The Legendary Jackrabbit Johannsen

Ronald R. Wallingford is a professor in the School of Human Movement at
Laurentian University.

With the aid of ski poles and following the motto “Never rest and
never rust,” the late Herman Johannsen catapulted himself into his
11th decade of active life. In this book, Alice Johannsen presents
less-well-known details of her father’s life that serve to elucidate
his devotion to the popularization of skiing.

Born in a country where skiing was the favorite, if not the only, form
of winter transportation, young Herman reveled in stretching his limbs.
As a youngster he watched Telemark Valley ski competitions, which
boasted the presence of the King and 10,000 spectators. Later, as a
student of mechanical engineering in Berlin, he responded to a snowfall
by skiing to a park. A policeman issued him a ticket when a horde of
fascinated schoolchildren mobbed him. His skis essentially shelved, he
spent several years selling heavy equipment, operating out of Cleveland,
Cuba, and New York. He finally left his head office in New York to shed
the cutthroat business, and “canned” New York air for Canada. The
Great Depression bankrupted his newly established Montreal office. He
became a skiing engineer in the Laurentians at the age of 55.

Alice Johannsen provides a vivid description (frequently from a
participant’s perspective) of her father’s part in the growth of
skiing north of Montreal. Readers craving Jackrabbit’s succinct tips
on cross-country skiing, fitness, and longevity will be disappointed,
for they are interspersed among too many pages of family biography.
Nevertheless, this publication is a valuable document of the
relationship between physical activity and longevity, and of the history
of the Canadian skiing movement.