Learning to Ski in Saskatchewan

Imagine living in a small town on the prairie where on a clear day you could see the grain elevators in the closest town 12 miles away. Alsask, a tiny little stop on the railway grain route to the ports of Thunder Bay and Vancouver, is one such little town. It sits barely a mile from the border between Saskatchewan and Alberta and there isn't really much left there any more since the dismantlement of the Pinetree Line of radar sites.

The radar station at Canadian Forces Station Alsask had 124 houses, all steel-locks (a euphemism for bargain-basement double-wide trailers), and a 15 pad trailer park. These steel-locks were all one of two designs, with aluminum siding and carports attached to the front or the side, depending on which model you had. They all were 3 bedroom, 1 bath slab-set homes and some families living in them had more children than there were rooms altogether. None of the yards were fenced except for the C.O.'s house. The school, K-8 in an H-hut, stood in the very middle of the townsite. The chapels were across the road from the school, Catholic on the west side and Protestant on the east. The swimming pool was in a building of its own, separate from the rec centre and the pool just fit in the space. Locally it was known as the Gopher Dip. The people who lived here were the men and women of the Cold War and their families. About one third of the population turned over each year during the Annual Posting Season and that's how we came to be there from August 1968 to July 1971.

Speaking of gophers, there were millions of them everywhere! And where there are gophers, there are gopher holes. More golf balls were lost in them than anyone would believe.

There were two trees, bristlecone pines that stood next to the guard house at the main entrance to the station. When we moved there in early August 1968, those trees were only as tall as I, a 10 year old girl. The main road, a big loop through the housing site, was paved but the little cul-de-sacs that sprouted off it weren't until that fall of '68. There were 6 houses on each of the cul-de-sacs; we lived in house # 122, on the very last cul-de-sac, between the Nowans and the Savages and across the road from the Pinders. Shopping was very limited; there was a tiny drug store and a small IGA in the village and an even smaller canteen on the station. If you couldn't get it there, you'd have to go to Kindersley, 40 miles to the east, or to Oyen, 25 miles to the west but much smaller.

Now I can hear you thinking, what ever does this have with learning to ski? Well, actually it has a lot to do with it. The people who were transferred to Alsask came from all over Canada. We moved there from Quebec and when we left, it was for New Brunswick. The same summer we moved to Alsask, another family moved there from the Ottawa area where the skiing was quite good. Sgt Dave McKinnell was a ski instructor and ski patroler in Ontario when he wasn't defending our country from the Russians and he had a real problem with the notion of living on a treeless, flat prairie for 3 years.

Dave spent the late summer driving up and down the rural roads of southwestern Saskatchewan looking for a hill. Or even anything that looked like a hill. One day he found one. It was not a huge hill, more like a dune, but it offered enough of an incline to at least provide a little momentum. It wasn't far from the station, about 10 miles to the southeast and the road was reasonably well-maintained. There was a spring on the property and a few spindly trees; close to the road was an old derelict house that had been the original homestead. The best part was that it wasn't cultivated, as was most of the land around it, and the owner was willing to lease the area for a nominal fee. The station commander agreed to support the development of a ski area at the Springs and so it began.

A shed located a short distance from the derelict house housed the old car that would become the motor for the rope tow needed to propel the skiers to the top of the hill. A half dozen or so power poles were erected along the path the tow was to take and the trails were groomed to remove rocks, fill holes and create a safer surface for the throngs of people Dave hoped would find their way to his little resort. The derelict house was cleaned up enough to provide a place to get out of the wind (which is relentless in Saskatchewan year 'round) and a propane camp stove brought out to heat water for instant hot chocolate. The station motor pool was tapped to provide a bus out to the Springs and back every Saturday and Sunday as long as there was snow on the ground, no matter the weather. The Alsask Ski Hill opened in early November 1968 and I was an inaugural member.

My parents were not well-off but they scraped up enough cash to buy skis, memberships and lessons for my sister and me. I was a real diehard and was there every single weekend; I loved it. My pants would be frozen to my legs, my hair matted to my head, my cheeks windburnt and frostbitten, my lips chapped and the tip of my nose totally numb, but nothing brought me down off the hill but the headlights of the 15 passenger bus coming down the road. I wiped out in spectacular fashion, came to sudden stops at the bottom of the hill where the hay from the bales keeping the snow on the hill sometimes blew, jumped and teetered on one ski but I never had so much fun in my life.

In 1970 the owner of the land agreed that the "warming hut" could be demolished and an A-frame "chalet" be constructed as long as it didn't cost him anything. Somehow Dave gathered the necessary funds to build it; it wasn't fancy, built as it was out of 2x4s and particle board, but it had a soaring wall of windows looking over the hill and electricity. By this time there was a small canteen there that sold coffee, hot chocolate, potato chips, chocolate bars and Hot Rods. When the power was turned on, we could have some space heaters and a place to actually get warm. But still, there was no phone. We were really cut off out there.

That same winter, Peter Berthiaume was the first real casualty of our little club. He had taken the gentle slope on the west side of the tow down to the springs and the little stand of trees. I saw him fall but didn't think too much of it. I was right behind him on the same run; as I approached him from behind him I noticed he wasn't trying to get up. When I called his name he didn't even look up. He was very pale and had a dazed look in his eyes. One foot was twisted at an unnatural angle. I skied past him, shucked my skis outside the chalet and started yelling for Dave. I grabbed the toboggan leaning against the chalet as I yelled, then turned and ran back to Peter, who still hadn't moved. I carefully took the ski off the foot that wasn't hurt, undid the runaway cable from the other one and reassured him that help was coming. As I tried to help him onto the toboggan several adults arrived on the scene and Peter was loaded up, hauled to Dave's car and taken off to Kindersley for treatment. I was 12 and had just handled my first emergency without falling apart.

The summer came and with it a move to New Brunswick. The McKinnells also moved that year and I have no idea what happened to the Alsask Ski Hill. I didn't ski again for 6 years but I've never fogotten learning to ski in Saskatchewan. Thank you Dave McKinnell, wherever you are.