Your view might look like this one, captured earlier this month in Kamouraska, QC. Happy dryland training season!Photo: M. Pilotto
Hello CANSI,Thank you to everyone for taking the time to renew your memberships for the coming year. The support you give to CANSI helps us create the courses and schedules to support each one of you in your ski instruction journey. With only four paid employees (Marie in the office, Jeannie as our bookkeeper, Ann as our communications lead and Nadine as course administrator in the Pacific region – thank you to each one of you!), CANSI truly depends on its volunteers. From the national board of directors to the technical committee; from the regional committees to the Interski committee, our policy committee and now the roller ski committee, CANSI is truly driven by an incredible group of volunteers. I would like to extend a profound “thank-you!” for all the effort that goes on behind the scenes at CANSI.Now that I am seeing snow on the peaks here in the West Kootenays, I feel winter is on its way. Silver Star and Sovereign Lake woke up to a six-centimetre blanket of snow over the Thanksgiving weekend. With this in mind, I urge all of you to check out the many refreshers and courses posted to the CANSI website. It makes things much easier knowing you are interested in these courses. If you wait to register until there is enough snow on the ground to hold a course, you may find that the course has already filled up. Your timely registration means we can organize events based on demand, adding course conductors where necessary.I would like to remind everyone of the online refreshers coming up at the end of October and throughout November. Course conductors are required to refresh their CC certification every year in order to stay abreast of any new developments from the technical committee, so please sign up today for the easy-to-attend online courses. Also, if you are in the West and looking to ski with your peers, why not sign up for the Level II-IV Workshop at Silver Star on November 28 and 29? I find this workshop is a great way to have my skiing critiqued. It also gives me an opportunity to share teaching ideas and methodology with fellow instructors. Since this workshop also counts as a refresher, I think it is well worth the effort of attending. I wish we could run workshops like these all across the country.I began this message by talking about volunteers. I also mentioned the new roller ski committee. I would like to thank Colin Norman, Andrew Mahoney and Bjorn Ewald for the work they are putting in on this committee. Crafting a clear model of how to teach a given technique or discipline requires a lot of time and effort. At CANSI we teach people how to teach nordic skiing. With the good work of this new committee, our members will soon have the tools to teach people how to teach roller skiing. Thank you, Colin, Andrew and Bjorn, for your time and effort.That’s all for now. See you in November. Have you waxed your skis yet?Denys Lawrence, CANSI President
CANSI