Grey Rocks ski resort was Quebec’s first ski hill and was formerly known as the Laurentian Mountains’ ski center. George Wheeler, an American from New Hampshire who arrived in the region as a lumberjack in 1894, created Gray Rocks in 1905.
Gray Rocks was a small mountain with a few hundred feet of intermediate terrain. Yet, it remained a perennial favorite in ski school polls for decades. Grey Rocks developed a name for itself with its ski center, hotel, and the well-known Snow Eagle ski school.
For more than three generations, the Gray Rocks hotel has been in the family. Lucille Wheeler, George Wheeler’s granddaughter, earned the first Canadian Olympic medal in alpine skiing (bronze) in 1956 at Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. Surprisingly, Montreal came in second place to Italy in the 1956 Winter Olympics. Lucille Weeler got her first pair of skis at Gray Rocks.
Gray Rocks was renowned as the dean of Laurentian resorts from the 1950s through the 1970s. In the summer, many American families came for golf, tennis, and swimming, and in the winter, for ski packages. Even though one of the earlier owners, Philip Robinson, was aware that the hotel need upgrades, the ultimate blow came from New York. He had already lost over a million and a half dollars every year with the ski facility by the late 1980s. After more than a century of operation, Gray Rocks ski resort and hotel closed its doors in 2009.
In the evening of November 25, 2014, a suspicious fire damaged 70% of the Gray Rocks main structure. About 9 p.m., flames burst from the former inn, prompting multiple local fire companies to race to the scene to put out the fire. Just the two golf courses, LaBelle and LaBete, were open from May through October.
