Rockies' icon built businesses, family legacy

Craig Douce RMO file photo

Bud Brewster waits to make a shot during his namesake golf tournament at Kananaskis Ranch Golf Resort.

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Bud Brewster was a carpenter, a horseman, a golf course builder, a backcountry outfitter, a savvy businessman and a tireless worker.

Bud, who died on Friday (Feb. 10) at the age of 83, was also a fourth-generation Albertan who carried on his family’s legacy of providing warm mountain hospitality to visitors to the Canadian Rockies for more than a century.

“He was a carpenter in a cowboy hat,” said long-time friend Rick Kunelius. “He was generous. If he saw a need, he’d provide it.”

Bud’s great-grandfather, John, followed the newly completed CPR from Ontario to settle in Banff in 1886, with his wife Esebella and four sons joining him two years later. Three more children were born in Banff, where John founded a dairy. By the end of the century, he established his homestead in the river valley at the base of Mount Yamnuska, where the Brewster family operates a guest ranch and golf course today.

In 1900, two sons, Bill, 12, and Jim, 10, already skilled hunters and mountain men under the tutelage of a native family friend, William Twin, established Brewster Brothers Outfitting.

Bill and his wife, Tead, had three children, including Claude. Claude later married Ruth and the couple had two sons, Jack and Bud.

Born in 1928, Bud earned his first paycheques cutting wood and trapping fur. He embarked on his first backcountry pack trip with his parents at the age of eight. By the time he was 16, Bud was running pack trips for 75 guests with 100 horses at a time into the Rocky Mountain backcountry for groups including the Skyline Hikers of the Canadian Rockies.

Bud and his surviving wife of 52 years, Annette, raised three daughters, Janet, Alison and Cori. As soon as they were old enough to lift the buckets, the girls were pitching in, feeding oats to the horses. Now Bud’s grandchildren also lend a hand.

Janet’s husband (Kevin Stanton), Alison’s husband (Bryan Niehaus) and Cori’s partner (Jacqueline Hutchison) all contribute to the family businesses. Janet’s daughters, Lacey and Bailee, are both award-winning rodeo competitors.

While Bud’s daughters were all encouraged to earn university degrees, all three, alongside Annette, have devoted much or all of their lives to running the family businesses: Shadow Lake Lodge, Brewster Mountain Lodge in downtown Banff, MountView Barbecue Catering, Brewster Mountain Pack Trains, Lake Louise Stables and the Kananaskis Ranch and Golf Course.

Cori is a successful Alberta singer-songwriter whose engaging and romantic lyrics capture the mountain places and people deeply rooted in her family story.

“Bud was always an entrepreneur, but never a manager,” Kunelius said. “It didn’t matter how old they were, he’d give it to his kids to run. They ran the camps when they were teenagers.”

As a young Banff park warden, Kunelius – like many Banffites – moonlighted for Brewster, tending bar until he “graduated to meat cutter.”

“Bud gave everybody a chance,” Kunelius said. “If you worked, he liked you, and if you didn’t, you were dumber than a sack of hammers.”

Among his many talents, Kunelius said, Brewster was a talented singer who learned to play violin by ear.

“He had an ear for music; he could call square dances and play all kinds of Irish reels,” Kunelius said. “At the camps in those days you weren’t just an outfitter or trail hand, you had to sing a song and play an instrument.”

Seizing an opportunity, in 1950 Bud purchased a 1928-vintage CPR backcountry cabin at Shadow Lake in Banff National Park from his uncle Jim of Brewster Transport. Brewster Transport was sold in 1967. Now operating under the name Brewster Travel Canada by Phoenix-based Viad, the company, which operates Columbia Icefield Glacier Adventure, and which is behind the controversial proposed Glacier Discovery Walk, maintains no connection of any kind to the Brewster family.

Eventually gaining permission from Parks Canada in 1990, Bud began building 12 single-room log guest cabins at Shadow Lake, 15 kilometres from the Trans-Canada Highway, and accessible only by hiking or cross-country skiing in winter.

“One thing my dad always said to me was you have to go to bed thinking and you have to wake up thinking,” Alison said. “And he didn’t mean about a holiday. At the age of 63, when most people are thinking of retiring, he was starting a brand new business. He didn’t look his age either. I couldn’t believe how much enthusiasm he had for the project.”

His enthusiasm however, was not contained by formal regulations.

“Bud never had a (building) plan. His plan was on the back of a cigarette pack,” Kunelius said. “The coolest thing about Bud – he never had a desk or a briefcase.”

In his 70s, Bud, always an avid golfer, began building his own 18-hole golf course at the Kananaskis ranch site, a project that demanded a decade of toil and perseverance.

“Even when he couldn’t physically do something, he was still thinking ahead to the next project,” Alison said. “He never quit thinking about all the things that had to be done. He had the most amazing work ethic, and he passed that ethic on to us.”

For service arrangements contact info@coribrewster.com