Biography
Johannsen was born in the town of Horten, some fifty miles south of Norway's capital Oslo, and graduated with an engineering degree from the University of Berlin in 1899. He emigrated to the USA as a machinery salesman shortly thereafter. In 1907, Johannsen immigrated to Canada with his family and settled in the Laurentians in the predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec. Johannsen learned French and further introduced skiing to the area.
While on a trip to Canada to sell machinery to the Canadian Grand Trunk Railway in 1902, Johannsen was befriended by the First Nations Cree in the wilderness above North Bay, Ontario. The nickname "Jackrabbit" is said to have been given to him by the Cree, who were impressed by his speed on skis compared to the snowshoes they were using at the time.
Johannsen married Alice Robinson in 1907 and settled permanently in the Laurentians region of Quebec in Canada during the Great Depression. He is credited with building many ski jumps and with blazing trails throughout Ontario, the Eastern Townships, and the Laurentians. On December 22, 1972, Johannsen was appointed as a Member of the Order of Canada for fostering and developing skiing as a recreation and helping and encouraging generations of skiers in Canada.
He was profiled during ABC Sports coverage of the 1984 Winter Olympic Games.
He was an honorary member of the Norwegian skiing and gentlemen's club SK Ull. Jackrabbit died from pneumonia on January 5, 1987 at the age of 111 in a hospital near Tønsberg, Norway. He has been posthumously recognized as the oldest living man for the last month of his life.
Read more about this topic: Herman Smith-Johannsen
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)