Rural ski slopes face tough battle to survive
RURAL SKI SLOPES IN THE WEST HAVE TO RETOOL TO SURVIVE
Tawatinaw Valley ski hill isn’t what you’d call big. Three T-bars and a rope tow. No high-speed quad. Not even a chairlift. But, located north of Edmonton in a hamlet of five people, it’s where locals like Heather Toporowski started skiing. From a nearby town of 100 people, Toporowski learned on school ski trips at age 12. “I’m 58 now and that’s been a lifetime recreation opportunity,” Toporowski said. “A generation past me have been learning to ski the same way.”
Westlock County — an amalgamation of hamlets and towns that owns the hill — has been trying to figure out what to do with the hill, open since 1967, since a plebiscite last year when residents voted to try to sell it. It was just bleeding cash and needed more than $1 million in upgrades.
This episode was resolved this month with a new non-profit taking over just weeks after the county announced it was shutting the hill down in October unless a buyer came forward. But it’s emblematic of a struggle across Western Canada.
Ski hills are expensive; they’re hostage to the weather; and smaller communities are shrinking. And there are lots of them — most of the 92 ski hills between Manitoba and the west coast are community hills, according to the Canada West Ski Association.
Those hills matter, said Kelly VanderBeek, a former Olympic ski racer from Kapuskasing, Ont.; she learned to ski at the Rémi Ski Club.
“My first memory is actually leaning on this rope tow and recognizing that the big kids … would get to the top of the rope tow and that was my biggest life goal at the moment,” VanderBeek told the Post. “My mom and dad, they had visions of our family going on ski vacations, but you can’t do those if you don’t know how to ski.”
So there’s something of a conflict, in small communities, between the importance of outdoor activities and their cost.
“To me, it’s a part of our fabric of being Canadian ... teaching our youth to play, rather than hibernate, in the winter,” said VanderBeek. “Without these small clubs, you’re missing a massive demographic.”
It’s not like the hill was bankrupting the 7,000-person county, said Reeve Lou Hall, but over the years, there were cost overruns on renovations and the hill ran deficits of $200,000 to $300,000 per year. The county’s still paying off $800,000 in debt on the new chalet. And, it needs $1.2 million to $1.5 million in capital upgrades.
Westlock County CAO Leo Ludwig said that after Alberta’s economy stalled, there was a significant drop-off in property tax revenues, and, because of the carbon tax, “well into the six figures” in additional expenses. All this conspired to make maintaining the ski hill a burden. “(Shutting down) was mostly a fiscal decision, based on fiscal realities,” said Ludwig.
After the plebiscite, in which 53 per cent voted to off-load the hill, non-profit Friends of Tawatinaw working group came together, pitching the county on its plan to save the hill.
“That’s when a number of us that were users and user groups kinda went ‘oh my gosh, they’re going to sell it,’ ” recalled Toporowski, who’s involved with the Friends of Tawatinaw group. “So we started thinking about what we could do.”
Even in Edmonton — with several small hills — Edmonton Ski Club, on the edge of downtown, was on the verge of shutting down before the city and province offered more than $1 million for repairs.
In Westlock County, the key to success for what’s also called the Pine Valley Snow Resort will be diversifying the offerings, such as converting it into a four-season operation. The chalet, for example, will need to become a community hall and a place for weddings and other events.
“It’s a jewel, right. It’s an amazing place,” said Hall.
Several top-tier Canadian skiers began their careers at smaller hills.
If not for Chicopee Ski Club, VanderBeek said she never would’ve started racing.
“The only reason my parents signed us up was it was down the street, I could walk home from school, put on my ski boots, and in my ski boots, walk to the ski hill.”
By having a non-profit group operating the hill, Toporowski said, they’ll be able to seek out grant funding that the county wouldn’t have been eligible for, find donors and rally volunteers to help as needed. Westlock County will still provide $200,000 in operational funding and $50,000 for capital expenses.
Other community hills, such as Misty Ridge, 90 minutes away, has had to appeal to the County of Barrhead for funding to stay in business.
“I don’t think that we’re alone in the challenges that we’ve experienced, and that was kind of reassuring,” said Toporowski.