Senator Nancy Greene Raine and Al Raine may have been selected as joint recipients of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award by the Tourism Industry Association of Canada (TIAC), but the powerhouse couple plans to continue to assist the growth of the Canadian ski tourism industry for some time to come.

“We’re not finished yet,” said Nancy, 68. A Canadian Senator for B.C., she is also the director of skiing for Sun Peaks Resort. Her husband Al, 70, is the first mayor of Sun Peaks Mountain Resort Municipality, which was incorporated only in June of last year. Both are from British Columbia — Nancy grew up in Rossland and Al is from Burnaby.

“In this day and age, I think you’re crazy if you retire when you’re 65 or 70,” she said. “You’ve still got lots of energy — go for it, there are still things to do.”

The award recognizes the Raines’ leadership in the development of Canada’s ski tourism industry, including their instrumental roles in the early development of Whistler Blackcomb.

“I think that’s probably one of our greatest contributions — spearheading this idea that Whistler could be a tourist destination as opposed to just a weekend destination,” said Al.

“Whistler is everything I expected and then some.”

Greene Raine was Canada’s top ski racer in the 1960s, winning Olympic gold and silver medals, two overall World Cup titles and 17 Canadian championships titles. Her total of 13 World Cup victories is still a record today. She retired in 1968, the same year that Al Raine stepped into the role of program director and head coach for the national ski team.

“Our paths crossed a lot. It was a friendship born out of mutual respect and then we fell in love, and the rest is history,” she said. They married in early 1969 and Nancy gave birth to twin sons the following year.

The couple began to dedicate themselves to the development and promotion of Whistler and Blackcomb mountains, inspired by the beautiful resorts they had travelled to around the world for ski competitions. In the early ‘70s, Al was appointed the provincial ski co-coordinator to oversee the planning of Whistler Village as a major ski resort on behalf of the provincial government.

“I was the one who first proposed Blackcomb as a potential ski area that would expand the attraction of Whistler,” said Raine.

When the original design team proposed a formal grid pattern for the resort village, it was Raine who convinced council it wouldn’t work and hired the landscape architect who designed Vail to develop a plan with underground parking “so it became a pedestrian village, not a shopping centre,” he said.

“That was a good move,” Raine added with a laugh. “I’ve been to enough resort villages — I know it has to have magic, it has to have a sense of discovery.”

Nancy became the director of skiing when Blackcomb first opened and credits her national stature as an athlete with helping promote Whistler in its early stages. Named Canada’s female athlete of the century in 1999, Greene Raine is a member of both the B.C. and National Sports Halls of Fame, and the U.S. Ski Hall of Fame, in addition to numerous other prestigious accolades that have been bestowed on her since the beginning of her career.

“It’s a good use of a champion, I think,” she said.

Dave Brownlie, Whistler Blackcomb president, offered the following comment in an email to The Question upon news of the couple’s lifetime achievement award: “Al and Nancy were instrumental in both the vision and development of Whistler into a mountain resort that could stand on the world stage.”

This is not the first time the duo has been recognized as a team — they were jointly awarded Whistler’s Citizen of the Year in 1991.

“We’ve had a lot of fun together; we share very similar values and a love of British Columbia, and the mountains,” said Greene Raine. “When we look back, it is tremendously rewarding having been part of the start-up of two fabulous resorts.”

The Lifetime Achievement Award is sponsored by Tourism Toronto and will be presented as part of the Canadian Tourism Awards Gala in Ottawa on Nov. 24.