I have known J. J. Hilsinger from Sault Ste. Marie for at least a quarter century. I can’t remember when I met him or how I met him. It just seems like I’ve never not known him. I see Jim maybe two or three times a year and almost always at the Northern Ontario Business Awards, which Jim has supported since inception. How you really get to know a man, however, is by spending a week skiing, boating, hunting or fishing with him.
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Some 15 years ago, Jim joined a group of us who go skiing in a far away place in America where the sign at the top of the hill says 13,500 feet.
At the time Jim was not only a consummate downhill skier, he had his own ski resort. For my part I was a ski idiot who took up skiing at the age of 40 for reasons that are still not entirely clear to me.
Jim’s annual attendance on our ski trip was determined more by the amount of snow he had at Searchmont Ski Resort in Sault Ste. Marie than how
much snow was in America because we ski the first week of December every year.
Some years Jim would come because he had lots of snow and things were under control, and some years he would come because he had no snow and it was pointless to stay and stare at the sky.
Some years he wouldn’t come because he had snow and was too busy, or he had no snow and had to keep a watchful eye on things.
Anyway, way back then marked the beginning of our annual ski club called the Whoosie Ski Club or Whoosie club du ski.
Jim was president of this club for many years. The role has no responsibilities, no accountabilities and, if you try bringing any order whatsoever to the club, you are immediately fired.
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Jim made the mistake of once writing a longish memo on the nature and practice of Whoosiedom. We fired him and replaced him with a friend who has not skied with us for seven or eight years. We refer to him as our President in absentia, which is how we like it.
Although Jim’s day job for many years has been to own and operate the Algoma’s Water Tower Inn in Sault Ste. Marie, his passion has been the land, his town and Northern Ontario.
Jim is an extraordinary individual, which by no means makes him easy to get along with.
He is opinionated, irascible, pig-headed, hard working, creative, brilliant, passionate, annoying,adventuresome, introverted in a loud sort of way and sometimes hard to figure out.
What is not hard to figure out is his essence. Jim lives life to the fullest. He has high standards for himself and he is not shy about holding others to those same standards.
Of late, Jim has become a writer and a darn good one. He writes about what he sees, what he feels and what he thinks is right.
Some time in the last six months or so Jim decided it was time to take a bike ride from Cairo to Cape Town.
You have to understand that if you know Jim this makes perfect sense. When I last spoke with him around the end of November there was no
mention of this project.
The next time I learned of it I got an e-mail from a Sudbury friend who ran into him in the Sudan.
Do me a favour. Go to a Web site called
www.youbetican.com
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If you want to learn about spirit, adventure, courage, audacity and just plain chutzpah pay a visit.
He will make you proud to be a Northerner. It makes me proud to know him ... not enough to elect him President of the Whoosie club but darn close.
Michael Atkins is the president of Northern Ontario Business. He can be reached atmatkins@laurentianmedia.com.
