Like most, but not all Weasels, Roy Bissett was a skier first who then travelled a path which lead him inexorably into the arms of the Weasel family.  We first met Roy at the Labatt Blue Fantastic Downhill in 1985.  Let's just say right now that Roy was not a great skier at the time, but had a willingness to learn along with that dogged determination that made him a great Firefighter (his real job) and a great Weasel later on.  Determination or not, his team was a bit disappointed with his DNF on race day and he had to withstand a good amount of team abuse.  The following year, he attended the training camp prior to the race and pulled up his socks, finishing a respectable “top 90” (89th) and was only chicked by 15 women.  Realizing at this point that racing would not be his forte, he signed up to be a Race Department volunteer and his passion for behind the scenes work started to grow. 

Roy worked with us at Whistler Mountain for 4 years as a volunteer, scheduling his VFD shifts around our race schedule and, in 1990 and 91Roy  actually took the winter off to work with us full time.  It was through his volunteering and work with the Whistler Race Department that he was introduced to the world of Weaseling and he soon realized that the big show of the Downhill appealed more to him than running around after the doctor-lawyer crowd at Masters Camps and Races.

From that point on, Biss was a good, solid Weasel, who never really got any better technically at skiing but could ski anything, carrying anything, which means a lot in the Weasel world.  When the work was done on the hill, who can forget the laughs as he entertained with his ridiculously horrific, hilarious, endless (and fictional?) fireman stories.

Roy was on his way home after a long day on the fence line at Whistler when his car went off the road near Lions Bay.  The lasting legacy of his time spent in the Weasel trench is that tricky little section on the track known as "Roy’s Turns" and it’s tough to ski or work around there without thinking of him and making a quick tip of the hat to an old friend.