From the very first day that Bev Bendell joined the Calgary Section of the Alpine Club of Canada in 1971, she looked upon her involvement with the ACC as being a member of a team.

Over the years, Bev shared her boundless enthusiasm and varied and valuable talents with an assortment of teams within Canada’s mountaineering organization. She served as Chair of both the Calgary and Rocky Mountain Sections, and also as Calgary Section Librarian, Treasurer and Editor of The Chinook newsletter. At the Club’s national level, she served on the Awards and Endowment Fund Committees, as Huts Committee Work Party Coordinator and as Club Librarian.

In 1976, Bev participated in her first national level Club activity, a trekking trip to Nepal, and in 1978 she attended her first ACC General Mountaineering Camp. Through the years, she also took on special projects, displaying her desktop publishing talents by producing the invaluable Members’ Handbook in 1996 and again in 2000. Many an ACC member covets another of her projects, a brochure titled, “Old books are like old friends, they need to be treated kindly.”
Starting when its office was located in Banff, Alberta, and Bev was one of only three staff members, she became the ACC’s Facilities/Activities Administration Manager. In1985, Bev was awarded the ACC’s Distinguished Service Award, and in 1998 the A.O. Wheeler Legacy Award.

“The Club is something I was committed to,” Bev admitted. “I’m a project type person, and with the Alpine Club there was always something that needed to be done and never enough people to get it all done.”

When Bev learned she didn’t have much time left as doctors diagnosed her brain cancer as inoperable, she decided to make a significant donation to the Club she felt had given her so much, in the form of a $100,000 donation. In recognition of her long-standing interest and devotion to the Club’s library and archives, Bev requested that her donation go toward the ACC’s Mountain Culture and Library Funds. As such, in March 2007, the Bev Bendell Library Fund was created to facilitate the purchase of books for the ACC Library, and to help support the initiatives of the Mountain Culture Committee.

Although enormously generous, this was not Bev Bendell’s - who became Bev Downing after she met the charming Joe Downing on a cruise and married him in 2005 - first substantial contribution to the ACC. In 2005, she donated $50,000 towards the re-building of Fay Hut in Kootenay National Park, after the original cabin, constructed in 1927, was incinerated in a forest fire in 2003. In 2006, she donated $10,000 towards the Canadian Alpine Journal digitization project.

Bev’s generous nature was not confined to her association with the ACC. In March 2007, she presented a donation of $60,000 to the Bow Valley SPCA, a no-cage, no-kill facility in Canmore, Alberta, in recognition of her love of both dogs and cats.

But if there’s one place Bev is remembered most fondly, it’s in the kitchen – or kitchen tent - as a member of the GMC cooking team. Soon after presenting her generous donation to the ACC, the members of the Mountain Culture Committee decided to put a small portion of her donation to fitting use, by publishing the Bev Bendell Cookbook, thus creating a volume that might be enjoyed and shared among ACC members and mountain enthusiasts for years to come.

by Lynn Martel, Mountain Culture Committee, Gazette Editor.

Click here for information on the Bev Bendell Library Fund.

Click here to make a memorial donation to the Bev Bendell Library Fund.