Raising Resilient Kids on the Water

For more than three decades, Jimmy Martinello has built his life around the mountains, rivers, lakes, and oceans of British Columbia’s Sea to Sky corridor. An accomplished athlete, filmmaker, photographer, and adventurer, Jimmy earned a reputation early in life for pursuing adventures in some of the world’s wildest places. But behind the expeditions, surf missions, and athletic accomplishments, the centre of Jimmy’s world has always remained much closer to home: his wife Annie and their two children. 

Rather than stepping away from the outdoors when he became a father, Jimmy simply folded the two together, introducing his children to the same environments that had shaped so much of his own life. 

The ocean became a gathering place for the family—somewhere the kids could explore freely as their confidence, curiosity, and connection grew. 

“We’ve done a lot of family trips to the ocean on our own and with other families,” says Jimmy. “It’s great, because we can go to the beach, and the kids can run around together, and they can have fun.” 

Paddleboarding eventually became one of the activities that fit especially well into that lifestyle. Around the time their daughter, Brielle, was born, about 15 years ago, it offered the family a simple, accessible way to stay connected to the water together. 

“It’s always been something the kids liked,” he says. “They like swimming and being outside in nature. So, it’s never been a difficult thing as parents [to have our kids participate]. It naturally fell in place with our family.” 

For Jimmy, though, ocean life has always carried a deep understanding of responsibility and respect. Raising children around water meant prioritizing safety while also allowing them to gradually build their own confidence and independence. 

“When my little guy was really young, and we were in Costa Rica, he was always running to the ocean,” says Jimmy. “I actually let him get a bit worked, and it kind of scared him a little. It taught him that the ocean is pretty powerful and not to turn his back on it.” 

That balance between confidence and caution became one of the foundations of Jimmy’s approach to parenting around the water. 

From a young age, the children were enrolled in swimming lessons and introduced to ocean awareness, river conditions, and water safety. Over time, the family carefully expanded their comfort zones, introducing the children to river environments through manageable experiences like floating sections of the Squamish River before progressing to more advanced adventures. 

Jimmy’s understanding of risk deepened after a dangerous river-paddling situation with a friend — an experience that motivated him to pursue additional safety training. 

“I did my swift water rescue,” says Jimmy. “So, I take my kids on the rivers, too, and teach them what I've learned from that.” 

Rather than leading with fear, Jimmy focused on teaching respect. 

As his children grew older, so did his understanding that, eventually, the responsibility for safety decisions would shift from parent to child — a change he describes as both rewarding and humbling. 

“There’s a transition from making those decisions for them to trusting their judgment,” he says. 

That trust, however, wasn’t built through lectures or strict rules. It came through years of shared experiences outdoors watching them learn to read conditions, make decisions, recover from mistakes, and slowly build confidence in themselves. 

The lessons learned through surfing and paddling have extended well beyond sport itself. Jimmy says his children’s involvement in both individual and team sports has helped shape their resilience, patience, and discipline. 

“They learn that they don’t just become good at something overnight,” he says, reflecting on the persistence required in any sport and the confidence that develops through repetition and failure. 

Those lessons, he believes, stay with them far beyond the fields, mountains, and water. 

Even now, as his children have grown older, adventure remains one of the ways the family stays connected. Father’s Day, in particular, has evolved into what Jimmy jokingly describes as a family “Yes Day,” where everyone else has to say yes to whatever he wants to do. 

At the heart of it all, though, Jimmy says staying close with older children has little to do with adventure itself. 

“We’ve always tried to be engaged in what they are psyched to do,” he says. 

Communication, openness, and learning how to evolve alongside his children have mattered most. 

“It is a different time in life,” says Jimmy. “They're going to spread their wings and go on their own path. But we're very close, and even when they do their thing, they always know they have a home.” 

Rather than holding tightly to authority as his children entered their teenage years, Jimmy focused on building connections to foster relationships that would continue to grow into adulthood. 

That approach, it seems, is paying off. 

“My son asked me to go to Japan this year with him and his two buddies for his birthday, which I was stoked about.” 

For Jimmy, that may be the greatest reward of all: not simply raising children who followed him onto the ocean but raising young adults who still want him beside them for the journey.