Richard Collier ’63

A remembrance by Steve Stigler

Richard “Rick” Collier died August 15, 2012, in a fall while climbing Mt. Geikie in eastern British Columbia, when a part of the rock face gave way during a vertical ascent he was leading.

He retired from teaching English at Mount Royal University in Calgary in 1996, where he won three distinguished teaching awards, and where his wife, Mardy Roberts, still teaches. He was best known, though, as an accomplished mountain climber, having climbed all the 583 named peaks in the southern Canadian Rockies, including all 53 over 11,000 feet in height.

He also, notably, made a nighttime exterior ascent of Carleton’s Chapel in 1961 to install a banner reading “Sophs, God’s Children.” In recognition of this achievement, Dean Jarchow called him in the morning to invite a repeat ascent. Collier wrote extensively on pedagogy, climbing, and social justice causes, and helped maintain a blog on behalf of the Old Goats Group. In 1998 Carleton gave him the Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award, and his address on Carnivals was the highlight of his 35th Reunion.

I roomed with him Junior and Senior years: I was with him when he discovered Schiller during a subterranean exploration, and later when we arranged a photo op with Schiller and Larry Gould, and the following year I was rooming with him when Schiller was stolen from us by some undergraduates with evil intentions and a chain cutter. He could be charming, ornery, insightful, stubborn, funny, challenging; all in the same day. Life with him was a voyage not to be missed.

• Prominent 71-year-old mountaineer dies in B.C. climbing accident (Vancouver Sun, August 17, 2012)