FEATURES | CURRENT ISSUE | BACK ISSUES | COLUMNISTS | TECHNIQUE | SKI RESORTS | GALLERY

DECEMBER 2000

The Untold History of Skiing

From the Mongols invasion of China to Canadian cross-dressing countesses, Ski Canada delves into the little-known past of our sport.


By Marty McLennan -- Photos courtesy of the Canadian Ski Museum


A giant step-turn for mankind

1820 AD - In the small town of Telemark, Norway, Sondre Nordheim drops a knee and links the first-ever turn. He later developed the Christiana, or christie. Considered the birth of modern skiing, Nordheim's turns mark the creation of fundamentalist telemark and alpine factions that continue to battle to this day.
A name is a name

Norwegians were lured by adventure and 19th-century New World gold rushes. The early "Scandihoovian's" brought more than their culture and religion to Canada. They brought their three-metre-long skis. Best known of the early pioneers was "Snowshoe" Thomson, who delivered up to 50 kg of mail on a 300-km round trip across the Sierra Nevadas' 10- to 15-metre snowpack. Incidentally, during his 13 years of postal service, he never complained about the monicker. His real name was John Thorensen Rue, and he used skis, not snowshoes.

Going postal: It took the Pony Express and a railroad to replace the 1850s postman.
Canadian Clubs

Canada has a long history of ski groups. Here are a few highlights.

The First: Revelstoke Ski Club, 1891.

The Toughest: Mount Royal Ski Club's 1904 motto: "Every man, woman, boy or girl in Montreal out on skis--or in their graves!"

The Fastest: The McGill Red Birds took Europe by storm in 1933, winning the International Intercollegiate Ski Championships. That same trip, George Jost won a highly contested Kandahar--he bushwhacked the run on the backs of his skis--thus beginning a lasting tradition of Crazy Canuck skiing, and Canadian podium controversy that continued through to Nagano, 1998.

First (and only) Females: Of the 350 Penguin pioneers, many went on to win world championships.
It's a bird...it's a plane...no, it's a jumping, cross-dressing Canadian countess!

Akin to human cannonballers, Scandinavian ski pioneers were greater than life. In the early 1900s Dominion jumping champion Ragnar Omtvedt opened an important Ottawa competition. Before the Governor General and thousands of cheering spectators, he raced down the runway and soared in perfect form. Unfortunately the far-flung athlete overshot the landing run. He finally touched down at the icy river's edge, some 67 metres later, breaking both ankles.

Canadians continued this long flying tradition: Montrealer Isabel Courier held a 47-metre world record in Revelstoke in the late 1920s. This led to another spectacle--Countess Alma Stang's famous world title challenge. Leaping from the Ottawa Tower, she transfixed spectators with a faultless launch and landing. However, an untimely gust of wind blew off her wig exposing her secret--she was a he! The crowd was in an uproar, Courier held the world title and the countess was never seen again.


Prozac for the Great Depression

Moise Paquette didn't have a pilot's licence or wings on his bird, but that didn't stop him from roaring his post-war plane on planks across Lac des Sables at speeds up to 100 kph, with thrill-seeking ski-jorers in tow. Paquette was known to throttle tobogganers and skaters behind the plane, too.
Hang on! The world's first liftee, eh!

On Monday, January 2, 1933, Canadian champion Alex-a-Nickel-a-Ride-Foster, fires up a derelict Dodge at the bottom of the Shawbridge Big Hill. With a 2,400-foot-long manila rope wrapped around the rear axle, skiers grabbed on to ski the best-known run of the Laurentians. While bolstering the popularity of the sport, Foster's lift was never a financial success. A year later Fred Pabst of Milwaukee Brewery fame opens a competing funicular a few kilometres north at St-Sauveur, thus beginning the long history of big-money mega-resorts. The advent of the mechanical lift polarized skiing styles forever. Canadian ski legend Herman "Jack Rabbit" Smith-Johannsen assisted in developing the St-Sauveur and Mont Tremblant operations, and later turned to the backwoods saying, "I've frozen enough going downhill. I'll be damned if I'll freeze going uphill, too."
Stop the press!

Apparently Foster's famous lift wasn't the first. New old records show that entrepreneur Moise Paquette had patented the rope tow a year earlier.



Holy skis

By the 1940s Anglican minister Canon Horace Baugh begins the Blessing of the Ski for Laurentian skiers at St. Francis of the Birds, a local wooden church. Roman Catholics could get their blessings-to-go in St-Sauveur as well.
Look out, here comes Three Eyes!

In the '30s Di Kingsmill gains fame for schussing through Europe's race circuit with a monocle held firmly in place.


Jack Rabbit Express

Snow trains first ventured up the Alouette Belt--the Laurentian valley between Montreal and Mont Tremblant--in 1927. The first year drew some 11,000 ski-toting passengers. With the increased popularity of lift skiing in the late 1930s, 25 trains rode the rails north, carrying 25,000 skiers a weekend. This March 1975 anniversary ride (below) was specially chartered to celebrate Jack Rabbit's 100th birthday.

TIMELINE

Hot-stuff
(2500 BC)

The Hoting ski (1.10 metres X 20 cm) found in a Swedish bog.

Skiing rocks!
(2000 BC)

Rock carving of two skiers hunting elk carbon dated in Tjoetta, Norway. Experts divided on fate of the elk. However, anthropologists agree that similar rock paintings of naked skiers found around Russia's White Sea are the first record of apres-ski.

Holy!
(1 AD)

Jesus is born. Although destined to walk on water, there is no record to show he attempted skiing on it.

Finnished at last
(555 AD)

Byzantine historian Procopium meets race of "Skridfinns," or gliding Finns, denoting the first literary mention of skiing. Some 1,400 years later, Ski Canada publishes its 1972 charter issue. Editorial avoids Finns altogether.

Shhh...The King said schuss
(880 AD)

History's first tuck: King Harald Harfagr praises skier Vighard "Schust du war Schnell." Although unsure if he was swearing or not, it's technically the first recorded schuss.

Ski Rage
(629 AD)

T'ang Dynasty Chinese refer to their northern neighbours as "Turks-who-ride-horses-of-wood" because the Mongols were said to employ skis. Five hundred years later, Genghis Khan revenged the name-calling, proclaiming, "The greatest happiness is to crush your enemies and drive them before you. To see his cities reduced to ashes. To see those who love him shrouded in tears. And to gather to your bosom his wives and daughters." The Chinese wished their ancestors had shut their big mouths.

Humour thy King, lose thy skee
(1060 AD)

First Quersprung. For the King's pleasure, skiing great Heming Aslakson schusses a steep slope, digs in his pole and pendulums an airborne stop. Although he had amused the King, Aslakson wasn't so elated. His strap-on bindings released, sending his best skis crashing over the cliff. Another 850 years to go until "pull down" alpine bindings are born.

Betcha can't say that
(1200 AD)

Finnish national epic Kalewala describes Lemminkainen as "skiing so fast that his ski sticks smoked." (Now try saying that 10 times quickly.)

First tracks
(1759 AD)

First Canadian skier sighted. He seemed delirious.

 This article first appeared in the December 2000 issue.