Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Living on the West Coast

Roger McCarthy comes ‘home’ again
1547alta

Amazing how some people always manage to be at the right place at the right time. And then somehow manage to do the right thing too…

When we last caught up with globetrotting ski-operations guy Roger McCarthy, the former Whistler pro patroller was commuting between Geneva, Moscow and Sochi while engaged in one of the most exciting resort development projects in the world.

I hadn’t heard Roger this excited in a while. It was evident the project meant a lot to him — I could hear in his voice how invigorated he felt to be traipsing through the Caucasus bush on this wild new ski-hill quest. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime,” he’d explained in that unique Kiwi-cum-American-cum-Quebecois drawl of his. “The Russians are offering me the chance to get involved in building a ski resort from the ground up. And on a big, gnarly mountain at that! That hasn’t happened for years…”

Roger’s smile was as big as the proverbial kid’s in a candy shop that day. “For me, it’s the appeal of bringing a vision to life. Paul Mathews (of Whistler-based Ecosign) is responsible for the master plan, and he and I have a ton of experience working together.” He’d paused then. His laughter had filled the room. “Which means I won’t have to fight with anybody to get the mountain layout right…”

That was a year and a half ago. The project, although massive by any standard, was still relatively low on the global business radar. That all changed when Vladimir Putin’s $14 billion bid to buy the 2014 Games suddenly brought the world spotlight directly on Sochi and Roger’s Rosa Khutor project. Forget paying your dues. Forget jumping through the hoops. This was a ‘pass go directly, collect your $200 now and don’t smirk while you count your winnings’ move. But you can’t blame the IOC. Here was a huge new market to exploit — a winter-savvy 150 million-strong populace with a fresh pool of disposable income. Russia and the Olympics: it was a match made in marketing heaven.

That’s about the time, I figure, when things started to change for McCarthy; that’s when the big playeas started to meddle in Roger’s new playground…

“Never underestimate what the Russians can accomplish,” he’d told me back in June of ’07. “Never underrate what they can do.” And then he’d stopped speaking, before resuming in a totally different tone. “It’s hard for people in Canada to understand. But leaders like Putin are not at all like western leaders. This guy is more like an emperor. So when he decides that mountain sports are cool and photos and film clips of him on the ski slopes start showing up all over the country, you know the rest of the population is going to follow… It’s totally aspirational.”

Fast forward to November 2008. Roger and I are sitting at a beachside restaurant in Vancouver’s Kitsilano neighbourhood watching the last rays of a late autumn sun colour the waters a rusty red. Across English Bay, the North Shore Mountains are still green and free of snow. “What kind of a winter do you think we’re going to have,” he asks idly.

“It’s not a promising sign when we get this kind of a warm surge in November,” I shoot back. It’s very mild outside — even with the westerly breeze ruffling the chestnut leaves nearby. A bevy of hardcore westsiders jogs by in tank tops and shorts. A trio of kayakers paddle sedately in the background.

“I agree. They say now it’s going to be an El Niño year,” he says. “Could be a tough one all around…”

Indeed. And Roger should know. He’s living in Vancouver now. Commuting to Moscow and Sochi one week a month — “It’s simple,” he say with a straight face. “I take the morning flight to Toronto, transfer onto the Russian red-eye and I’m in Moscow the next morning…”

Still, the pace can’t be an easy one. So I ask him about his decision to settle with his family — his spouse, Josée and his son Julian — on the West Coast. After all, it’s not like the McCarthys have set down roots anywhere of late. From Quebec to New England; from Colorado to Switzerland — Roger’s two-decade blitzkrieg through the corporate ranks of the world’s biggest ski empires has left little time (or space) for settling down.

I’m expecting a ‘stranger-in-a-strange-land’ tale about broken promises and cynical decisions; betrayed ambitions and dishonest dealings. I’m thinking a John Le Carré style story: of pasty-faced spies and one-eyebrowed bodyguards and satchels full of newly-minted rubles. I mean, it can’t be easy working in Russia with the kind of dough now in play. Can’t be easy to be second-guessed and third-guessed and fourth-guessed at every step. Must drive you nuts! Besides, the communications issues have to be overwhelming. As Roger had said the last time: “These are people with a lot of pride. If there was a Russian guy in the system who knew what I knew, I wouldn’t have a job…”

So I can understand taking a step back from such a mêlée. I can see McCarthy realizing that this isn’t a battle he can win and deciding to disengage himself from the front ranks.

But that’s not the case at all. “Turns out my son, Julian, is what they call ‘twice-exceptional’: gifted, brilliant, but with a learning disability,” he explains. “We realized last winter that conventional schooling wasn’t going to work for him.” He sighs. “When it came right down to it, Julian wasn’t being supported in Switzerland.” So Josée and Roger started doing research on the subject. It wasn’t long before Roger was talking about it with his old pals Hugh and Debbie Smythe. “Hugh had some great suggestions,” he tells me. As did some other B.C.-based friends. “So we started looking for schools here. It’s pretty much that simple.”

The upshot of the whole thing is that Julian is now a student at Silbury School in Vancouver. Has been since September. And it’s working beautifully says Roger. “I dropped him off at school the other day,” he recounts, “and I watched this incredible scene going down. Here was this young teacher at a worktable with about six or seven students grouped around him. He had this old CD player and they were taking it apart together. Meanwhile, the teacher was also engaging the kids on geo-political issues and global oil consumption.” He pauses. “And everyone was totally absorbed in the process. It was amazing.”

But what about Rosa Khutor? “No change,” he says. “I’m still totally keen; totally as excited about it as I was when we last spoke.” What about his reduced time commitment to the new project then? How did that come about? It was a necessary decision, he explains. Family trumped work. “In the understanding that I would have to stay involved in Julian’s education,” he tells me, “I simply explained to the Russians that I was going through some changes in my life, that I had to address personal issues like selling my house in Colorado and stuff, and that I couldn’t be on-site full-time anymore…”

At first the Russians freaked out, says Roger. He smiles. “Right away, their reaction was: ‘Who’s going to tell us what to do?’ And that’s so Russian.” He laughs. “The work environment is totally different there. Decisions come from only one direction. There’s no discussion. Certainly no negotiations. It’s top-down-management all the way.”

Still, McCarthy was able to convince his associates that they could live without him in the short run. “Look, I said, I can be there one week a month for now. And when we get closer to opening day, I can be onsite as demand requires.” He pauses. “After all that’s when I’m at my best. I make resorts go. I make ’em profitable.”

And then he puts it all in context for me. “We’re still a long way from opening day,” he says. “I mean, we won’t even have power on the mountain until next year…”

Besides, he adds, being based in Vancouver has some very compelling up-sides. Especially given the city’s Olympic connection to Sochi and Rosa Khutor now. “There’s going to be a lot of expertise needed as 2014 approaches,” he explains. “And there’s no better place to recruit that kind of talent than somewhere where people already have Games experience.”

Vancouver’s advantages don’t end there however. “I still have a lot of friends around here,” he says. Just last spring, for example, Roger introduced some of his Russian colleagues to Hugh Smythe during World Cup Week at Whistler.

As usual, he says, Hugh got right to the point. “‘Whistler is 40 years old, the Olympics are two years away, and we still have loads to do,’ he told them. ‘You guys are hosting the Games in six years and there’s still nothing in the ground. You’re going to have LOTS to do.’” Roger smiles. “The second thing he told them was: ‘When you get to the architectural stuff, do something that is identifiably Russian in style.’”

So did Hugh’s words have an impact on Roger’s guests? He laughs. “I’m not sure,” he says. “But one thing didn’t change. Forget ‘Russian style’. They still want a 21 st century version of the classic Tyrolean village at the base of their mountain…”

Stay tuned. This story arc is bound to get even more interesting with time.