july 2015 BCBusiness 69 BCBuSINESS.CA
He was into T-shirts, however. Every fall he
would have hundreds made up with slogans
ripped from early-'90s Nike campaigns: Just
Drink It, Bo Knows Bishop's, and so on. He went
from dorm door to dorm door—and sold out in a
day. He also outfitted the fraternities and sports
teams. In his fourth year, the university adminis-
tration finally sent Hardy a warning letter about
using its logo.
In September 1993, after graduating with a BA,
Hardy returned to Bishop's for one last T-shirt
sale and then headed west in his 1986 Honda
Prelude. "I had really only been from Ottawa to
Lennoxville, and that was my sense of the world.
Everyone said, 'I'm finished university—I want to
travel and see the world.' But I had no interest in
Europe, Asia or anything else. In my mind, the
only thing I could envision doing was going to
Whistler. I remember seeing the Sea-to-Sky High-
way—this unique place where the ocean meets
the mountains—and thinking, 'I'm home.'"
As he pulled into a parking lot at Whistler, he
glanced up and saw a friend from his volleyball
team at Bishop's, who offered him a place to stay.
It was "serendipitous"—a word Hardy uses a lot.
After a winter of skiing and working at Whistler's
Listel Hotel, he packed up his van and drove to
Cabo San Lucas, where he spent the summer
surfing. In August 1994, he returned to Kitsilano
and serendipitously ran into another friend who
offered him a place to stay.
He briefly thought of returning to Whistler,
but he wanted someday to be able to buy one
of the $250,000 lots he had seen there. It was
THE FAMILY
Roger Hardy with his
wife, Jenny, a former
communications manager
at Coastal, and their
two children
