A Chance for Others to Touch the Sky

Steve Collins Looking to Revive Ski Jumping for Local Youth

The Walleye Magazine 1 Feb 2021 By Justin Allec

There were a lot of difficult things to accept when Big Thunder shut down in 1996. For Steve Collins, a former professional ski jumper from Fort William First Nation, Big Thunder’s closure meant that northern Ontario missed out on developing two generations of alpine athletes. Having competed in three Olympic Games and spent a decade on the World Cup circuit, Collins is concerned about the future of his favoured sport. “Especially for our First Nations kids,” he says. “A lot of them don’t get a chance to go skiing anymore. Mount McKay, Candy Mountain, all these places have closed.” Accessibility and cost of equipment can be prohibitive, so Collins is trying to help revive ski jumping by starting small and local.

Collins says he got involved in ski jumping and eventually became a champion because he had chances to watch the sport as well as participate. He still laughs at the idea of a teenager from Fort William tearing up hills across Europe, but it wouldn’t have happened at all if he hadn’t been exposed to the sport. Alpine sports such as ski jumping used to be ingrained into Thunder Bay’s winter activities, Collins says. “At this early point we need to get kids to the hill, […] kids from Fort William, kids from town who have never seen ski jumping.” To instigate change, the jumping veteran has started preliminary discussions with Ski Jumping Canada to support the development of the sport in smaller areas.

Mount Baldy’s owner/operator Dan Kardas, himself also a veteran of alpine sports and a long-time friend of Collins, reached out to offer his hill as a possible local avenue. Right now, the plan is to build and maintain a “small” jump— meaning 10 to 15 meters from takeoff to landing—at Baldy in order to generate interest in the sport. This jump can be taken on normal downhill skis but it will help give people a taste of how far they could go in the sport. Since Kardas took over Baldy four years ago, he’s been looking for ways to increase the profile of alpine sports in the Thunder Bay area, both for locals and as a destination.

“We can have snow on the hill by late October, early November. Development teams from southern Ontario are currently traveling to Alaska at that time to train; I want to bring them here,” Kardas says,

referring to an experience he had earlier this year when he invited the Canadian freestyle training team to Baldy. Increasing the profile of the area by bringing in advanced skiers would help with that exposure necessary to pique a beginner’s passion. Kardas points to the renewed popularity of skiing in terrain parks as an indicator that people are willing and wanting to take skiing in different directions, and ski jumping should be one of them.

Collins stresses that the whole project is still beginning. Bi-weekly discussions are happening with

Ski Jumping Canada, and Kardas has ensured that the work will happen at Baldy to at least provide a starting point for the revival. Collins still has a faint hope for

Big Thunder to re-open its doors, since it already has the infrastructure and jumps established, but he’s more interested in what can be built during the next phase of alpine sports in Thunder Bay. It’s obviously a difficult time to start any kind of initiative, but Collins has faith that we’ll see skiers flying high again in the next few years.

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