1927 – 2027
Ninety-nine winters, and a hundredth one coming
Most ski clubs do not get to write a page like this. Ours starts with a meeting in a hotel in 1927 and runs through an Olympian, two national champions and two national championships hosted in a town of a few thousand people.
15 October 1927
Timber cruisers and trappers, in a hotel, deciding to make a ski club
The founding meeting was held at the Omineca Hotel in Burns Lake on 15 October 1927. The people in the room were timber cruisers and trappers — men who were already on skis all winter for work, and who decided there ought to be a club.
Ninety-nine winters later the club is still run by volunteers, on ground six kilometres south of the same town.
The club's own claim
“The oldest cross-country ski club in British Columbia, and possibly the oldest club in Canada.”
That is how the club describes itself. We have reproduced it as the club's claim rather than presenting it as an established fact — it deserves to be said out loud, and it deserves to be said accurately.
The record
What is written down
Six dates the club has published. There will be a great many more in the minute books — this is what is currently on the record.
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1927
A meeting at the Omineca Hotel
Timber cruisers and trappers called a meeting in Burns Lake on 15 October 1927 and started a ski club. Everything on these trails follows from that evening.
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1932
Kaare Engstand skis for Canada
Kaare Engstand represented Canada at the 1932 Olympics at Lake Placid, New York — five years after the club was founded.
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1952
Two national titles
At the national championships, Alford Eakin won the junior cross-country title and Niilo Itkonen won the senior.
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1975
The senior nationals come to Burns Lake
The club hosted the senior national championships — a small volunteer club running a national event.
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1977
And then the junior nationals
Two years later the club hosted the junior national championships as well.
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2027
One hundred years
On 15 October 2027 the club reaches a century, still volunteer-run and still on the same ground south of town.
Names
Skiers this club sent out into the world
A club of this size producing this list is not normal, and it is worth putting the names somewhere people will actually read them.
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Olympian · 1932
Kaare Engstand
Represented Canada at the 1932 Olympics at Lake Placid, New York.
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National team
Esther Miller
Spent nine years on Canada's national team.
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National champion · 1952
Alford Eakin
Won the junior cross-country title at the 1952 national championships.
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National champion · 1952
Niilo Itkonen
Won the senior cross-country title at the 1952 national championships.
1927
100
Years · 2027
The hundredth year
On 15 October 2027, this club turns a hundred
The founding meeting was held on 15 October 1927, called by timber cruisers and trappers at the Omineca Hotel in Burns Lake. Every winter since has been organised by volunteers. The club describes itself as the oldest cross-country ski club in British Columbia, and possibly the oldest club in Canada — that is the club's own claim, and it is a good one to be able to make.
- Founding meeting
- 15 Oct 1927
- Centenary
- 15 Oct 2027
- Days to go
- 445
A note from JnP
A hundredth-year page is only as good as the archive behind it
Everything above came from what the club has already published. There is no photograph on this page because we have none that belong to the club, and we will not put a stock photo of a stranger next to Kaare Engstand's name.
What a centennial page really wants is the club's own material: photographs from the twenties and thirties, the 1975 and 1977 race results, the minute books, the names of the people who have groomed these trails for fifty years. If that exists in a shoebox in Burns Lake, the year to scan it is this one.
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