Lori coaches the girls’ snowboard team

at Georgetown High School where she teaches.

She’s been coaching this team for many years.

Today, we’re up at Beaver Valley Ski Club for the day.

Beaver Valley Ski Club is located in the snow belt,

about an hour and a half north of where Lori and I live.

Her students are competing in some races.

I snowboard a bit now and then and I’m here to help chaperone.

It’s March 2017.

I have never snowboarded at Beaver Valley before.

I check out their website to learn more about it.

On the homepage of their website it says:

Skiing in the Beaver Valley has been recorded as early as February 1936

when the Dominion of Canada Skiing Championships

attracted 20,000 spectators to the valley.

In 1948, the ski site was discovered.

What does it mean when the webpage says,

“The Beaver Valley ski site was “discovered” in 1948”?

What does it mean to name a piece of land in your language

when it doesn’t belong to you?

They say that Columbus “discovered” America in 1492.

This claim doesn’t make sense for two reasons:

First, he didn’t discover America because America didn’t exist in 1492.

Secondly, if they mean he discovered the land, he didn’t.

Indigenous People have lived on this land, Turtle Island—

the land settlers call North America—for thousands of years.

Indigenous People have lived in the Beaver Valley for thousands of years.

In fact, people have lived on the Niagara Escarpment—where the Beaver Valley lies—

for more than 12,000 years.

who lived there long before the Davis and Weber families.

There’s nothing about it being sacred Indigenous Land

Land on which Indigenous People depended for survival and spiritual nourishment.

A warm sense of belonging for whom?

Welcoming for what kinds of people?

Fostering new friendships with whom?

The telling stories of whose rich histories and daring adventures?

It’s a private ski club

for those who can afford to pay the one-time initiation family fee of $11, 500.00

plus annual membership dues

plus annual capital contribution levies.

At lunch in the cafeteria, people bustle about,

swerving around each other with trays of food,

burgers and French fries, small packets of ketchup and mustard

Coke and 7Up in waxed paper cups with clear plastic lids and white straws.

A middle-aged couple sits beside me at the table

talking about golfing in the summer and

I think about all the pesticides that leach into golf course soils,

chemicals flooding into the streams.

I sit with my lunch I brought from home, surrounded by people

but I feel alone here.

After we’re done eating, Lori and I put our toques on, zip up our coats, put on our gloves,

thump outside in our clunky snowboard boots, and grab our boards.

We head over to the chair lift and file into line.

We shimmy up into place as the next chair winds around the track

and zooms up behind us.

We sit down and the chair speeds forward out of the sheltered chair lift station

whisking us up, up, up into the air, floating

above the trees and over white groomed hills.

It’s quiet, except for the whirring and dinging of the chair

as it rumbles over the cogs of each tower we pass

skiers and boarders whizz by down below

scraping across the icy slopes.

We take a selfie on the lift.

Smiling, we have our arms around each other.

I’m happy to be here with Lori.

I think it’s cool that she’s a snowboard coach

it’s kind of hot; I have a thing for jocks.

I twist my body around enough on the chair so I can survey the view of

Beaver Valley, the forests, the farmlands, stretching out far behind and below us

on this crisp, wintery, sunny day.

At the top of the lift, we arrange our boards and bodies,

and glide off the chair and over to one of the runs.

Sitting down beside skiers and boarders, we tighten our bindings, stand up, nod to one another, and drop down off the lip of the slope.

The wind on my cheeks is bitterly cold as I ride

the snow is slick underneath my board.

Too much rain lately and then temperatures dropping sharply overnight

makes for icy conditions

I don’t feel very confident today.

We carve wide, s-shaped designs in the granular snow

back and forth

back and forth

past rows of trees

over undulating terrain

until we reach the bottom of the hill.

Then, we head over to a nearby run,

where the Georgetown High School girls’ team

will be crossing the finish line, along with the other racers.

A crowd of people gathers to watch and cheer and congratulate the athletes.

The generator that provides electricity

for the loudspeaker and heat for the announcer’s hut

growls and vibrates in the background.

The announcer calls out the names, numbers, and schools

of each girl who shreds a path around blue and red flags

placed in a long curve down slopes covered in snow

made from high-tech machines.

There are 110 girls competing in this race from all over Ontario.

I wonder if any of them are Indigenous.

My privileged settler body doesn’t always recall

until it recalls

that I’m surrounded by other privileged settler bodies

moms, dads, coaches, teachers, students, spectators.

My colonizer/colonized mind forgets

until I remember

that I’m standing on Indigenous land

that we’re snowboarding on Indigenous land

that Beaver Valley Ski Club is built on

Anishinabeg and Haudenosaunee land.