Everybody around Bill Ruddy worked, whether you were his employee or not.

Even after retiring and selling his businesses, Jasper’s tourism pioneer was known for putting his young grandchildren to work.

He can be remembered sitting in his lawn chair, with a cigar and rum in hand, as he supervised the kids using power tools in the back yard of his Maligne Avenue home. They were making the pickets for a fence.

He had the two oldest kids with jig saws, another two with sanders, another two – decked out in paper coveralls with the crotch dragging on the ground and the legs rolled up dozens of times – staining the boards with rollers, and the two youngest kids setting the boards out to dry, recalls Ruddy’s eldest son, Gordon.

“The kids were just beside themselves with glee. You know, they’ve got saws going; they’ve got sanders going; they’ve got rollers going. I just cracked up. That was so Bill. You know, everybody’s going full blast.

“Everybody around Bill worked.”

Ruddy was born in Hanna, Alta., in 1924 and passed away in Jasper Nov. 5 at the age of 87. He moved to Jasper in the 1940s when his father, a railroader, decided to relocate the family. Shortly after, he took a post in the navy as a radio operator. While stationed in Ste. Hyacinthe, Que., Ruddy met a member of the Bombardier family – a family that shortly after the Second World War released the first machine capable of travelling on snow.

Upon returning to Jasper after the war – which ended on Ruddy’s 21st birthday (May 8, 1945) – Ruddy met his future wife, Evelyn Hargreaves, whom he married in 1948.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Ruddy worked as Jasper Park’s health inspector.  

It was while driving to the Columbia Icefields Chalet, down the Icefields Parkway, that Ruddy started thinking about the Athabasca Glacier and how Bombardier’s 15-passenger snowmobiles could transform the area into a destination.

It was in 1951 that Ruddy and his friend Tom McCready brought that vision to life, by obtaining permission from Parks Canada to use the machines to transport visitors to the Athabasca Glacier in the summer and to transport skiers to Marmot Basin in the winter.

In 1955, Ruddy saw another tourism opportunity. He bought one of two companies operating boat tours at Maligne Lake and renamed it Maligne Tours.

As his businesses grew, so did his family. In 1950, Gordon was born, then Russell in 1951, followed by twin girls, Maureen (Mo) and Susan (Susie) in 1959.

Once old enough, all of Ruddy’s children worked for the family businesses.

“Working for him was a rippin’ good trip,” said Gordon. “He was an incredible man to work for. 

“Work hard and play hard, too. That’s what it was like hanging out with Bill.”

Ruddy was an eccentric dresser. He was known for wearing many “snappy hats.” And while working he always wore dark green wool clothes with a Swiss-style, green wool hat. Because of his quirky attire, his staff and children referred to him as “the man in green, who runs the scene at Maligne.”

Ruddy retired in 1979, but not before building the Maligne Building and helping found the Mountain Park Lodges group. He sold his snowmobile tour business to Brewster Transport, and sold Maligne Tours to Gerry Levasseur. 

Ruddy had seven grandchildren: Dana, Dylan and Darcy Ruddy; Logan and Nicole Rutherford; and Curtis and Kassi Horton.

He was predeceased by his wife Evelyn in 1992 and his son Russell in 2005. His other three children, Gord, Mo and Susie still live in Jasper, the community whose tourism industry he helped create.

In 2007, Ruddy was named Citizen of the Century by the Jasper Booster during the Jasper National Park centennial. He was selected from a group of eight distinguished Jasperites by the people of Jasper.

“I think that just says it all,” said Gordon, who remembers his father as the most humble, courageous, gracious and ethical man he has ever met.

“He died without having to say sorry to anyone in his whole life. That’s pretty remarkable for a businessman.

“You know, people are upset that he’s dead and it’s a little sad sometimes, but goddamn he had a good ride and he dragged his kids right through the middle of it. It was just wonderful being his child.”