Shoes, clothing, booze, music, and, even a horse.
If there’s a sign awareness of Revelstoke is growing, it’s the increasing ways that the name of our town is being used. To keep on top of the news, I get e-mail alerts every time the word Revelstoke is mentioned on the Internet. These are a few of the products that use our town’s name, some of which could make for a great Christmas gift.
The race horse
Yes, there is a horse named Revelstoke. It’s a five-year-old mare owned by Thomas Campbell of Souped Up Stables in Ohio, and trained by Jimmy Corrigan. Its mother is named Libeccio and its father is named Monashee Mountain, so we assume the owners have some connection to the area (unfortunately they didn’t return calls for an interview). How safe a bet is it? Well, according to equibase.com, in 37 career starts, it has seven firsts, five seconds and six third-place finishes, for career earnings of $260,714. It slowed down in 2013, with only one win in 10 starts.
The band
More than two years ago, we profiled Andrew Seale, the Toronto-based musician who calls himself Revelstoke. Seale plays solo, taking his guitar and banjo on stage, and building up songs using a foot-pedal to loop the track. Seale named himself Revelstoke after stopping here on a post-college road trip with some friends. “I’d never even heard of Revelstoke,” Seale said. “It was beautiful, our first real beautiful day. It was just unreal.” When he recorded his first album, Esprit d’escalier, the March 2010 Boulder Mountain avalanche was in the news, so he went with the name Revelstoke. You can download esprit d’escalier, and his follow-up My-Oh-My from his webpage, revelstoke.bandcamp.com.
The whisky
Revel Stoke claims to be the “original spiced whisky.” Distilled in Canada and blended in the U.S. by Ed Phillips & Sons, there are now three varieties of Revel Stoke spiced whisky. There’s the original, which you’ve probably seen at the liquor store. It was the winner of the Spirits International Prestige Award and features hints of vanilla, ginger, cinnamon, coriander and cardamom. It’s 45 per cent alcohol, but it’s a fairly easy drink, if you don’t mind sweeter spirits. They also produce a blended Canadian whiskey, which is a mix of a three-year-old whiskey and an eight-year-old whiskey. The latest addition to the Revel Stoke brand is a cinnamon whiskey.
The ski jacket
Spyder makes three-in-one ski jacket called the Revelstoke. As the marketing material put it, the jacket has “sophisticated design lines with bold strokes of color.” “We name a lot of our jackets after famous ski areas/massive mountains around the world so if it sounds like a name you have heard before as a location, chances are that is where the name of our jacket came from,” said Hallie Kupfer, a dealer services coordinator for Spyder Active Sports. Its list of attributes includes all sorts of fancy jargon, like Osmo waterproof breathable fabric technology, Spylon durable water repellent finish, PrimaLoft Sport insulation, a nylon downproof twill pill weave body and custom embossed steel stretch nylon lining. It also has nifty features like a pocket for your goggles, a lens wipe and a pocket for your season pass. At $700 it’s not cheap.
The boot
The Nike Air Revelstoke Premium isn’t exactly what you’d picture from a boot named after our town. I envision a burly hiking boot, capable of getting you up and down Mt. Begbie in style and comfort. The Nike Air Revelstoke looks more like a boot that you would wear to an office job in the city during the winter, with its leather exterior and thick rubber soul. The high-top version comes in black and brown, and the low-top version comes in grey and black. You can order it online. Prices vary.