Earlier this year climber Marc-André Leclerc made his last ascent in the mountains of Alaska. This past weekend his accomplishments were celebrated in the shadow of the Stawamus Chief.
While the world will remember the 25-year-old as an extremely talented alpinist, friends and family gathered on Saturday rounded that image out with stories of an energetic son, partner, brother and friend.
“Most people know him as a guy who accomplished all these things, and he really did, but I just want you to know that it’s not something that came easily to him,” explained his father, Serge Leclerc, to a large crowd at O'Siem Pavilion.
“It’s something he really had to work at; it’s something that he put so much effort into it. Little by little, little by little, Marc-André not only became a really great athlete, but he became a wonderful man.”
Leclerc grew up in Agassiz, though he and his partner and fellow climber Brette Harrington made Squamish their home when they weren’t exploring.
In March, Leclerc and climbing partner, Ryan Johnson died on an expedition outside Juneau, Alaska, after a storm interrupted their descent from the Mendenhall Towers.
On Saturday night Harrington shared lessons she had learned from their time together and tried to explain the deep bond of trust required for two people to love both each other and the mountains.
“When Mark needed to go soloing, I needed him to do that, although it was always hard to separate. When we got back together, it was always beautiful,” she told the crowd.
“It’s not just the trust you have for your partner, but it’s the trust you have for yourself. When you go into the mountains with your partner, you trust that they will take care of themselves as well as you can take care of yourself.”
“He wasn’t fearless, but he wasn’t afraid,” she said.
The types of terrain Leclerc took on would make most people feel afraid.
He was well known for daring solo accomplishments in icy and remote locations from his backyard in British Columbia down to Patagonia. He achieved incredibly difficult solo summits.
Closer to home, in 2013, he solo climbed the Grand Wall of the Chief in under an hour.
Despite his accomplishments, friends and family spoke of him as someone who was always humble and a lover of books, music, and nature.
The event on Saturday night was an open invite — it was even mentioned that the fun-loving Leclerc would have surely approved of any party crashing climbers who showed up just for music and beer.
His sister, Bridgid-Anne Dunning and brother Elijah Leclerc, recalled his sense of humour and his complete passion for climbing.
Leclerc’s mother, Michelle Kuipers, said she was “thankful that at least God granted me the grace to understand this about my son.”
Kuipers said Leclerc was destined for the mountains. By the time he started kindergarten he had memorized the height of Mount Everest and the names of the first alpinists to reach its peak.
After a chance encounter with the sport of climbing at a Coquitlam mall, Leclerc’s path was set. For the next 16 years, a love of adventure and the outdoors would take him to many wild places his family couldn’t follow.
“He saw much more of the world than most people,” said Kuipers. “He lived the sort of adventures usually reserved for imagination and epics of ages past. We don’t know what he would have done with more years, but we do know what he did with the years he was given, and he didn’t waste a moment.”
