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All in — a fish tale about India, acting and mastering the green meanies

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop and look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself: 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.
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Fish Boulton & Angie Nolan

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop and look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself: 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'"

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Courage comes in many forms. There's the physical kind. And the emotional kind. The scientific kind and the artistic kind. Even the political kind. It's one of our most vital traits — as the great narrative of human development has charted so well over the centuries.

To show courage in the face of overwhelming odds — whether David attacking Goliath or Juliet defying the Capulets... or even R2D2 taking on the Evil Empire — well, it's the one story-theme that human audiences, old folk and young, never seem to tire of.

Maybe that's why I'm so intrigued with this Fish Boulton character. I mean, the guy is bold in all aspects of his life. Whether ski touring or stage-acting, travelling, filmmaking or simply hanging out with friends, it's almost a creed for him... as in: "life's not worth living if I'm not scaring myself a little (or a lot) in the things I do."

But enough of my words. Let's listen to Fish recount how he ended up spending much of 2004-2005 crossing India by bike.

"It's pretty simple, really." Fish flashes his naughty-kid grin. "I just had to get out of town." And I can't help it. I have to smile back. "Seriously though," he continues. "The girl I was seeing at the time decided to move to Fernie. And I was pretty devastated by the break-up..." He lets a beat pass. Smiles again. "Meanwhile, I was getting into yoga — hard core, as usual — and I wanted to do a teacher training course. So I did some research and saw that there was a really good course I could take in Australia. But then I thought: 'why not go to the root of yoga and get a cultural experience as well?'" He laughs. "Sure, India. And on a bike? Why not? Sounded like a great adventure. But my Whistler friends thought I was crazy."

They had every right to think that way. Fish, you see, had never been out of the country before. As for his experience with Third World locales, "I didn't have a clue," he admits.

No matter. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. And Boulton started planning for his solo ride across one of the craziest countries on earth. "I'd done a lot of mountain biking, you know — mostly downhill stuff — but I'd never really spent any time road riding. That really didn't concern me much though. I figured I'd pick it up fast." He takes a quick breath. "So I found a good deal on a used touring bike, bought it and tweaked it out for the trip." He laughs. "Suddenly I was ready to go."

Just like that. And just like that, Fish found himself dropping into a world way stranger than fiction. "My initial arrival in India — I landed in Chennai on the east coast — was insane... a totally mind-boggling experience." A beat goes by. Another. "It was a life-changing trip," he says finally. "It was the worst of times and it was the best times... for sure."

He dredges up a few memories of his first night for me: "I remember coming out of the plane and into the main terminal. And it's just this big empty hangar with a conveyor belt and a whole lot of people standing in line behind this door frame — just a frame nothing else — and a guard standing next to it."

Fish soon understood that, like everyone else, he would have to go through the doorframe if he wanted his luggage. "It was so surreal," he says. But not as surreal as what was about to hit him. "I finally got my bike and my bags and walked out of the terminal." He stops. Laughs. "That's when the real India hit me. It was like this wall of heat and humidity and this nose-twitching blend of tropical smells. And so-o-o-o-o-o-o many people. I didn't know it at the time, but I had arrived during one of India's principal holidays..."

He says he nearly lost it that first night. "I got to the hotel and totally broke down," he admits. "I was so lonely. So lost..." Fortunately for Fish, things looked a lot brighter the next morning. "I just decided I wasn't going to be a baby about this thing. So off I went."

He never looked back. "I saw so much on that trip. I spent a lot of time at an ashram down south near Kerala studying the philosophy of yoga. It was just off the coast, right in the middle of the jungle..." His voice trails off. Then quickly takes up again. "Of course, there's the Christian Monastery where I stayed for a while too. The monks there were totally self-supporting... it was a really interesting place."

He sighs. Shrugs. "Coming from where I came from — you know, my Winnipeg life — the India trip was a huge change-up for me." Another long pause. He laughs again. "When I got back to Whistler I was like this total hippy-yogi guy... I was so into it."

Granted, Boulton's Indian journey had been far more exotic in tone than his usual adventures — but it wasn't all that much different in intent. Take the way Fish first got into skiing at Whistler. "I got a job one summer as a lifeguard at the Blackcomb Water Ramp," says Fish with a straight face. "It was a great gig, because, you know, I was living in my van back then and they let me park it in the compound so I could live onsite. It was the best accommodation I ever found at Whistler — it had everything: a pool, showers, electrical outlets..."

Yeah, OK. But the skiing part? "Right — well, I've got good kinetic intelligence, you know, so I started coaching a little on the trampoline when I wasn't lifeguarding." If you've been following the story, you should know what's coming.

"Hmm," he says. "I kept looking at that ramp and wondering what it would be like to hit the lip at full speed and fly off that thing. I was still a dedicated snowboarder at the time — I maybe skied once before when I was in junior school — but that was a long time ago." He laughs. Let's a few beats go by. "Frankly? It was terrifying for me to learn how to ski on that ramp. I mean, it's not easy to handle the green meanies (the plastic-bristled ramp surface that doubles for snow in summertime) — even for good skiers. But for a rank beginner? I was scared sh**less every time I went up." A pause. "It took me a little while, you know, but once I mastered the meanies and the in-run, well, taking those jumps was awesome."

See what I mean? The guy seeks danger like a cat seeks mice. And he usually gets what he's looking for. Consider his Whistler acting debut.

"I was working as the manager at Cougar Mountain," Fish begins, "and this gal I'd just hired started talking about the play she was in. One of the guys had dropped out, she said, and they were desperate for a new actor. 'You should try out,' she told me. 'You'd be perfect for the part.'" He shrugs. "So I asked how I could get involved."

And that's how Fish Boulton ended up auditioning for — and getting the part of — a male fairy called Tonkerbell in Heather Paul's Peter Pan-inspired pantomime. "Prancing around the stage in a tutu," he says with a lavish flourish. "That was my first acting role in Whistler."

An aside: "When I was really young," says Fish, "thirteen or so, I decided I wanted to be an actor." He laughs. "So my mom enrolled me in a class. All I remember is being terrified every time I went on stage... Eventually I moved on to other things."

Those who were lucky enough to see the Peter Pan pantomime were treated to quite a show. Meaning? There was no holding back. In his inimitable go-for-it style, Fish delivered a Tonkerbell tour-de-force. "People loved it," he says. He lets a beat pass. "And so did I." Another smile slides across his face. "As for my childhood stage fright, sure I was still nervous before the show. But once we got going..."

A star was born that night. Or so it seems. Since his fairy debut, Fish has become a fixture on the local acting scene. And he's fearless on stage, which makes for great performances. But it goes further than that. "I love the performance aspect of acting, sure," he says, "but I also love the creative process behind the scenes." Which has led him to undertake all sorts of new projects... filmmaking primary among them.

Still, there's a much more important reason why Fish Boulton is beholden to the Whistler acting community. "It was during that Peter Pan pantomime that I met my future wife," he says. "I mean, to me back then, Angie Nolan was this unassailable pro actress... way above my league." A state of affairs that, for our young suitor, merely made the challenge of winning Angie's affection that much more of an adventure. Right Fish? Ah, but that's a whole 'nother story...