"Chill" student Gianna Femia, 11, is helped by a teacher at Mount Seymour ski hill in North Vancouver, British Columbia. The Chill Foundation is a six-week learn-to-snowboard program for under-served inner-city youth.Ben Nelms/The Globe and Mail
Even though she grew up within a few dozen kilometres of some of Canada's busiest ski hills, the slopes felt as far away as the Swiss Alps to 11-year-old Elmarie Dionisio.
Like many of her classmates at Mount Pleasant Elementary School, the costs associated with one of Canada's favourite pastimes meant that Elmarie had never visited the snow-covered mountains that encase her hometown.
That changed in January, when the sixth grader was one of five students from Mount Pleasant Elementary School selected to participate in a charity that takes students snowboarding for the first time. Every Wednesday, for six consecutive weeks, she and her classmates zipped up borrowed jackets, oversized gloves and snowboarding boots and piled onto a giant maroon bus that climbed a winding 12-kilometre road to the base of Mount Seymour ski resort.
There, among tall pines and fluffy white powder, the students learned how to fall, pull themselves back up, and then carve a fat turn down the mountain.
"Snowboarding is awesome," Elmarie said recently, on the day of her last lesson. "It's maybe not so hard as I thought it would be."
A teacher at Mount Pleasant Elementary, Steve Mulligan, started looking for ways to get students on the mountain after he polled a group of Grade 7's this fall.
"I asked them to raise their hands if they'd been skiing or snowboarding before," he said. "Not a single hand went up."
He spoke with the school's vice-principal who managed to gain five spots for the school with Chill, the Burton-backed charity that teaches low-income kids how to snowboard.
"The hard part was picking just five," Mr. Mulligan said.
By late January his students were in a storage room choosing from a selection of lightly used snow pants and helmets and brightly coloured jackets. Over the next six Wednesdays Mr. Mulligan and a rotating cast of 23 volunteers inched their way down bunny hills shouting instructions and occasionally acting as protective human cushions.
In addition to the Mount Pleasant students, the Vancouver School Board sent several high-school students from their Take a Hike program for youth at risk. Altogether, about 75 youth participated in the program.
Learning to snowboard requires patience and perseverance, and the mountain often yields a lesson or two for the students.
"It stinks the first couple of weeks, I'm not going to lie," said Jenny Minke, Chill's program co-coordinator in Vancouver. "You're on your butt, you're falling all over the place. It is considered an extreme sport for a reason. I guess the main thing is to just stick with it."
Ms. Minke is working out a deal with Mount Seymour in hopes that she might win discounted lift tickets for her students and their families to use.
For Elmarie, her last day on the slopes was bittersweet. She and her classmate, 11-year-old Gianna Femia, had conquered the chair lift, were linking their turns, winding their way down some intermediate-level hills.
But while taking a rest near the bunny hill Elmarie grew quiet.
A reporter asked her if she thought she'd ever visit the mountain again, and she stared down at the snow where she'd dug a whole with an oversized mitt.
"Probably not," she said. "It's too far."
"But maybe when we're older …" said Gianna.