August 25th, 2026

Hi Friends,

His legacy was literally set in stone —stone steps and pathways to be exact — hundreds of them in various places in the Kananaskis, Banff National Park and Yoho National Park. Forty-six years after his death, I benefited from some of those steps just last week. I knew his name by association with a place of natural beauty but, until last week, I didn’t actually even know it was the name of a person. And what a person he was!

Andrea was born in Italy on December 20, 1890. In 1912, he emigrated to Canada and began work with the Canadian Pacific Railway, which brought him west to the Bow Valley, where he settled in Canmore in 1916. For the next 29 years, he worked as a coal miner around Canmore. All that time, he enjoyed the mountains and he was generous with his time and energy toward people. As a mountain climber, he has several “first ascents” to his credit but they are not the things for which he is most remembered.

At 65, he retired from the mines. After a life like that, you’d think he’d take it easy. Far from it! For the next five years, he served as Assistant Warden at Lake O’Hara in Yoho National Park. Rather than simply patrolling the area, he could be found most days in overalls, heading out on the trails with a pry bar, wheelbarrow, shovel, crowbar, spade, and mattock. Using only these rudimentary tools and his renowned strength (remember, he was 65+ years old), he set large flat rocks (many weighing as much as 200 pounds) in place to make easier, more accessible trails. Where ascents were so steep that guides used wooden ladders to enable clients to climb, he built magnificent rock stairways, still in use today. I was on several of them last week.

“During his research at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies,[biographer Elio] Costa recalls reading a letter written by a man whose son had died skiing in the mountains around Lake O’Hara. The body had not been found, despite the best efforts of search parties. One day, [Andrea] set out by himself to look for the body of this young man, whose parents were desperate to find him in order to give him a proper burial. [Andre] found the body and brought it back. ‘There is this very moving letter from the father to [Andrea], in the Whyte Museum in Banff,’ Costa says.” (Jacqueline Louie)

You will not likely know this man by his first name or his anglicized middle name, Lawrence, but you will know his last name if you’ve spent any time around Canmore. You may have even enjoyed the short steep hike to the beautiful lakes above Canmore that bear his name (using a stairway and pathway that he built some fifty or sixty years ago). Grassi Lakes, Mount Lawrence Grassi, Grassi Knob and even Lawrence Grassi Middle School in Canmore are all named after Andrea Lorenzo Grassi, the “little Italian superman” as he was known to many.

This strong, generous man lived his life unknown to the larger world and yet people from that larger world, decades later, benefit from his simple work, artist’s eye, profound strength and faithfulness. It makes me think of Jesus commending the woman who washed his feet with perfume; Jesus saying that a cup of water given in his name will never lose its reward; and of Paul reminding us to do whatever we do as unto the Lord and for his glory.

What “trails” are you leaving for people? What “staircases” are you building to help people find their way to the good life in Jesus? Keep building. Your “cup of cold water” matters!

Blessings!

Doug