ProSlide Brand Guidelines: The Ottawa Water-Ride Maker Started by a Ski Racer

From the downhill to the flume.

ProSlide Technology began in Ottawa in 1986. The trade magazine EuroAmusement Professional dated its founding that way, by Rick Hunter in Ottawa, when it marked the company’s 35th anniversary in February 2021. ProSlide says Hunter was a member of Canada’s alpine ski racing team from 1969 to 1974, and that the company started in partnership with Tanzer Industries, a Canadian maker of fibreglass sailboats. The Federal Court of Canada adds a detail in its 2024 judgment: it calls Hunter the owner and founder of ProSlide, and records that the father of Andreas Tanzer, then ProSlide’s director of research, design and standards, co-founded the company with him.

Hunter told PLANT magazine in 2018 that “the waterslide business has the thrill of skiing,” with G-forces, curves and sudden drops but no skill needed from the rider. The same article gave the state of the trade at the start, in the words of ProSlide’s senior vice-president of corporate affairs, David Alexander: “basically anyone who had a fibreglass plant and a hosepipe were making rides.”

The first rides came in 1987. ProSlide’s timeline says Giant TWISTER was its first patented attraction, and English Wikipedia says the first Twisters opened at Mont Saint-Sauveur in Quebec and at Adventure World in Maryland that year. In 1990 the company gained a test site. English Wikipedia says Hunter bought Mont Cascades, a Quebec ski area and water park, and ProSlide says it became its dedicated research site; PLANT placed it about 20 minutes north of Ottawa and said ProSlide owns it.

Hunter has stayed at the head of the company. Health Club Management called Hunter president and owner in December 2007, PLANT called ProSlide privately owned in 2018, and the Federal Court gave him as president and chief executive in 2024. PLANT counted about 120 staff at the Ottawa headquarters and 12 at a facility in Shanghai.

Curves, funnels and magnets.

ProSlide’s reputation rests on a series of new ride types. The first big step was the Mammoth of 1990. PLANT said a Colorado company approached Hunter about a fibreglass raft ride for six people, far wider than the two-person rides then standard, and that the prototype was assembled at Quebec’s Mont Blanc ski hill. The ride used what ProSlide calls its compound curve, with curves of varying radius, an idea PLANT traced to Hunter’s skiing; it took the World Waterpark Association’s 1991 award for best new water park ride. Sources describe the first version differently: English Wikipedia speaks of four-person tubes and a first installation at Kings Island’s WaterWorks. ProSlide calls it the world’s first family raft ride.

Next came the funnel. ProSlide says TORNADO 60, of 2003, was the world’s first funnel ride, and that it won an IAAPA Brass Ring Award. In the mid-2000s the company built uphill water coasters, first with belts and then with HydroMAGNETIC linear induction motors, the technology English Wikipedia says was first known from launched roller coasters such as Flight of Fear, built by Premier Rides. PLANT said this technology prompted the term “water coaster.” English Wikipedia says Guinness World Records named the Mammoth coaster at Holiday World the world’s longest in 2016. The company’s later names keep its habit of mixing capitals, as in RocketBLAST, FlyingSAUCER, TornadoWAVE and HIVE.

Whole parks followed. ProSlide says Disney’s Blizzard Beach opened in 1995 as its first all-ProSlide water park, and that Universal’s Volcano Bay of 2017 has 17 of its attractions. EuroAmusement Professional named Volcano Bay and Rulantica at Europa-Park among its largest recent projects in 2021, Rulantica with the German supplier Aquarena. ProSlide says it has now worked on more than 750 water parks and holds more than 50 patents and more than 146 industry awards. It also says Hunter entered the World Waterpark Association Hall of Fame in 2000 and the IAAPA Hall of Fame in 2024.

PLANT also set out how the rides are made. It described rides designed in CAD and 3D rendering from modular parts that Alexander compared to Lego blocks. A five-axis CNC machine cuts a medium-density fibreboard form for a fibreglass plug, from which a solid fibreglass mould is taken; the company developed one or two moulds a week. Parts are gel-coated and built up with chopped fibreglass to between 6.5 and 9 mm. ProSlide once made half of its fibreglass at Rigaud, Quebec, PLANT said, but by 2018 it outsourced this to four suppliers in Quebec and Ontario, while keeping “made-in-Canada” as a stated part of its strategy.

Steel, renderings and show floors.

Ride makers sell to parks rather than to the public. The park usually names and themes the ride, and the maker’s own identity sits further back, in the engineering. That shapes how these firms present themselves.

The factory floor is usually the first picture. Long curved lengths of steel track, jigs, welded supports and finished trains waiting for shipment do the work of a product shot, because a coaster cannot be photographed whole until it stands in a park. Alongside them come CAD renderings, which let a maker show a layout, a station or a new train to a buyer long before any steel is cut.

The trade stand is the second stage. IAAPA Expo, the industry’s large annual show, is where makers put full-size vehicles and scale models in front of park owners, announce new models and compete for the show’s product awards. Company websites tend to follow the same logic, leading with reference lists and record claims rather than with a founder’s story.

The third stage belongs to the ride itself. On-ride films, shot from the front seat and released by parks and makers, are a common way to show a layout to people who will never see the drawings, and a park’s opening day puts the finished work in public view. This guide sets out who founded each firm, who owns it and where its work is made, and it attributes every claim to its source. Colours and typefaces here are our own interpretation, not the companies’ standards.

Two court cases and a project on hold.

ProSlide’s patents have been tested in court against its fellow Canadian company WhiteWater, of Richmond, British Columbia. The Federal Court of Canada called the two the largest water slide companies in the world. In November 2023 Australasian Leisure Management reported that a Florida jury had found that WhiteWater’s Tailspin and Orbiter wilfully infringed one ProSlide patent and that its AquaSphere infringed another. WhiteWater gave a different reading to blooloop that month: it said it had prevailed on more than 96% of the 193 claims originally brought, with the jury siding with ProSlide on six claims in two patents, and that it would pursue every legal avenue.

The parallel Canadian case went the other way at first. In a judgment dated September 13, 2024, Justice Michael Manson held that none of the asserted claims were infringed, found them invalid, and awarded costs to WhiteWater. ProSlide appealed. According to a March 2026 bulletin from the Toronto law firm Lenczner Slaght, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled on March 20, 2026 that the trial judge had erred on overbreadth, restoring the validity of the asserted claims in three related “Water Ride” patents, while WhiteWater’s cross-appeal on utility failed. The appeal court did not find infringement, however: the bulletin says WhiteWater’s slides were built and used abroad, and that design work in Canada was not enough.

A hometown project stalled. Health Club Management reported in December 2007 that it would build a water park called Alottawata in Ottawa as a showcase for its rides, scheduled to open in June 2009. PLANT said in 2018 that the project was to break ground that year. English Wikipedia says ProSlide sold the land in July 2023.

The company marks its 40th anniversary in 2026, with new products still coming. It says PowerRAPIDS, which it describes as a “river in the sky,” made its debut in Vietnam in June, and in September it announced ATRIUM with Aqualibi at Walibi Belgium, a way to extend a TornadoWAVE beyond an indoor park’s walls. Its current line is “Bold. Brilliant. Unmistakably ProSlide.”

For a design guide, ProSlide shows how product names styled the same way across a range can carry a maker’s identity. Compare WhiteWater, the other party in those cases, and Europa-Park, home of Rulantica. For this guide we use teal, a pale spray and a coral with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep ProSlide’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.