CANMORE – With the first Canadian Girls On Ice (GOI) completed, Canmore resident and co-organizer Jocelyn Hirose said she felt exhausted and proud that the 12-day program had been not just successful, but deeply meaningful.
The inaugural GOI Canada wrapped up on Aug. 18 with presentations by the participants at the Barrier Lake Field Station in Kananaskis. Launched in the U.S. in 1999, girls aged 16 or 17 embark on annual expeditions to explore and learn about glaciers and alpine landscapes. As part of the expedition, they conduct scientific field studies led by professional female mountain guides, glaciologists, ecologists and artists. The program aims to introduce a younger generation to the potential of pursuing careers in science.
The Canadian GOI team includes Hirose, a Parks Canada resource conservation officer with a Masters in glaciology and mother to a toddler; Eleanor Bash, a PhD candidate in glaciology at the University of Calgary; Association of Canadian Mountain Guides (ACMG) internationally certified mountain guide Cecelia Mortenson and ice core scientist Dr. Alison Criscitiello, University of Calgary adjunct assistant professor and Technical Director of the Canadian Ice Core Archive, who added extra inspiration by participating in the expedition while pregnant.
Canmore’s Alison Andrews, one of the earliest Canadian women to earn full mountain guide certification with the ACMG, and first to work as a mother, along with IFMGA guide Penny Goddard, shared guiding duties.
Ten girls from across the country were selected from hundreds of applicants, including girls from Barrie, Ont., Calgary, Edmonton and Victoria, B.C. Among them were Haylee Yellowbird from Alberta’s Paul Band Reserve and Syrian native Yumna Sakkar, 16, who has called St. John’s Nfld. home for a year and a half.
During the program, the girls camped and spent several nights at The Alpine Club of Canada’s (ACC) Asulkan Hut in B.C.’s Glacier National Park.
During wrap-up presentations the girls shared the questions, hypothesis and conclusions of their scientific experiments on glacier dynamics, glacial organisms, geomorphology and the flora and fauna of a glacial environment.
“I didn’t know anything about glaciers,” Sakkar admitted. “I learned about the ecosystem; it was so cool, the bugs and the trees and the water.”
Edmonton’s Leilu Munro, 16, said the experience was an eye opener.
“I feel like I came home a little more confident than I had started, and the whole experience changed me and how I see the world,” Munro said. “It made me realize how much people impact the environment and that we need to take care of the world because we only have one.”
For Kaslo, B.C.’s Rosemarie Smith, 16, the expedition introduced a new path of post-secondary study.
“On the glacier, I got to go into a crevasse, it was so cool,” Smith said. “I was really inspired by Ali and Elli and Cece. They’re the kind of people I want to keep in touch with the rest of my life.”
That sentiment wasn’t only shared by the girls.
Launching a Canadian GOI took three years of hard work on behalf of the organizers who were spurred by the sheer number of applicants in recent years for the three Canadian spots available on the Washington and Alaska expeditions.
“It has been clear for years that there is a huge need for a tuition-free program like this in Canada,” Criscitiello said. “The four of us share a strong desire to create an opportunity for high school girls that didn’t exist until now; a no-barriers, tuition-free, science- and mountain-based program in our home mountains.”
“We were all keen on sharing our scientific understanding, encouraging female leadership and mentorship and sharing our love for Canada’s many glacierized landscapes with teenage Canadian girls,” Hirose added. “And I learned that teenage girls soak up information so quickly - particularly in an all-female setting - as well as learn mountain movement and complex concepts best through seeing them on the landscape.”
For Mortenson, a veteran of 15 GOI expeditions, the experience is priceless.
“I fundamentally believe in the impact and power of this program,” Mortenson said. “It feels like the most meaningful part of my guiding; it’s the piece of my diverse guiding career where I learn the most every year - from the girls and from the other instructors.”
Because a key aim of the program is to be tuition-free, the organizers expressed gratitude to The W. Garfield Weston Foundation for crucial funding, the ACC, Mount Revelstoke and Glacier National Parks for providing accommodation, the ACMG, and numerous Bow Valley companies and private donors. To learn more, visit www.inspiringgirls.org/canada.
