join the list of former glories when the old Laurentian tourist resort closes next Sunday after 103 years of operation.
It's a lacklustre name - in lower case, gray/grey rocks are dull and inanimate. But Gray Rocks the resort was a colourful place for most of the 20th century, notable for being at the forefront of a new trend in post-war tourism- the all-inclusive package deal.
And no one was as close to the story of Gray Rocks as the family that founded it - the Wheelers.
It was George and Lucille Wheeler who arrived in St. Jovite in 1894 from Chazy, N.Y., eager to make their fortunes in lumbering, failed - and opened their home as Gray Rocks Inn in 1906.
But from those humble beginnings, the efforts of three generations of Wheelers - from patriarch George to his sons Tom and Harry and, then, onto Harry's sons, Harry Jr. (Biff) and Tom Jr. - made Gray Rocks the place so many Montrealers fondly remember.
"It was a wonderful era," said Biff Wheeler, now 72 and living in Canmore, Alta. "It was lots of fun - and yes, stressful, too."
From fishing, hunting, snowshoeing and berry picking in the early days on through tennis (starting in 1910), golf (1920), mountain climbing, dog sledding, cross-country skiing, downhill skiing and all manner of watersports, he said, there wasn't much in the way of sports and recreation the resort failed to deliver.
But "generation after generation kept coming back," said Wheeler - the last member of the family to own and operate the resort. He sold in 1983.
"We had a fantastic clientele," he said, his mind flashing through the years. "Blue-collars, white-collars, we had all sorts of people."
The place attracted the rich, the famous, even the infamous - the American gangster Al Capone spent one September at the resort during the 1930s.
Although saddened when he heard that today's owners had deemed Gray Rocks a "losing proposition" and they planned to close the resort for good March 29, he said, he resigned himself to that possibility some time ago.
Looking back, now, he said, he could only be proud of what his family had built and the untold numbers who fell in love with the Laurentian mountains thanks to Gray Rocks.
He recollected how it was his father, Harry Wheeler, who had the tourism epiphany that positioned the resort for the phenomenal success it enjoyed through the 1950s, '60s, '70s and into the '80s.
During the winter of 1949, he drove to Sun Valley, Idaho, so that Biff's older sister, Lucille Wheeler, could race. She later became Canada's first Olympic medalist in downhill skiing when she won bronze in Italy in 1956.
There, he noted that the U.S. resort was "experimenting" with something new: learn-to-ski weeks. "He seized on the idea," Wheeler said.
Gray Rocks had put in its first rope tow in 1934, a T-bar in 1944 and under the direction of Austrian Hermann Gadner, had established its own ski school, the Snow Eagle Ski School on the resort's Sugar Peak.
Back from Idaho, his father talked to Réal Charette, then chief instructor of the school, about setting up the one-week learn-to-ski program that was then coupled with food, beverage, entertainment and lodging.
"We never looked back," said Wheeler, noting how the idea became a hit with budget-conscious vacationers.
Soon after, he said, Gray Rocks began offering all-inclusive packages for golf, tennis and horseback riding in the spring and fall, making the resort a four-season destination and creating the template for others that followed.
During the winter season, "it was almost like a cruise ship on snow," said 74-year-old Lucille Wheeler-Vaughan.
"You didn't have to go anywhere. Everything was right there."
Unlike her brother Biff, she left Gray Rocks in 1960 after she married Kaye Vaughan, who was captain of the Ottawa Roughriders from 1953 to 1964. They live today in Knowlton.
But she said she still has strong memories of Gray Rocks and her family's role in opening up the region.
She recalled how the resort was one of the first to bring in snow-making equipment in 1962, then an innovation, and the ski season was extended from November until May.
"There used to be a bumper-sticker, 'I skied Gray Rocks at Thanksgiving,' " said Wheeler-Vaughan, noting how Americans loved to come up for their November Thanksgiving holiday.
In recent years, she said, she has felt sad when she has driven by the resort during the summer on her way to visit family members, such as her brother Tom Wheeler Jr., who lives in Bermuda but keeps a home in the area.
"It just doesn't feel like the old place," Wheeler-Vaughan said. "It makes me sad."
But she conceded it is debatable whether Gray Rocks could have survived had it stayed as a well managed, well-promoted family-run business.
In its heyday, Gray Rocks was what Mont Tremblant is today - the go-to place.
But now the reality is the most popular tourist destinations, Tremblant included, are owned and operated by international conglomerates, Wheeler-Vaughan admitted.
"I don't know," she said wistfully. "You can go to Whistler or Tremblant and other than the height of the mountains, you can feel you are in the same place,"she said.
"That couldn't happen at Gray Rocks."
ccornacchia@thegazette.canwest.com
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That run is short but steep on the top . Great day yesterday as we were down the 117 at Alta with Great bumps and sun . Made turns right to 4.30