When Ed Bootle says he’s stand-ing on top of the world, he’s not kidding.
The 38-year-old executive financial consultant in Investors Group Inc.’s Edmonton Metro office has been scaling mountains for as long as he can remember. Perhaps his most impressive climb was the 3,500-metre ascent of Mount Temple in the Rockies in 2002. Unlike some mountain adventures, such as the Grouse Grind in Vancouver, Mount Temple has no gondola to bring you down. “It’s a long, gruelling climb,” says Bootle. “You leave at 4 a.m. You can probably scale it in eight hours and, if you’re lucky, you can get back at 4 p.m., before dark.”
Getting back to nature is Bootle’s way of recharging his batteries for the workweek ahead and recovering from the week that was. He readily admits that one of the best things about being in the middle of nowhere is having a cellphone that can’t connect to the outside world. But there are exceptions. “The only problem with climbing to [3,300 metres],” he says, “is that you get excellent cellphone coverage.”
While on the Mount Temple climb, Bootle had made a point of calling his dad, Fred, who was suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease and from whom Bootle had inherited the love of hiking, hunting and fishing. “I called him,” says Bootle, “to tell him I was thinking about him.”
Bootle’s father passed away that autumn. The love of the outdoors, however, is being passed on to the next generation of Bootles — Cohen, age six; Mason, three; and Everleigh, six months. Bootle takes the elder two out hunting and fishing because those are activities they can do together. “My kids will walk around and look for deer with binoculars,” he says, noting that most of the time, that’s the extent of their “hunting.” Adds Bootle: “They love fishing, even if we don’t catch anything. What’s important is getting away from iPods, video games and computers.”
In many ways, Bootle leads a double life. From Monday to Friday, he leads a “five-star” existence, driving a Mercedes and eating at fine restaurants. But come the weekend, he undergoes a transformation: “I become a typical redneck Alberta boy. There are people who see me in a suit and tie and people who see me in casual, relaxed weekend mode. Sometimes, people who see me in the other environment have trouble recognizing me.”
Bootle’s other conquests include the West Coast Trail (three times), the Olympic Mountains in Washington state, the Skyline Trail in Jasper National Park and the Athabasca Trail in Banff National Park. Almost without fail, Roy Wolker from Niagara Falls, Ont., and Jeff Hamel from Nanaimo, B.C., fellow Investors Group consultants, are with Bootle every step of the way.
One autumn, Bootle had a conference on the West Coast around the same time Hamel was getting married in Vancouver. The morning after the wedding, the three friends packed up their hiking gear and spent seven days in the Olympic Mountains in Washington state. “Then [Hamel] went back and started his honeymoon,” Bootle says, adding the new bride was “very forgiving.”
Says Bootle: “Life gets in the way of your passion. You have to try to make it work the best you can. That’s what we’ve all tried to do. I put it in my marriage contract: I get my one week a year to go hiking with the boys.”
Bootle’s dual personality also helps him forge relationships with his clients, who see him as more than a “suit”: “There’s a reservation [among many] of wanting to work with somebody who’s so formal. Having outdoor hobbies that are so natural, so general, it gives you an opportunity to relate to people.”
Many of Bootle’s clients share the same values — importance of family and love of the outdoors. “A lot of them are hunters, fishermen, farmers or outdoors people,” Bootle says. And that, he notes, may be the ultimate proof that doing what you love can bring satisfaction on many fronts. IE