"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go."
- TS Eliot
He's not normal. Of that, there's no question. Taking risks — constantly stepping beyond the bounds of conventional behaviour, physically, mentally, emotionally — well, that pretty much defines the man. And yet he does it with such verve and childlike pleasure that he rarely gets reproached for his limit-pushing conduct.
He has imagination to spare. And enough energy to get him in all sorts of trouble. There's no fear there. No insecurity about his status or his level of competence — he's completely at peace with who he is... really, he doesn't seem to care one bit how the rest of the world perceives him. Which means that he can go places that few of us will ever travel to.
Maybe you've seen him on stage. You know, in one of the Chairlift Reviews or in one of Heather Paul's pantomimes. Maybe you caught his Chaplin-inspired role in the 72-Hour Filmmaker Showdown's winning entry last spring. Or his hilarious pratfalling debut in the faux-beer commercial, "The Summer Mountain Mix-Up," he and a friend produced for the Whistler Film Festival a few seasons back.
That's where his fearlessness is most evident. In his acting, his stunt work. That's where the 38-year-old really stands out. I mean, being slapstick-funny — using physical humour to connect with your audience — is a skill not shared by many. Sure, it looks easy, but that's the magic of it: to be good, you have to combine a high degree of athletic skill with flawless comedic timing plus a casual disregard for your own safety. And Fish Boulton is a master of all three.
But to think of him strictly in those terms is to do him a disservice. Why? Because Fish is the kind of person who commits his considerable energy — 100 per cent of it every time — to whatever activity he's decided to get involved with at that moment.
Whether it's teaching himself to ski — from scratch! — because he wants to become a ski patroller, or spending a year — a year! — cycling across India to learn more about yoga, Boulton immerses himself totally in his chosen activity... until, that is, something more interesting catches his attention. "I love to learn new things," he says. Laughs. "But that can get difficult at times. I mean, there's so much stuff I want to learn about on any given day..." More laughter. "It's like serial ADD, I guess."
Take the way he got involved with snowboarding. "I was born and raised in Winnipeg," he begins. "Hot summers, good thunderstorms... and a whole lot of drinking." Like many Canadian kids, Fish grew up playing school sports — "Mostly hockey and football," he says. "I even had a potential football scholarship in the U.S." He sighs. "But I got kicked out of high school before I could graduate..."
Yes, he admits, he'd fallen into a bad crowd by then. "I was a banger," he says with a grin. "You know, leather jacket, long hair and tight pants." He also owned this grotty Metallica t-shirt that was heavily coveted by one of the skateboarders at his school. "And you know, bangers and skaters definitely didn't hang back then." No matter — Fish decided to trade his hallowed t-shirt for one of the kid's boards.
And it totally changed his life. "I immediately fell in love with skating," he says. "Dropped my banger friends and started hanging out with skaters instead." Which eventually led him to Spring Hill. "That's where I first started snowboarding. It's a tiny little ski hill on the edge of Winnipeg. It has, I don't know, maybe 300 feet of vertical..."
Still, it was enough for Fish. At least at first. But then came his ouster from school for fighting — "I was kinda standing up for a friend," he explains — and the development of a whole new life plan. "Me and my buddy Mario, we decided to take off for Lake Louise." He stops. Another quick shrug. "It was supposed to be a two-week snowboarding trip. We weren't really expecting to stay there all that long."
Although he didn't know it at the time, the young Winnipegger would remain in Lake Louise for the next four years. But this was 1995, and Fish had no other goal but to immerse himself in this new world of rock and ice and snow... RIGHT NOW.
"I'd never travelled very far from home before," he says. "Never left the prairies... I remember just how amazing it felt at first. We were in the Rockies, man. These were the first real mountains I'd ever seen."
Fish isn't the shy type, and he quickly found himself a hard-charging posse of young riders to hang with. "My life was all about riding and partying," he adds. "Done to the extreme." He stops. "But then, that's me," he says. "I'm either fully on or fully off. There's no in-between..."
Whatever. By 1999, Fish was an elite snowboard competitor. "I did it all back then – halfpipe, boardercross, big air. And I had some good sponsors too. But I still had a long ways to go before turning professional."
Apparently the next step was a move west. "If you wanted to go pro, word was Whistler was the place to be," says Fish. "So that's what I did — I moved to Whistler."
He'd already spent a summer here — "working on the glacier at one of the camps," he says — but he really didn't realize what Whistler had to offer until he spent his first winter sampling Coast Mountain conditions. "I hooked up with a great crew of riders again," he says. "And I totally fell in love with riding big mountains. But I really wanted to get 'discovered' that winter — I mean, that's why I'd moved west."
Money — or lack of it unfortunately — was an issue. "I'd gotten my snowboard instructor certification before leaving Winnipeg," he explains. "So I decided to apply to WB for a part-time teaching job," He laughs. "I couldn't afford a season's pass, see, so I thought this would be the best way for me to get up the mountain."
Meanwhile, he'd also landed a lifeguarding job at Meadow Park. "I was feeling pretty good about life right then," he says. "I thought I had all my bases covered."
That's when his ski school supervisor informed him that he needed to work four full days if he wanted a free pass. "Say what? I couldn't believe it. Four days a week? That's not part-time work. That's fulltime, man. Besides, I had this other lifeguarding job that I couldn't drop..." He sighs. Shakes his head. "So they fired me."
It left a bitter taste in his mouth. "I spent the rest of the winter finding ways of getting on the lifts for free..." But the buzz wasn't the same anymore. "For whatever reason," he says, "that really shifted my direction as far as snowboarding goes."
Meaning? "It's funny, you know. Being bitter like that — and me always wanting to be different — well, I got really disillusioned with the whole snowboard scene. Suddenly, it seemed to me like it was all about how you looked and who you knew instead of how you rode."
Besides, the competition thing was getting out of hand. "It really escalated there at the end of the 1990s. Suddenly you needed coaches and trainers and physios and masseurs and specific gear... it just got so expensive. And I'd suffered a bunch of injuries in a row." Another shrug. "So my motivation for riding really took a hit. My passion for snowboarding just wasn't there anymore."
Somewhere along the way, Fish had landed a job with the Whistler Fire Department. ("I already had experience as a member of the Lake Louise Fire Department," he explains. "And I really loved the work.") His big goal now was to become a ski patroller. "So I started skiing a bit," he says. "But only on lousy days. I mean, I'd never skied before — so it seemed a bit foolish to waste a pow day learning to turn..."
Still, he quickly figured out that he'd never get better that way. "So I eventually hung up the snowboard and started skiing full-time instead." It wasn't all fun and games though. "It was sooooo frustrating," he says. "As in: 'I can do this line on my board with my eyes closed. But on skis? Wow! Is this ever tough...' But I stuck to it!"
He smiles. "I ended up falling madly in love with skiing. It's just so versatile, you know, so practical — whether you're touring, playing, exploring, whatever. It just works." He stops talking. Takes a long breath. Grins again. "You know, with all the snowboarding hype, I never realized just how much fun skiing could be. But now I do. I don't think I'll ever go back."
Next Week: Fish travels to India for a year, rediscovers acting... and falls for Angie.
