Lone Star: René Farwig’s Far-out Journey
Wartime breadlines. Olympic fall lines. Papal friendship won and loves lost. A Cranbrook senior shares the story of a truly remarkable life.
Decorated and dignified — Having lived and travelled across the globe, the 89-year-old now lives a quieter life in Cranbrook with his third wife and their aging dog. — Jeff Pew Photo
On a warm June morning, René Farwig sits on the veranda of his mobile home in Cranbrook, B.C. At 89, he moves with the steady choreography of someone who’s practiced slowness. His memories arrive in flashes: some precise, others cloudy, recovered with a snap of his fingers and a squint.
For Farwig, time is not a straight line. He loops back mid-sentence, rewinds decades, then jumps to the present. He speaks for five and a half hours without pause, his accent a thick hybrid of German, Bolivian, and middle North American. He wears a straw hat, blue jeans, and Birkenstocks. Every so often, he combs his thick white eyebrows with his fingers.
His third wife, Danella, brings coffee, smiling, says very little, and drifts back into the living room. Airplanes fly overhead. A barefoot man ambles on the road strumming a guitar, singing something half-familiar.
“Seems like if your organs are okay, you can go on forever,” Farwig says, before we begin.
A CHILDHOOD TORN BY WAR
Farwig was born in 1935 in Valencia, Spain, the child of a German engineer father and a Bolivian woman from a large Catholic family. His father, wounded and decorated with an Iron Cross, had left post-WWI Germany for Bolivia, building small dams in the Yungas mountains and carrying equipment by mule.
The family returned to Europe: first to Germany, then back to Spain, just as Franco's civil war ignited. “My dad was a translator for Franco,” Farwig explains. “He worked with the German pilots helping Franco, but died in 1939 when I was only five. Malaria. War wounds. Who knows?”
That left his mother alone in Spain with three boys. “She was elegant, but tough as nails,” Farwig says. She returned with her boys to Germany, drawn by family promises of education and stability. They settled in Halle, a Saxon town of 100,000, just in time for the Second World War.
“We got bombed for three years straight,” Farwig says. “There was little to eat. Breakfast was potatoes and onions, whatever you could scrape together. Our house had no windows. The doors were scavenged plywood. We’d steal light bulbs and anything we could to survive.”
Farwig learned to adapt. “I stole cigarettes from my mother and gave them to teachers. That didn’t go over well.” He remembers strict rules: never stepping off the concrete onto the grass, and learning to eat properly at the tables. “It was discipline.”
By the end of the war, everything fell apart. “The Russians were coming from the east. The Americans and Canadians came from the west, giving us bread, chewing gum, and chocolate.” His family left by train, just ahead of the Red Army, which eventually stopped the train, evicted the German soldiers, and beat or killed them.
“But we had Bolivian passports, which saved us.”
The family ended up in displaced persons camps — first in Bavaria, then Munich, then Switzerland. “In Munich, the camps were full of women and children. No men, other than the very old.” He remembers standing in line with a tin can, waiting for soup.
Switzerland was another world, untouched by the war. “The trains ran on time,” he recalls. “Everything was clean. The lake sparkled.”
FOR A YOUNG REFUGEE, THE ANDES’ EMBRACE
After the war, Farwig’s family left Europe for South America aboard a packed emigrant ship from Genoa, Italy. “There were 3,000 of us,” he says. “Six decks high, all crammed where the cargo used to go.” The journey spanned 30 days, with stops in Dakar, Rio de Janeiro, Fortaleza, and Montevideo.
“They’d unload people at every port, immigrants accepted by each country. We were the last ones off in Buenos Aires.”
To escape the stench and sickness below deck, Farwig’s family made a deal with the ship workers. “They let us sleep in a lifeboat if we smuggled rum and nylons to shore. It was quiet, clean, and sunny. We had to sneak back on board each morning before the rest woke up.”
The family made their way to La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia: high in the Andes, and rough. The family lived in a two-room, century-old apartment downtown. Farwig’s mother found work as a bank teller and sold a Franco-gifted watch for $50. Now a refugee, Farwig received a scholarship to a German private school.
“Some kids were driven by chauffeurs. I sat there with a piece of bread and a banana, thinking, ‘Sons of bitches.’”
He hated the nuns. “I was in school six days a week because I misbehaved. My mom thought it was terrific.” Still, there were perks, like free ski equipment for juniors under 15. Bolivia, like everything else in Farwig’s life, was complicated.
A NATIONAL TEAM, OF ONE
On weekends, Farwig skied on Chacaltaya, a 17,000-foot glacier 40 minutes from La Paz. “We had 40 feet of ice,” he recalls. When crevasses opened across the lift line, Farwig and his mates laid down planks, shovelled snow on top, and helped tourists ski across. The lift engine was a 1942 Ford truck with a cable around its wheel.
A wealthy family from Buenos Aires — owners of Austral Airlines — sponsored a month-long ski scholarship in Argentina that Farwig won. “They were multimillionaires,” Farwig says. “They’d fly us in when I was about 14 or 15.”
At 16, he became Bolivia’s top skier and joined a national team — “not official,” he explains, “but we called it that.” He returned each year, eventually winning the National Championships in Argentina.
That’s when Emil Allais, a French world champion skier, took notice of Farwig. Allais sent French coaches to South America, first to Chile and then Bolivia. “They didn’t charge us anything,” René says. “We had world-class coaching, totally French, technically oriented.”
In the southern hemisphere, the ski season ran during the north’s summer, and South America was becoming a hotspot for off-season ski training. Coaches from Denver University brought some of the best American skiers to Chile and Argentina to train during these months.
In the following years, Farwig, the best skier in South America, was invited to compete in the U.S. With just $200 to his name, he travelled four days from Miami to Denver.
“We hosted American patrollers in Bolivia — fed them well — so they returned the favour,” he says.
Peak performer — Farwig competed in slalom and giant slalom events in the 1956 Winter Olympics — and years later, helped shape Canada’s own Olympic story, overseeing the development of what would become Nakiska, home to alpine events for the 1988 Winter Games.
At 20, René Farwig became Bolivia’s first-ever Winter Olympian. With no team or federation, his brother introduced him to a Bolivian government minister who asked, “You think you’re good enough for the Olympics?”
With $1,000 and a $140 boat ticket, he travelled to Chamonix to train with the French national team, widely considered the best. He lived simply, trained hard, and ran alpine roads while a friend followed on a Vespa.
“I kept currencies in different pockets — marks here, lira there,” he laughs.
Farwig raced all over Europe, including Sestriere, Adelboden, and Kitzbühel, the latter where four racers before him were airlifted to the hospital. “I made it down,” he says. “The officials ran toward me, but by then, the crowd had gone to the bar.”
At the 1956 Cortina Olympics, he carried Bolivia’s flag alone in the opening ceremony. “An Italian girl held the nameplate. The Russians had hundreds of athletes — I raced with strings cinching my pants to my legs.”
“Without a coach or proper gear, I finished 35th in the downhill,” Farwig says. “Someone told me, ‘You beat a lot of countries.’ I held onto that.”
When he returned home, 300 people greeted him. “For revolutions, thousands would fill a stadium,” he says smiling. “No one understood the Winter Games, but I enjoyed every minute of it.
THE ARMS OF AMERICA, THE MAN OF GOD
After the Olympics, Farwig's life in North America exploded into a whirlwind of racing, love, coaching, and reinvention. Landing in Denver in the early '60s with $200 to his name, he hitchhiked to Aspen where he found housing with ski patrollers and met his future wife, a vibrant home economics teacher chasing her ski dreams. They fell in love, married, and skied across Chile and Argentina, where Farwig beat Olympic champion Stein Eriksen in a GS race.
Back in the U.S., Farwig found work in Aspen as a groomer and ski instructor. He eventually settled in Colorado, started a family, and opened a ski school. Tragedy struck when their daughter was killed in a traffic accident — something Farwig and his wife never fully recovered from.
René’s ski school career took off. He became ski school director in Boise, Idaho, and then at Mount Hood Meadows in Oregon, where he pioneered women’s programs, midweek racing leagues, and youth training systems. At his peak, René managed 100 instructors and 80 racers, hiring international talent from Argentina, France, and Chile.
Known for his charisma and instinct, René helped shape modern ski instruction, blending elite technique with inclusivity. But tension with business partners and the difficulty of managing his French ski instructors — who urinated in the snow and slept with clients — led him to walk away.
After the Olympics, Farwig was invited to represent Bolivia at the National Erasmus (Student) Games in Zakopane, Poland. He took a train alone through the Iron Curtain.
“They gave me a whole compartment — eight seats — just for me. I felt like a celebrity,” he recalls. At the event, he was the only solo athlete, and housed far from the venue. “No coach. No helmet,” he says.
During a formal banquet, he was seated beside a young priest dressed in black who was curious about Bolivia, and Farwig’s blonde hair and German fluency. They became fast friends.
“He was an intermediate skier, very kind,” he reflects. “When we skied, I gave him tips on his turns.” That priest, in 1978, would become Pope John Paul II, a lifelong friend of Farwig.
FROM JASPER TO KASHMIR TO CRANBROOK
In 1979, Farwig left Mount Hood Meadows to become general manager of Marmot Basin, a ski resort owned by 17 doctors in Jasper, Alberta. “The gearbox on the T-bar was open and loud as hell,” he says. “Grease everywhere. It was shocking after the States.”
Adjusting to Canada’s National Parks system, René learned on the fly. He documented mismanaged avalanche control that killed wildlife and pushed for better infrastructure.
“I wanted 10 more lifts, but first we needed basics — like taxis at 2 a.m. when tourists arrived by train.”
René quickly became a local leader, joining the Chamber of Commerce, and rubbing shoulders with politicians like Joe Clark and his wife, and Maureen McTeer, whom he skied with.
Later, Pope John Paul II planned a visit to Edmonton. “The weather was too bad for the Pope to fly to Jasper,” Farwig explains, “but the Vatican invited my wife and me to dinner in Edmonton instead.”
At dinner, René and the Pope spoke for 40 minutes. “He asked me how a Nordic skier from Bolivia ended up in the Canadian Rockies. I told him, ‘You were a Polish priest. Now you’re Pope. Things change.’”
“I was lucky to be white and blonde,” René reflects. “It helped me get through doors. But I saw how hard it was for Black people in Idaho. That always stayed with me.”
One man showing — At the 1956 Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, Farwig was famously the only person carrying the Bolivian flag; he was the country’s sole competitor, and the first athlete from that country to ever be sent to the Winter Olympics.
In 1983, Farwig was asked to leave his job at Marmot Basin to become general manager of the new Olympic alpine venue near Calgary, Mount Allan (now Nakiska).
“The committee asked, ‘Do you want to build the Olympic ski hill?’ How could I refuse?”
Farwig lived in a motorhome on-site and oversaw massive infrastructure projects: pumping water 3,000 vertical feet from the river, installing 355 snow guns, and blasting through frozen terrain.
“On the eve of the women’s downhill, we had to drill holes every two metres on the course and pack them with dynamite,” he says. “We blew up 200 metres of snow and ice. It looked like a war zone.”
Throughout the night, they groomed and made fresh snow. When the jury arrived, they were impressed with the conditions, having no idea what Farwig’s team had done all night.
Mount Allan faced warm weather, lawsuits, and tragic accidents. René’s team struggled with snow density regulations and building a system from scratch. Despite setbacks, the venue hosted all alpine events for the 1988 Winter Olympics.
“It was the last Olympics before the Games became what they are now,” he says, referring to the massive expenses today.
After the Calgary Olympics, Farwig’s career spanned various continents and disciplines. In Northern India’s Kashmir region, he helped map gondola and lift lines, walking the mountains to design ski terrain. He served as general manager of Hemlock, Shames, and Nitehawk ski resorts, and base manager of Sunshine Village, across Western Canada.
As technical delegate for downhill events with Molson and FIS, he played key roles at ski races across North America, including the Lake Placid Olympics. Known for his artistry as well as athleticism, Farwig also held art exhibitions of his scenic landscape paintings.
“Nowadays, I do nothing,” René says, looking toward his dog curled nearby. “He understands me slowing down. He’s almost my age.” After a life of mountains, medals, and continents travelled, Farwig speaks with the calm of someone who's seen the world rise and fall.
“Everything passes,” he says. “It’s the consequence of the passing you really have to watch out for.”
~ Jeff Pew
Find this full-length story and more in The Trench’s Summer/Fall 2025 edition: