Reid Carter had a decision to make. Four months before the first race start of the Nordic Junior & U23 World Ski Championships in Whistler, the event was in jeopardy of being shut down. Carter was torn. Fold or fight. He hadn’t established the Black Tusk Nordic Events Society to walk away with the dream of Canada hosting the prestigious event unfulfilled. A long-time cross country skier, and Division chair of Cross Country BC, Carter had been...
“In the off-season, our athletes would hop on cross country skis,’ Keisha Lewis explains. “They use it as their cross training. I saw our competitive guys do it, and then I had some homeschoolers say to me: ‘Oh, I’d love it if my kids could do something like that,’ I reached out to Kanata Nordic and launched a home-schoolers cross country program for the kids.” “Problem being, as so often happens, there was no one willing or available to implement what was...
The return on investment is there, in plain view. You can see it in precious medals hanging around necks and in places of pride on podiums. You can see it in growing recognition of the names, the progress, abilities, and accomplishments of Canadian skiers. Just this past February, the return on investment was seen in the Alpine valley of Planica, Slovenia, when 21-year-old Sonjaa Schmidt from Whitehorse YT. made history by becoming the first Canadian woman...
For Morgan Rogers, the problem strikes a very personal chord; hits a raw nerve. “This issue,’’ emphasizes the newest chairperson of Nordiq Canada’s board of directors, “is something I’m very passionate about, something I think about and work on a lot. “I myself have experienced not feeling safe or included in a workplace – that happened to me in a non-sport summer job. “So I lived it, what it’s like to be on the receiving end of those feelings. Because of...
The decision last October to flee Odessa, the third largest city in war-torn Ukraine, perched on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea, for a new beginning a world away was a difficult, but necessary, decision for Valentina Modryka. For her life. As well as her lifestyle. “I left because of the war. But Canada, for me, is also very open-minded,’’ explains Modryka, a proud member of the 2SLGBTQI+ community. “In my country, it’s pretty strict. You...
