In True Canadian Style; Westbeach x Dano Heritage Project

Canada's original snowboarding brand, Westbeach, can quickly lay claim to three plus decades of operation come 2009. From humble starts in 1979 with their first retail shop selling skate and surf stuffs in Calgary to an outerwear line launch in '87 to the international contest of rider reckoning for years on end; the iconic brand made an undisputed impact on the shred scene as it evolved into a community at large; progressive at the instant, historical in retrospect. Drop names.

Commissioned to take on the telling of not only the Westbeach story, but that of the bigger picture: snowboarding Canadian style, legendary photographer Dano Pendygrasse digs deep into the company archives to uncover the ruling and ragged tales (of which he's very much a part) straight up or on the rocks. To know where you're going, you gotta know where you came from ... In this case, in the following, in his own words, Dano offers a little of the approach—along with a few select shots—of the process of putting such a cool, both introspective AND comprehensive, project.

"Here is the lowdown ... Westbeach is coming up on their 30 year anniversary, so to mark the occasion, they have hired me to put together a heritage project. The project is a suite of media: a book, some short "documentary" style movie pieces, and an interactive website. Luckily, Westbeach has given me free reign to tell the story "warts and all" and the book will be more about the history of Canadian snowboarding than just about the brand."

"We've been working on it for a couple months now, and it's been amazing getting in touch with so many of the people who were involved in the growth of the sport in Canada. From the mid '80s on, Westbeach was always a huge part of Canadian snowboarding and the team has been a who's who of stars: Devun [Walsh], Dionne [Delesalle], Sluggo [Rob Boyce], Kevin Young, [Jon] Boyer, the list goes on and on."

"In the late '90s & Westbeach got lost in the shuffle of corporate consolidation, and by early this decade, it was looking pretty bad. After several false starts with various buyers, Westbeach finally got traction with ownership that has a long-term relationship with the brand. So now, after almost 30 years, they are essentially running as a startup, stripped to the bare essentials and focusing on rebuilding the brand to where it belongs. It's always been really durable, even when it wasn't doing well, so it's interesting to watch them continue what Chip Wilson, Scott Sibley and Marco Polo started so long ago.