Richard and Louise Guy

A Life Well Lived with Mountains and More

In 1965, Richard and Louise Guy moved to Canada and became two of the most inf luential and inspiring Alpine Club of Canada members ever. It all started in 1939 when Richard asked Louise to join him on a scrambling trip to the Lake District of northern England. They found a shared passion after climbing a number of famous peaks. They married in 1940 and over the next 10 years had three children.

In 1947, Richard, who had graduated from Cambridge with a second class honours degree, worked at London University teaching math; he taught 22 classes a week. Wanting something more diverse, the family moved to Singapore for a decade. On one occasion they f lew to Switzerland and hired a guide named Alfred Steger to take them climbing. They summited Butlassen, a peak with icy slopes to its top. Richard later recalled, “Best of all, it was my first sight of the Matterhorn, albeit a somewhat distant one.” In 1959, Richard and Louise climbed Low’s Peak on Mount Kinabalu in Borneo. Louise became the second woman to reach the summit.

In 1962, while the children were at boarding school in Britain, Richard and Louise moved to Delhi where Richard taught at the Indian Institute of Technology. Between acting in plays and playing tennis, the pair visited the Himalayas for treks to escape the heat of the city. After three-and-a-half years in Delhi, they took the advice from friends who had recently moved to Calgary to teach at the University of Alberta. Arriving in the city by the Rockies, Richard became an i mportant mathematician at the school. In 1966, he became the head of the department, but that did not keep him from exploring the mountains.

During their first few years in Calgary, they visited a number of huts, skied popular tours and climbed King’s Chimney on Yamnuska with Eckhard Grassman. After the climb, Louise said, “When I got to the top, I looked around – I was so full of happiness I felt I could have opened my wings and f lown off.” In 1967, on a math department trip celebrating Canada’s centennial to the Waiparous Valley, Louise was part of a team that made the first ascent of a mountain called Peak Number Five.

In 1970, Richard and Louise joined the Alpine Club of Canada ( acc) and four years later both attended the Mount Robson General Mountaineering Camp ( gmc). Louise went on to attend 31 camps and Richard 29. In 1984, she was awarded the Distinguished Service Award for her volunteer work with the club. Over the next few seasons, the acc suffered from financial difficulty and the gmc was almost cancelled. Louise assisted Brad Harrison in creating awareness with club members and after two years, the gmc numbers were up and there was no cancellation of the annual mountain meet. Richard recalled, “At the camps you got a great opportunity to express yourself, to do what you would like to do. But on the other hand, you were able to climb mountains that you barely could think of climbing if you were on your own.”