The Chill Foundation | Community Connected
Community Connected: The Chill Foundation
Words by Adelaide Tiller
Photos by Isami Kiyooko
SOLLORS ON EXPENSE & EXPERIENCE
For professional snowboarder Mark Sollors, who comes from a family of five kids, a sport like soccer may have been the more economical choice. But Big White’s deal on passes for large families provided he and his brothers the golden ticket to the mountain. On the weekends, their parents dropped them off at 6 a.m. to take the bus from Kelowna to Big White. The Burton athlete says, “Getting into snowboarding that way was pretty amazing, but I could see how expensive it was from the beginning.” His experience informed his perspective on the value of getting youth onto the mountains. Mark is now a major ambassador and volunteer for the Chill Foundation, a global organization removing barriers for youth in board sports. He also runs the annual Very Chill Golf Tournament fundraiser in Whistler, which has seen enormous community support and sponsorships from big names like Monster Energy.
Chill engages youth through community centres, neighbourhood houses, and alternative schools. The foundation aims to work with youth who typically wouldn’t have financial access to snowboarding and/or those of minority groups. In B.C., Chill participants take snowboard lessons for six weeks from professional instructors at Mt. Seymour and Whistler Blackcomb. “I want to make sure these youth, if they’re willing and want to, have access to [snowboarding]. To at least try it and see a different world,” says Sollors. He believes Chill opens youth to new perspectives and possibilities. “They get on top of a mountain and look north, and all they see are snow-covered peaks and not a single building or human-made feature. Just showing these youth that there are possibilities out there they didn’t even know existed is huge in the long run for their growing minds.”
FULL CIRCLE MOMENTS FOR MIKEY
Mikey Barton is someone who took advantage of the new perspective Chill offered him. He grew up around Vancouver’s Commercial Drive, where at the end of the road Grouse Mountain towers as the focal point. “I always remember looking at it and thinking, I’d love to go up the mountain one day,” says Barton. Then, that day arrived. A youth worker asked Barton: “There’s this thing called Chill; would you be interested in trying snowboarding?” At age 18, Barton joined Chill on a wet Vancouver day, and he strapped into a snowboard for the first time. When he returned home, he was “glowing with energy.” As a die-hard skateboarder, snowboarding came naturally. The instructors were shocked. Within a month, he was on the First Nations Snowboard Team. The following year, he moved to Whistler and began instructing. “I was a little skateboarder dude from Vancouver, and [suddenly] I’m teaching people from all over the world.” Barton has since then been performing at Whistler Blackcomb’s Fire and Ice Show; an instructor with Indigenous Life Sport Academy and the Northwest Territories Snowboard Association; and was asked to join the Burton team last winter. Coming full circle, he started volunteering with Chill in 2020—13 years after the program introduced him to the sport. Recounting his first day of snowboarding, he says he loved going fast and the challenge of it. “As a kid growing up in a challenging lifestyle, having the option to push yourself past certain things is a big one,” Barton says. He imagines his life’s trajectory would have looked quite different without Chill. “Snowboarding gave me an actual route and passion to follow.” He’s now an integral part of snowboard and skateboard programs, and his experience has made him a compassionate leader. “I’m pretty relatable to a lot of kids. Whether they’ve grown up in foster care, or they’re not living with their parents, I’ve probably skimmed through some of that as well,” he says. He affords the youth reasonable freedom and caters his instruction to individual needs. And it resonates. Kids he’s taught message him years later as young adults looking for advice. Both Sollors and Barton have put in countless hours to develop their skill. But they each recognize the support they’ve received along the way. “Anybody can do it. You just need that extra bit of kick, drive, or support,” says Barton.
VOLUNTEERS FOR MEANINGFUL CHANGE
Founded in Vermont in 1995 by Jake Burton Carpenter and Donna Carpenter, the foundation has expanded to nine countries. The Vancouver program has been running for two decades, and the Whistler program recently concluded its second season. Describing the youth Chill engages, B.C. program coordinator Kaelen Smith says: “Whether they have recently immigrated to Canada, don’t have anyone in their life who has ever gone snowboarding, their family isn’t able to afford it, or maybe they’re from a marginalized community.” Smith might initially strike you as a bro who says ‘rad’ unironically. But he’s exactly the guy you’d want at the helm of local programming. Mark Willmot, a Sea-to-Sky Alternative School teacher, says Smith wanted to meet his students before they joined Chill. Willmot invited him to attend a school cooking class, and Smith was a willing participant. “He’s all about the students and making sure they’re having the best experience they can have,” says Willmot. In addition to coordinators Kaelen Smith and Katie Turner, volunteers like Daniel Michaud-Soucy are on the mountain with the youth to provide extra support. Michaud-Soucy is a man of stature and works a serious nine-to-five job in cybersecurity. But he turns into a fearless, jovial kid in the mountains and is a standout volunteer—dedicating his time twice a week on both Mt. Seymour and Whistler Blackcomb. “It’s nice to donate money to certain causes you care about, but donating your time is a lot more meaningful,” he says. Michaud-Soucy sees the diversity of youth coming from different backgrounds, countries, and languages as a draw of the program. “The joy you feel when you’re snowboarding is universal. So having these kids that come from a different space feeling that [joy] is pretty cool,” he says. His favourite memory, watching the progress of a girl who had recently moved to Canada. They forged a relationship by speaking basic Spanish together, and he was thrilled to watch her become a confident rider. Equally as important as its diversity is Chill’s engagement with Indigenous youth. Katie Zalazar, the Indigenous Success Teacher at Burnaby North Secondary, says Chill has been life-changing for some of her students. Students who have a hard time going to school show up for snowboarding at 7 a.m., she says. “[Chill] is the shining joy of their year. They go to school, and they’re like, ‘it’s fine,’ but they’re really here to go snowboarding,” says Zalazar. At Whistler Blackcomb, Vail’s Epic Promise Foundation and the Katz Amsterdam Charitable Trust provide lift tickets, rentals, meals, and transport for Chill programming. Zalazar believes this is the right thing for Vail Resorts to do, as Whistler Blackcomb operates on Indigenous land. “It’s a for-profit institution that can only exist with the theft of Indigenous land; the land in B.C. inherently means it’s unceded,” says Zalazar. She says it’s not a black-and-white issue where being a snowboarder makes you unjust but highlights the importance of acknowledging where resorts operate.
MUCH MORE THAN SNOWBOARDING
Chill introduces youth to values on the mountain, transferable to daily life. Each week has a theme like “persistence” or “respect,” which is discussed during transportation, lessons, and debriefs. A repeated focus is “challenge by choice.” Youth are encouraged to push themselves but are always given the autonomy to make their own choices. Sollors argues the process of pursuing a new sport, especially one like snowboarding and one outdoors, imparts relevant life skills. “If you learn how to manage those barriers [on the mountain], then that’s a cheat code for life,” he says. At lunchtime, the youth also hear from guest speakers like professional snowboarders, snow patrollers, or mountain maintenance crew. Zalazar says some of her students were so inspired by certain speakers they decided to study industrial mechanics at BCIT so they could work on the mountain. Chill functions because of volunteers, instructors, donors, ambassadors, and teachers who love this sport and lifestyle. They show up for youth because they believe snowboarding should be enjoyed by everyone, not a select few. In six weeks, youth who have never strapped into a snowboard can be spotted shredding the mountains. Their camaraderie and energy are palpable. They embody the best aspects of the snowboarding community. If you endorse a diversity of riders in the community and want to join the awesome people highlighted in this piece, reach out to kaelens@chill.org to learn more about how to get involved.
Printed in 16.1. Head to https://www.chill.org for more information about The Chill Foundation.
