The Story of “Jackrabbit”.
The man that eventually became known as Jackrabbit was born in 1875 as Herman Smith Johannsen near Oslo, Norway. He is considered as one of the great ski pioneers, credited with popularizing cross-country skiing in North America, and his life story is filled with so many amazing events that saw him witness almost the entire evolution of skiing from its birth as a recreational hobby to what it is today.
As a child he began skiing using the telemark turns recently developed by Sondre Norheim of Telemark, and as a teenager he met Fridjof Nansen, who in 1888 captivated people all over the world by crossing Greenland on skis. From Fridjof he learnt how to master skiing on ice, and in his young years he also skied with Roald Ammundsen, famously the first man to reach the South Pole.
Herman was already one of the most accomplished Norwegian skiers when he made his way to USA in 1899 to settle down (until he became a Canadian citizen in 1928). On business trips to northern Ontario Herman often brought his skis to traverse the inaccessible terrain. It was on these trips that he encountered Cree Indians that endearingly started to call him “Okamacum Wapooes”, the Cree word for “Chief Rabbit”, due to his superior ability to quickly and effectively navigate the dense forest, and to move at a quicker pace on his skis than they could on their snowshoes. He eventually became known as “Jackrabbit” and it is said that when he returned to the same Cree area 20 years later he was delighted to see how his old friends in the tribe used skis to hunt in addition to the previously used snowshoe.
During his long life he was an integral part of the development of skiing in North America, constantly breaking new ground to create ski trails (such as the entire Maple Leaf Trail networkl), advised on the development of ski areas, designed and built ski jumps, laid out the first ever slalom downhill course in Canada, and trained Canada’s Olympic ski team. At the outbreak of World War II he wanted to do his duty and join the army training staff, but was turned down for being 65 years old. Annoyed at this rejection, he thought he might be accepted if he could prove his good physical condition, so every year he kept reporting to the army his yearly mileage on skis that peaked at 1155 miles (1859 km) in the winter of 1942-3. In the end the war was finally won without him.
Jackrabbit felt that his mission in life was to create new ski trails and get people away from the crowded lift lines that he despised. He always stayed true to his ideal of skiing and preferred camping out in winter. “February and March are the best time of the year. You can build a fire way back in the bush and sleep in your sleeping bag in the snow”. At 100 years of age he was still an avid cross-country skier, visiting the Arctic ski fields with his daughter, and he kept skiing well into his 100s. In 1986, at the age of 111 he finally moved back home to his native Norway, where he passed away shortly thereafter as the oldest known living male in the world. He had lived quite the life!