Mountain Life
  • Daily Content
    • Trips & Expeditions
    • Climbing
    • Mountain Biking
    • Mountain Lifer
    • Multiplicity
    • On The Trail
    • Paddling
    • Photography
    • Skiing
    • Snowboarding
    • Stay & Play
    • Surfing
    • The Great Outdoors
    • The ML Interview
    • Travel
  • GEAR
  • VIDEOS
  • STORE
  • Magazines
    • ML Coast Mountains
    • ML Rocky Mountains
    • Vie En Montagne
    • ML Blue Mountains
    • ML Annual
    • ML Subscriptions
  • ABOUT
    • What is ML?
    • Our Team
    • Newsletter
    • Adventure Grant
    • Distribution
  • Podcast
  • Contests
  • CONTACT
    • ML Agency
    • Advertising
    • Contribute
Subscription Form

Get notified of the best News

Social Links
Instagram 22K Followers
Facebook 0 Likes
Twitter 0 Followers
Pinterest 1K Followers
Vimeo 34 Followers
LinkedIn 0
22K Followers
0 Likes
0 Followers
1K Followers
Mountain Life
Mountain Life
  • Daily Content
    • Trips & Expeditions
    • Climbing
    • Mountain Biking
    • Mountain Lifer
    • Multiplicity
    • On The Trail
    • Paddling
    • Photography
    • Skiing
    • Snowboarding
    • Stay & Play
    • Surfing
    • The Great Outdoors
    • The ML Interview
    • Travel
  • GEAR
  • VIDEOS
  • STORE
  • Magazines
    • ML Coast Mountains
    • ML Rocky Mountains
    • Vie En Montagne
    • ML Blue Mountains
    • ML Annual
    • ML Subscriptions
  • ABOUT
    • What is ML?
    • Our Team
    • Newsletter
    • Adventure Grant
    • Distribution
  • Podcast
  • Contests
  • CONTACT
    • ML Agency
    • Advertising
    • Contribute
  • The Great Outdoors
  • Skiing

Jocelyne Trudeau: Mont Sutton’s Miss Metéo

  • December 19, 2017
  • Ben Osborne
Total
7
Shares
7
0
0
0
0
0
Total
7
Shares
Share 7
Tweet 0
Pin it 0
Share 0
Share 0
Share 0

Momentum is the lifeblood of a resort—not snow, good press, or lift capacity, or even après—but the force that makes arcing into a turn the most exhilarating sensation your body can chase. The current that pulls people from modest little towns and traffic churning cities to unload their cares at the foot of a Canadian ski town and to catch a whiff of the expectations that lies ahead. The invisible energy that makes resort towns more than their best runs and brightest rippers, big claims and vital statistics.

 

WomenResorts

Words: Lisa Richardson

This small handful of unsung and inarguably rad individuals are just a few of the people among us who have insisted with their passion and positive energy that the mountains be a place in which they can contribute meaningfully—knees deep, elbows deep, in the thick of it. Their actions give us all permission to shape the contours of our days, with snow and stoke, and a healthy dose of exhilaration.

This is Part 4 of a 5 Part series dedicated to women making a lasting imprint on mountain culture in Canada.

 

MLRG HRb copy

 

“For a retired woman, I’m quite busy,” says 75-year-old Jocelyne Trudeau, in her French-inflected English, in between appointments and packing for an African safari. More widely know as “Miss Metéo” (the Weather Girl) on the slopes of Mont Sutton, Trudeau has been the voice of Sutton’s snowphone, and the beta-gatherer behind it, since her retirement from the City of Montréal 28 years ago.

“I never spent a weekend in the city in my whole life,” she says of a lifelong passion for skiing, fishing, and being in the mountains. A member of a ski club in her teens, she discovered Sutton at the end of the resort’s opening season in 1960 and fell in love. She has been skiing here every single winter since.

She took her non-skier husband to Sutton for their honeymoon. Taught him how to ski. She also introduced her sisters and her nephew, legendary freeskier, PY Leblanc, to the sport (he turned out to be the most receptive.) “He’s a really good skier. And now he has two kids who are going to be perhaps as good. So it’s become a family affair.” says Trudeau.

Her husband put 10 years into the sport, but prefers to snowbird in the Dominican Republic in the winter, leaving Trudeau to her passion and her early mornings. Thursday to Sunday, she rises at 5 a.m., to head up the mountain to the snow plot where she measures the overnight snowfall, analyzes the weather and compiles the daily snow report, broadcasting it to guests, the media and the resort’s social channels, before 6 a.m.

She loves the early mornings on the mountain. “It’s so quiet. When we have a big snowfall, it’s amazing. I’m mostly alone out there, with the moon and just a few of the snowmakers.”

She loves the early mornings on the mountain. “It’s so quiet. When we have a big snowfall, it’s amazing. I’m mostly alone out there, with the moon and just a few of the snowmakers.”

After the snow report is filed, Trudeau leaves the marketing office and heads back up the hill.

“I go and ski all the sectors of the mountain to get a sense of the conditions for the next day’s report. I’m always in the mountains so people know that the snow report is the real thing. I ski the whole mountain. I especially love the glades. I’m not fast, but I’m strong.”

 

MLRG HRa copy

 

She takes her camera with her, sending photos to the marketing department to fi ll their Facebook feed with live updates.

“That’s my trick,” she confesses, for managing the impact of skiing all day, all winter, on a 75-year-old body. “Taking pictures means I get to take a rest every few minutes.”

She doesn’t conform to any particular workout routine. “I go in the mountains three or four times a week. That’s my training. Winter, spring and summer, I’m always in the mountains, hiking and trekking.

I’m not into jogging or things like that. I tried cycling but I didn’t like being on the road. I would try mountain biking, in the woods. I just don’t like it on the road.”

“Do you have that expression in English, ‘a muse’?” asks Nadya Baron, Mont Sutton’s head of Marketing. “She skis all the black diamond trails on the hill from morning to the end of the day. She’s in such good shape. We just did some touring skiing, hiking up with skis and skins. She equipped herself, and now she’s doing it. When I grow up, I want to be just like her.”

 

You might also like:

Lisa Roddick3LISA RODDICK: KICKING HORSE’S ADVENTURE KICKSTARTER
All is quiet at noon on Thursday at the Eagle Bump hut on Kicking Horse Mountain, where Lisa Roddick is on mountain safety dispatch, available to guide any late summer via ferrata tours that come her way. A ski patroller since she moved to Kicking Horse seven years ago, Roddick is happy to spend her summer taking the lead as a guide for the via ferrata – she’s trying to minimize her time in the Kicking Horse bike park. “My love in the summer is whitewater kayaking and I’m trying to save my body for that.”… Read more

 

 

Sue BoydSUE BOYD: FERNIE’S PRIME MINISTER OF THE STATE OF SNOW
Sue Boyd has skied almost every winter of her life since she could walk. Fifty-six years, and almost as many seasons, working and skiing five to seven days a week, in rain, hail, and puking storms, and she still loves it. “I loved skiing even as a child,” says Boyd who grew up at her family’s ski hill, Tillicum Valley, just outside of Vernon. The day lodge had a family room for the five Boyd kids, where they were supposed to do their homework while night skiing operations went on outside…. Read more

 

Total
7
Shares
Share 7
Tweet 0
Pin it 0
Share 0
Share 0
Share 0
Related Topics
  • Mont Sutton
  • Resort Guide
  • Skiing
Ben Osborne

Previous Article
  • The Great Outdoors

Backcountry Huts 2.0: Envisioning a Better Way to Build up High

  • December 18, 2017
  • Ben Osborne
View Post
Next Article
  • THE GEAR SHED

The Designers: For MEC’s Mark Knight, Lightweight Tent Design is all About Balance

  • December 20, 2017
  • Ben Osborne
View Post
You May Also Like
Mike-Traslin-Andy-Traslin-ski-touring-KootenaysBC
View Post
  • Skiing

The Traslin Brothers: 200 Months of Earned Turns

  • Mountain Life Media
  • May 30, 2023
View Post
  • CAMPING GEAR
  • THE GEAR SHED
  • The Great Outdoors

Gear Shed: MEC Volt 2-Person Tent

  • Editor
  • May 10, 2023
Lara-Shea
View Post
  • Skiing
  • Snowboarding
  • The ML Interview
  • Videos
  • Women

ML Podcast: Award-Winning Filmmaker Lara Shea

  • Mountain Life Media
  • May 9, 2023
Caroline-Cote-explore
View Post
  • Skiing
  • Trips & Expeditions

Why Do We Explore?

  • Editor
  • April 17, 2023
View Post
  • Skiing
  • Snowboarding
  • Stay & Play

Beyond The Summit Lodge

  • Sarah Bulford
  • April 3, 2023
morocoo_kari_medig-026
View Post
  • Photography
  • Skiing

ML Podcast: A Conversation with Photographer Kari Medig

  • Editor
  • March 30, 2023
View Post
  • Mountain Lifer
  • Skiing
  • Snowboarding

End of an Era: Another Double Chairlift Bites the Dust

  • Editor
  • March 28, 2023
Skiing at Hudson Bay Mountain in Smithers
View Post
  • Skiing
  • Snowboarding

Where Eagles Dare

  • Mountain Life Media
  • March 27, 2023
Featured Posts
  • Kathryn-Corbiere-artist-Indigenous-Ontario-Blue-Mountains 1
    Artist Profile: Elevating Awareness 
    • May 29, 2023
  • Mike-Traslin-Andy-Traslin-ski-touring-KootenaysBC 2
    The Traslin Brothers: 200 Months of Earned Turns
    • May 30, 2023
  • Leslie-Timms-Devils-Glen-Nutcracker-Colin-Field 3
    Behind the Devil’s Glen Climbing Route Closures
    • May 25, 2023
  • Fisher-Monahan-illustration-illustrator 4
    Sweetgrass Chronicles: Walking from BC to San Francisco
    • May 26, 2023
  • Paul-Manning-Hunter-Kananaskis-River-surf 5
    Mountain Life Takes Home Multiple Awards
    • May 23, 2023
RECENT POSTS
  • John-Haines-Simcoe-Street-Collingwood2-at-CreativeSimcoe-Street
    Tribute: ML’s Map Artist John Haines
    • June 1, 2023
  • benno_bikes-46er-sea-otter-tour-web2
    Gear Shed: Picks for Spring & Summer
    • May 24, 2023
  • Baptism By Gravel: Rab Equipment Enters The Adventure Cycling Game
    • May 19, 2023
Social Links
Instagram 22K Followers
Facebook 0 Likes
Twitter 0 Followers
Pinterest 1K Followers
Vimeo 34 Followers
LinkedIn 0
INSTAGRAM

Warning: preg_match(): Unknown modifier '0' in /home/customer/www/mountainlifemedia.ca/public_html/wp-content/plugins/powerkit/modules/lazyload/helpers/helper-powerkit-lazyload.php on line 146
avatar
mountainlifemedia
Mountain Life
25K Followers
Check out our signature 20th Anniversary tees that just dropped in our shop! 🔥 10 0
For 15 years the Ontario artist drew ML’s gatefold map for both the Blue and Coast Mountains editions. 16 1
Just your average day on the trails…nothing to see here. #mountainlifer #onewheel 24 4
How many turns did you earn last winter? Most skiers and boarders would be proud to say they logged a week with no chairlifts and zero auxiliary help to the top—or toured exclusively for a month. 47 2
onekwe didn’t set out to become an artist. She first became a welder with the intention of establishing herself in the trade. But, as good welding jobs are few and far between where she lives on Manitoulin Island, she began doing commissions for architectural pieces and modern furniture. “From there, I found the opportunities and the abilities in myself to create art,” she says. 75 1
ML and partners offer a gear list curated for spring-summer stoke, including the latest sunnies, trail shoes, sun shirts, e-bikes, headlamps, racerback tanks, Rollerblades and sun hats. In alpha order. #linkinbio to check out all picks! 22 0
"Alright—where to begin? Between the months of July and November 2022, I walked about 2500 kilometres from British Columbia to San Francisco. Yes—I walked." 47 4
🚫The sweet sound of the wilderness at Devil’s Glen… 77 5
✨It's time for another giveaway! 69 126
☝️Ahem, so … we’re officially “award-winning” again. Yup: ML Rocky Mountains and ML Coast Mountains both received awards recently at the 2023 Alberta Magazine Publishers Association Conference. 82 9
Follow

Subscribe

Subscribe now to our newsletter

Check out our signature 20th Anniversary tees that just dropped in our shop! 🔥 10 0
For 15 years the Ontario artist drew ML’s gatefold map for both the Blue and Coast Mountains editions. 16 1
Just your average day on the trails…nothing to see here. #mountainlifer #onewheel 24 4
How many turns did you earn last winter? Most skiers and boarders would be proud to say they logged a week with no chairlifts and zero auxiliary help to the top—or toured exclusively for a month. 47 2
onekwe didn’t set out to become an artist. She first became a welder with the intention of establishing herself in the trade. But, as good welding jobs are few and far between where she lives on Manitoulin Island, she began doing commissions for architectural pieces and modern furniture. “From there, I found the opportunities and the abilities in myself to create art,” she says. 75 1
ML and partners offer a gear list curated for spring-summer stoke, including the latest sunnies, trail shoes, sun shirts, e-bikes, headlamps, racerback tanks, Rollerblades and sun hats. In alpha order. #linkinbio to check out all picks! 22 0
Mountain Life
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Subscribe
  • Advertising

Input your search keywords and press Enter.