Project NOWE has been fortunate to have a variety of skilled an diverse guest instructors this year. Here are some photos and brief bios of some of them.
Doug Saul is the Program Director at the YMCA's Camp Cheif Hector. Doug has been active in camping for over 20 years, and has been going to camp since he was six years old. He and his wife Jill and their two children, Magnolia and Jedadiah, live at the Rocky Mountain YMCA. Doug has worked at YMCA Camp Chief Hector for 16 summers. He is also a teacher and a youth-worker. He enjoys meeting and being active with the campers, families and staff of YMCA Camp Chief Hector. Doug is a member of the Alberta Camping Association and is active in the hiking, horseback riding and canoeing organizations that provide leadership for these activities in Canada.
Mitch Suliak started with Aquabatics as a 14 year old in our Junior Development Kayak Team. Since then he has been around Aquabatics every summer, working, paddling and paddling some more. Mitch is equally at home teaching an Intro to Kayaking course as he is talking about bow flair and rocker on canoes or discussing paddle materials. At the ripe old age of 22 shows a maturity far beyond his years both on and off the water.
Simon Coward, owner of Aquabatics (Project NOWE's kayaking contractor). Up until 2004 Simon had been following summers for about 7 years teaching kayaking and raft guiding. Over the years he has led several successful expeditions to Africa and South America where the teams ran multiple class IV/V first descents in remote regions of Kenya and Bolivia. Now a full time Calgary resident, he leads snowboarding and surfing trips in the Winter time and runs the ever expanding Aquabatics kayak school during the summer
Colin Funk is a seasoned facilitator and program designer in the area of creativity and leadership development. He has spent the last 20 years working as a facilitator, director, and theatre producer throughout western Canada. He is a graduate of the BC Institute of Technology – broadcast communications (1981), and a graduate of the Vancouver Playhouse – theatre arts and dramaturgy (1985). Funk is currently the artistic director of Precipice Theatre. Since 1989, he has led the creation of unique leadership development initiatives that bring together the arts, ecology, and business through the medium of theatre. He has also held a number of positions at The Banff Centre, as arts administrator, program coordinator, and creative program director of The Banff Centre’s Leadership Learning Lab.
Albi Sole has been guiding since 1979 and has spent the last fourteen of those years working at the Outdoor Centre at the University of Calgary programming avalanche awareness, ski touring and climbing courses. Albi has an extensive resume including: writing the World's first waterfall ice climbing guide, first climbing ascents in Europe, North and South America, and the Himalaya. Albi worked as a heli-ski guide for 13 years, has guided groups to Aconcagua, Huascaran, and Denali, led two expeditions to Himalaya, and was a participant in lightweight sieges of the West Ridge of Makalu and the first ascent of the West Ridge of Everest from Tibet. In 2008 Albi completed an MSc. researching risk taking in avalanche terrain. Since then Albi has lead the foundation and growth of the Outdoor Council of Canada. Through Albi's support Project NOWE students have been able to learn rock climbing skills on the one-of-a-kind concrete and stone climbing gym structure at the University of Calgary. In January Project NOWE students will take their skills to the world of vertical ice on the Outdoor Centre's ice wall structure at Fortress Mountain Resort.
Joni Cooper, Director, Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival. In 2010 Joni returned to her roots in the Canadian Rockies to take up the post of programming director for the Banff Mountain Festival at The Banff Centre. Joni made it possible for 10 project NOWE students to take in two days of amazing presentations by mountain book authors including "John Clarke – Explorer of the Coast Mountains" by Lisa Baile, "Alone on the Ice" by David Roberts and "George Lowe and The Conquest of Everest" by Huw Lewis Jones.
When we started Project NOWE we had two sponsors and an extremely limited budget. Then one of our sponsors dropped out in early September unexpectedly. This left us with a problem: how to run a half funded outdoor education semester. The biggest initial hurdle was clothing and equipment. Tom Wolfe sent an email out to industry professionals, members of the Association of Canadian Mountain Guides, asking for donations of used clothing and equipment.
Within weeks our shelves and clothing racks were filled. Now our students can participate in activities like snowboarding, cross country skiing, and ice climbing in comfort and properly equipped.
Tom: "Skating would be a fun thing to do. But we don't have skates. And we don't have money." Amy: "Let me give Mike a call..." A big thanks to GearUp for their incredibly generous support of our program with incredible rental discounts. Mike Meilike you rock!
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