Ski Like a Girl Podcast

Season 2, Episode 4: Paralympian Voices – Skiing for Canada

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Listen to Francine Lemire and Christina Picton, both Para Nordic cross country ski racers, as they share their ski stories and experiences as Paralympic athletes. Lemire, a Newfoundland family doctor, tells her “love story” of learning to ski and going on to win 1988 Paralympic Gold medals in Austria, capped off by backcountry ski touring in the Italian Alps. Ontario’s Picton, a dual sport athlete, shares her journey of embracing Para ice hockey and Para Nordic skiing at the national level. She will be heading to her second Paralympic Games at Cortina, Italy with Team Canada in 2026. Lyndsay Conrad and PearlAnn Reichwein bring you the origins and backstory of the Paralympics, remembering the postwar Stoke Mandeville Games and the more recent role of University of Alberta professor Robert Steadward who brokered to bring the Paralympics alongside the IOC Olympic Games. This episode is based on original oral history interviews and library research prepared for this podcast.

Season 2, Episode 3: On Target: Women Speaking Out for Olympic Inclusion and Equality

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

What does it mean when women in sport speak out? Women have a long history as changemakers persevering and advocating for their inclusion in sports at the Olympic Games. Calgary biathlete Gail Niinimaa strove to establish an Olympic event for women’s biathlon at the Calgary 1988 Olympic Winter Games. Her story reveals how an athlete challenged structural barriers and systemic discrimination in sport. Women ski jumpers also spoke out, calling to add an event for women’s ski jumping at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. How did their efforts lead to the inclusion of women in Olympic events for biathlon in 1992 and ski jumping in 2014? Nordic Combined – ski jumping plus cross country racing – is the only Olympic sport that still lacks a women’s event. Hosts Charlotte Mitchell and PearlAnn Reichwein weave the Olympic history of exclusion and inclusion together with present day implications for women’s equality in sport, conversing with athletes, and listening to the need for more awareness and ongoing advocacy for women in Nordic sports. Let’s hear what athlete activists have to say and why it’s important as intergenerational storytelling.

Season 2, Episode 2: Canadian XC Ski Champions: The Inside Story

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Canada’s Olympic relay racers Sharon and Shirley Firth, Joan Groothuysen, and Susan Holloway competed at Seefeld, Austria in 1976. A strong national ski team turned more eyes toward where cross country skiing was going for women and girls in Canada, while sport administrators and volunteers on the Women’s Committee of Cross Country Canada served as champions of change. Hosts PearlAnn Reichwein and Charlotte Mitchell go behind the scenes of cross country skiing and a national sport organization to talk with early leaders who brought affirmative action to life – assisted by Sport Canada – and find out why it was needed during the 1980s and 1990s. What challenges did they face? How did they encourage participation, performance, and mentorship for women and girls, and ParaNordic skiers? New historical research brings together inside conversations from the kitchen table of sport and the boardrooms of skiing. Advocacy for skiers, instructors, coaches, and officials supported a career pipeline and lifelong cross country skiing for women and girls in Canada. This episode is dedicated to volunteers and in memory of sport historian M. Ann Hall.

Season 2, Episode 1: Learn to Ski - Nordic Style

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Whether you’re a casual skier or an Olympian, everyone begins by learning how to ski. How many ways did girls and women learn how to ski – and what keeps them going? Follow us as we track down this story, talking with beginners, teachers, and competitors in cross country racing and ski jumping across Canada from the South Cariboo region to the Appalachians and Arctic. Enjoy our get-togethers talking with Olympians Chandra Crawford, Sara Renner, and Sharon Firth, and community leaders Trice Cameron, Phil Dunn, and Judy May. We find out more about the national JackRabbit learn-to-ski program and its place in Canadian sport history. Listen to conversations about sport and growing up, backed with personal insights across generations. Our hosts Lyndsay Conrad and Charlotte Mitchell touch on their own stories of cross country skiing and ski jumping while exploring the significance of play, family, and community when learning how to ski. The episode is based on original oral history interviews and other research conducted by our history research team.

Ski Like a Girl Podcast: Season 2 Trailer

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In the all new Season 2, Ski Like a Girl Podcast follows the lives of Canadian Nordic skiers with a community of learners and leaders in recreation side-by-side with Olympians and Paralympians as elite sport athletes. Combining academic research from archives, oral history interviews, and other sources, this podcast series reveals insights into the lives of women and girls in Nordic sports, including cross country skiing, ski touring, biathlon, and ski jumping.

Episode Five: Banff Ski Business

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

PearlAnn Reichwein and Lyndsay Conrad go behind the scenes of Banff ski business to meet a trailrider, artist, baroness, and restaurateur. Stories of Fern Brewster, Catharine Whyte, Lizzie Rummel, and Edith Wing tell us more about Banff’s winter carnivals, and ski lodges at Sunshine, Lake Louise, Skoki, Mount Norquay, Mount Assiniboine, and Bugaboo – along with the Dominion Cafe on mainstreet – revealing a close-knit and culturally rich community at work and play. Beginning with an old postcard, we track down local spirit from the twenties to the seventies. Drawing on archival letters, photographs, and rare voice recordings from the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, and other sources, our research team pulls together the pieces to uncover transformations in ski life and modern tourism in Canada’s mountain parks.

Episode Four: Canadian Birkebeiners: The First Forty Years

Fri, 23 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Charlotte Mitchell and PearlAnn Reichwein explore the history of the Canadian Birkebeiner, established in 1985, highlighting stories of women and ski instructors who reinvented the Birkebeiners and its traditions. Forty years later, the all-inclusive event is still held east of Edmonton, Alberta. Like the Norwegian and American Birkebeiner events, the Canadian Birkie is a ski loppet that retells the legend of saving Norway’s baby prince. Teacher Phil Dunn skied the Birkie with hundreds of school kids, including future Olympian Amanda Ammar, executive directors Cathy Schreiner and Glenda Hanna (who was first to ski 55 km carrying her own baby) ran the event, and citizen skiers Janice McGregor, Bridie Forde, and Paulina Retamales ski toured with family and friends. The Ski Like a Girl Podcast team share their journey skiing to the finish line of the 2025 Birkie. This special episode commemorates the Canadian Birkebeiner’s fortieth anniversary and is dedicated to all volunteers, supporters, and skiers.

Episode Three: Jasper’s Backcountry Ski Adventures and Flying Mountain Girl

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Join PearlAnn Reichwein and Lyndsay Conrad to explore a generation of skiers in Jasper National Park who dwelled deeply in Alberta mountain life. This episode highlights the ski stories of Jasperites Doris Kensit and Dolly Johnstone in the 1930s and 1940s. A married woman with a tourism job, Kensit shares an insider’s outlook on small town life and her skiing encounters with icefields, avalanches, and wildlife. A young athlete, Johnstone reveals the thrill of ski jumping competitions, fireworks, and mountain ski tours. A social network of avid women on skis is unveiled with archival research, drawing on oral history interview audio recordings and newspapers to reconstruct little known experiences among early Jasper townsite families. This episode is dedicated to residents of Jasper, CNR families, and first responders.

Episode Two: Women’s Ski Jumpers: Fighting to Flying

Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this episode, we talk with Charlotte about her PhD research and personal experiences as a Canadian ski jumping athlete. Charlotte discusses the history and discrimination of women’s ski jumping as documented by sport historians and the lawsuit women’s ski jumpers filed against the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) in an attempt to get a women’s ski jumping event added to the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. Charlotte speaks with us about how she became involved in the sport and a subsequent plaintiff in the women’s ski jumping lawsuit, fighting for change in the sport as a young teenager. This episode takes us chronologically through Charlotte’s experiences as an athlete and concludes with a look at present-day women’s ski jumping. Has equality been achieved in the sport and where do we go from here?

Episode One: Tracing Ski Tracks: The U of A Varsity Ski Club in the 1930s

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Join student historian Lyndsay Conrad as she traces the tracks of the University of Alberta Varsity Ski Club (VSC) through the Great Depression based on her MA research. Her current sport history project reveals ski club members led a vibrant outdoor recreation life in a prairie city with Sunday ski hikes, skijoring thrills, ski jumping, ski races, campfires, and warm cabin get-togethers. Learn about the VSC women, sport leaders that emerged as U of A graduates and trailblazers in many professional fields including, physical education, medicine, and law. Drawing on archival evidence, Conrad illuminates the student ski experience on the slopes of Varsity Hill during the 1930s. This podcast will bring to life how skiing was one of the most popular sports on campus, one that brought students from across the province together to enjoy winter recreation at the U of A.

Ski Like a Girl Podcast Trailer

Fri, 13 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This episode introduces the Ski Like a Girl Podcast and the women behind the podcast – PearlAnn Reichwein, Charlotte Mitchell, and Lyndsay Conrad. The podcast is an collaborative academic podcast that combines research from oral history interviews, archives, and other academic sources to provide insight into the lives of women and girls in Nordic sports, including, cross country skiing, biathlon, touring, and ski jumping.