PearlAnn Reichwein
March 25, 2026

This winter our Ski Like a Girl Podcast team reached out to listeners and friends to warm up winter for children and youth in Spirit North. Thanks to the generous contributions of many donors, our drives collected more than a hundred new mittens and toques. We are thrilled to collaborate and support keeping kids warm to play outdoors. 

Canadian Olympic gold medalist and cross country skier Beckie Scott founded Spirit North in 2017. The national charitable organization works in partnership with schools and communities to offer land-based activity programs with over 21,000 Indigenous youth in 103 communities and 198 schools, across Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and the Northwest Territories. Learning to cross country ski and playing games on skis are fun ways to move and play for Grades 1 to 12. Sport and land-based activities for all seasons suit local program needs and aim to improve health and wellbeing to empower youth for sport, school, and life. 

The Torskeklubben of Edmonton kindly offered its support to our drive at monthly fish dinners (Torske means cod in Norwegian) hosted at Chateau Nova in February and March. Club members and guests contributed toques and mittens to our drive for Spirit North. We also enjoyed hearing guest speakers Rosella Bjornson, Canada’s first woman commercial jet pilot, and Dr. Eva Koppelhus, a renowned palaeobotantist, giving dinner talks about their fascinating work. Our sincere thanks go to Torskeklubben leaders Leanne Boraas and Kaare Boraas – a sister and brother pair and U of A grads – for their warm welcome, and to our colleagues Dr. Ingrid Urberg, Professor Morton Asfeldt, and Bree Urkow, visiting from Augustana Faculty, who thoughtfully contributed new toques from their varsity sport team the Vikings in Camrose. Donations from skiers added adorable animal toques and sporty mittens. Our warm thanks go to the Torskeklubben and its guests.

The Canadian Birkebeiner Society (CBS) collaborated with the Ski Like a Girl Podcast team at its events in February. The world famous Canadian Birkebeiner ski loppet was cancelled this year during a melt down east of Edmonton, but skiers still gathered to feast in Sherwood Park. We received generous donations at the annual Viking Feast held in the Agora at the Strathcona Community Centre and County Hall on February 14. The banquet featured young Norwegian folk dancers followed by Norsk musicians in the Swans of Winter Project, playing ancient sounds on birchbark lur, bone flute, and drum. Volunteers and guests stepped up to show the love on Valentine’s Day with toques and mittens for Spirit North. We thank the Canadian Birkebeiners and CBS President Charles World for hosting us and for the honour of offering the land acknowledgement and talking about Spirit North at this celebration. 

Closer to our homebase, the Ski Like a Girl Podcast led a drive with the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation and the Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation Student Society (KSRSS) at the University of Alberta. Our colleagues and students contributed in February and March 2026, sharing the love with toques and mittens for Spirit North and learning more about Spirit North programs. Thanks to Reese Arlinghaus and the KSRSS team for collecting donations from our undergraduate students. Podcasters and doctoral students Charlotte Mitchell and Lyndsay Conrad ran another drive at the Faculty Research Day on March 20. Many thanks to all who participated generously.

The audience at the Edmonton Public Library and the Alpine Club of Canada Edmonton Section came together on March 24. We celebrated the 120th anniversary of Canada’s national alpine club, founded in Winnipeg on March 27-28, 1906, and shared mountain scholarship during Mountains on the Edge, a series of public research talks organized by the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Science in partnership with the Library. I offered a talk about the history of Canadian mountaineers, artists, and skiers as a way to give back to my hometown and Edmonton's Stanley Milner Library.  As a child, I enjoyed books, puppet shows, live ducks, and an iguana here at the downtown children's library. The value of public libraries for learning and community is still clear today as the Wall of Wonder featured the Rockies with moving images of a bear and digital puzzles that delighted all ages. Many thanks go to the kind EPL staff and audience for listening on a snowy evening that completed our final drive this year.

Volunteer drives for Spirit North collect new mittens and toques for children and youth to play and learn on the land in local communities. Program leader Chad Chessall accepted the donations when we met at the Van Vliet Complex of the U of A campus on Treaty 6 lands and Homelands of the Métis Nation of Alberta (MNA) in District 10. I learned more talking with Chad who indicated the new gear is going to schools in Indigenous communities around Edmonton and northern Alberta in areas of Treaty 6, Treaty 8, and several MNA districts. I also enjoyed meeting Coordinator Marilyn Payne at Spirit North, located in the office space of Nordiq Canada at the Canmore Nordic Centre Provincial Park and situated in Treaty 7 and MNA District 4. We talked and met ski leaders in Spirit North while school students were playing games on skis and gliding in bright mountain sunshine. This month, as winter turns to spring, Spirit North celebrates another great year on skis and gets ready for summer paddling.

The Ski Like a Girl Podcast is a collaborative academic podcast that combines research from oral history interviews, archives, and other sources to provide insight into the lives of women and girls in Nordic sports, including cross country skiing, touring, biathlon, and ski jumping. Community, sport, and culture are at the heart of what we do now and for the future. We are proud to support gear drives for youth in Spirit North.

Donations for Spirit North came together in kindness and respect to support opportunities for Indigenous youth to be active in sport and play. Just like woolen mittens and toques, we loved knitting communities together with caring and warmth, grateful for each other and the opportunity to share. Thanks for joining us and let’s go play outside for more fun!

For more information about Spirit North, see https://www.spiritnorthxc.ca/

Website: spiritnorthxc.ca

Instagram: @spiritnorthxc

LinkedIn: Spirit North

Facebook:  @spiritnorthxc

YouTube: @spiritnorth3212

For more information about the Ski Like a Girl Podcast, visit our website.

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Website: https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/ski-like-a-girl-podcast

Meet up  with Marilyn Payne.